A Review of Gender and Language by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet

My Gender and Language course has two textbooks. I just finished the first one, a book entitled Gender and Language. The book is a collaborative effort between Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet. While it is a linguistics-based textbook, you don't have to have much linguistics training to get a lot out of it. This Gender and Language class is the first linguistics class I have ever taken, but Gender and Language is entirely approachable and understandable. I think it says a lot that I read ahead so far that I completed the entire book two weeks before the course syllabus has us scheduled to finish. Even if I hadn't had to read the entire thing, I still would have, because I found it so enjoyable and fun, something rare for a textbook. While definitely suited for a classroom setting, I enjoyed reading it. It may not be your first choice for beach reading, but as far as textbooks go, it's well-written and not inundated with jargon. The reason this book works so well is because of its interdisciplinarity. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet combine linguistics, gender studies, psychology, anthropology, and sociology to create a well-rounded work appropriate for a wide audience. The introductory chapters start more generally, reviewing a great deal of gender studies literature (and may even be boring for people who already are well-versed in canonical gender research), and as the book progresses linguistics is introduced gradually. As a result, linguistics does not appear as an unfamiliar, complicated, or scary subject area. Instead, the reader sees the ways in which language is connected to all other aspects of society and culture. Language and Gender might be too simplistic for an advanced linguistic student, but makes a fantastic introductory text. And while the authors do not make use of heavy jargon or technical details, even people who have studied linguistics for awhile can get something out of it. If one is already familiar with many linguistic concepts but hasn't studied them in relation to gender, this is the perfect book to begin to explore those issues. I recommend it for anyone teaching a course about gender and language. In addition, individual chapters work well in isolation and would be useful to introduce the topic of gender in an introductory linguistics course. Individual chapters would work vice-versa as well: in an introductory gender studies class, excerpts from Language and Gender could be used to discuss the ways in which language has an effect on gender. In addition, the book is largely interdisciplinary, and as a result appeals to the fields of sociology, social psychology, and anthropology, giving Language and Gender usefulness across the academic spectrum.