Thinking about language and gender: a South African perspective

This brief critical review considers the historical and theoretical development of language and gender research by abstracting some of the key themes, debates and ideas before extending these to the issues raised in this editions. The paper raises questions about the empirical context within which language/gender studies research is taking place and situates current research within a broad theoretical and methodological frame. Furthermore, the paper suggests that some important research is taking place in non-linguistic disciplines that frame gender as a social category in terms of its construction within and through language.