With the general growth of feminist work in many academic fields, it is hardly surprising that the relationship between language and gender has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In an attempt to go beyond "folklinguistic" assumptions about how men and women use language (the assumption that women are "talkative", for example), studies have focused on anything from different syntactical, phonological or lexical uses of language to aspects of conversation analysis, such as topic nomination …showed first 75 words of 677 total…

…showed last 75 words of 677 total…as a site of possible resistance); looks specifically at the contexts of language use, rather than assuming broad gendered differences; involves more work by men on language and gender, since attempts to understand male uses of language in terms of difference have been few (thus running the danger of constructing men's speech as the ‘norm’ and women's speech as ‘different’); aims not only to describe and explain but also to change language and social relationships.