Robin Lakoff, expert on language and gender, dead at 82

Summary

Robin Lakoff, a linguist who analyzed what she considered the unique ways women speak and argued that language enforces the power imbalance between the sexes — an insight that inspired an entire academic field, the study of language and gender — died on Aug. 5 in Walnut Creek, Calif. She was 82.Her son, Andrew, said she died in a hospital from complications of a fall that led to respiratory failure.Dr. Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1972 to 2012, maintained that women and men communicate differently, and that women are brought up to speak in a way that triggers their powerlessness.“‘Woman’s language’ has as foundation the attitude that women are marginal to the serious concerns of life, which are pre-empted by men,” she wrote in 1973 in a groundbreaking paper, “Language and Woman’s Place,” which was expanded into a 1975 book.Dr. Lakoff’s thesis that women are raised to accept a secondary role in the world, one enforced partly by the speech they are taught, sets off academic arguments to this day.Her 1973 paper “created a huge fuss,” the linguists Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet wrote in 2012. “Thus was launched the study of language and gender.”Dr. Lakoff observed that women’s speech was marked by hedging phrases (“like,” “y’know”), which convey that the speaker is uncertain; empty adjectives like “adorable” and “lovely,” which trivialize statements; so-called tag questions at the end of sentences, like “John is here, isn’t he?,” which convey hesitancy; overly polite phrases like “Won’t you please close the door?,” which suggest submissiveness; and a habit of ending declarative statements with a rising tone of voice that saps them of force.She also observed that women are less likely to tell jokes than men, less likely to use vulgarity, more likely to use hyper-correct grammar and to speak with exaggerated politeness, and more likely to “speak in italics” — that is, stressing words because the speaker fea...