Overview

Controversy over gendered pronouns, for example using the generic ""he,"" has been a staple of feminist arguments about patriarchal language over the last 30 years, and is certainly the most contested political issue in Western feminist linguistics. Most accounts do not extend beyond policy issues like the official institution of non-sexist language. In this volume, Anna Livia reveals continuities both before and after the sexist language refore movement and shows how the creative practices of pronoun use on the part of feminist writers had both aesthetic and political ends. Livia uses the term ""pronoun envy"" ironically to show that rather being a case of misguided envy, battles over gendered language are central to feminist concerns.Livia examines a broad corpus of written texts in English and French, concentrating on those texts which problematize the traditional functioning of the linguistic gender system. They range from novels and prose poems to film scripts and personal testimonies, and in time from the 19th century to the present. Some withhold any indication of gender; others have non-gendered characters. Livia's goal is two-fold; to help bridge the divide between linguistic and literary analysis, and to show how careful study of the manipulation of linguistic gender in these texts informs larger concerns. This fresh and highly interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of several vital areas, including language and gender, sociolinguistics, and feminist literary analysis.

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9780195138535

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Reviews

Pronoun Envy is a delight to read with its use of witty chapter headings which concisely capture the focus of the particular chapter ... highly recommended Discourse & Society A valuable contribution to the series with a fascinating study of feminist writers' textual strategies surrounding the 'pronoun' problem and the respresentation of linguistic and cultural gender Discourse & Society

""Livia's deft explication of how these texts conceal and queer grammatical gender stands as a compelling contribution not only to the fields designated by the series in which the book appears-Studies in Language and Gender-but to literary study as well.""--nterdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis ""A valuable contribution to the series with a fascinating study of feminist writers' textual strategies surrounding the 'pronoun' problem and the representation of linguistic and cultural gender.""--Discourse and Society ""This book could be used in Language and Gender classes because of the in-depth explanation and review of works done in language and gender studies. It offers a simple yet informative introduction to pronominal studies in French and English. The translation of French into English is very useful as it allows readers without knowledge [of] French an insight into French language system.""--Linguist List ""Livia's deft explication of how these texts conceal and queer grammatical gender stands as a compelling contribution not only to the fields designated by the series in which the book appears-Studies in Language and Gender-but to literary study as well.""--Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis

Author Information

Anna Livia is Visiting Assistant Professor of French at the University of California at Berkeley. She co-edited Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality (OUP, 1995).

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