Robin Tolmach Lakoff

It becomes apparent that one of the reasons women are put into "woman's place" is that women like Lakoff keep putting them there: She fails to recognize the achievements of other women, and claims to be contributing a "small first step" in the direction of a wider option....Well, it IS small. But this is hardly the "first", and her inability to even "see" what other women have done speaks volumes.

Her humorless and insulting style defeats her ostensible purpose, makes the reader want to flee, and the content is not academically helpful: Parellel words are actually equivalent, NOT "widely different" -- not in the extreme that she delineates. "Bachelor uncle/ Maiden aunt" are closer than she claims and "master/mistress" "king/queen" for the long-term, historically, are equivalent if not "equal". She fails to show examples of exalted/despicable parallelisms, although there is no question of non-parallelism. There IS linguistic prejudice, but she fails to cite the extremes, and labels the middling ranges with provocative words.

The author was a Linguist in an institution in which other women -- around her turf -- did not thrive. Curiously, this book contains "linguistic" errors ("supersegmental patterns" probably meant suprasegmental. Gad.)… (meer)