displacement of race in language and gender studies

Abstract

As a collaboration between the two authors, this essay first addresses each author’s individual perspective on language and gender studies, particularly as it has taken shape in the US context, and then offers a jointly developed argument regarding the field’s history and trajectory. We write from the respective standpoints of our lived experiences within and beyond the academy. Mary is a white cis female-identified linguistics professor who was deeply involved in the Berkeley Women and Language Group in the 1990s and has conducted research on language and gender throughout her career, especially with respect to its intersection with race. deandre’s Black and gender-creative subjectivity substantially colours the lens through which they experience and interpret the social life of language.