I got this book at the library because most of the linguistic writing on gender based language studies quote it. Lakoff's theories seem largely out of date-for example, a discussion on whether "Ms." will ever come into use. The material is based on her observations rather than any experiment and there is no data. Still, the book is thought provoking. It is also interesting to see how language perceptions, and the role of women in society has changed (or failed to change) in the past 25 years.

It has been almost 3 decades since the publication of Language and Woman's Place. Though it was a 'pioneering' work at the time of its publication, there has been a stream of research in the language and gender area since then, and now it has become a 'classic'. Being a classic doesn't mean that it is immune from criticism, though. One thing that stands out to today's readers is that it is almost 'sexist' in "measuring women's language against men's", that is taking male language as 'norm' and viewing woman's as a "deviation" from it. It was in this "male-as-norm" tradition of research, for instance, that she could speculate that women use more tag questions than men because they learn the lesson not to be as assertive as they are.

However, the book is a delightful read for anyone interested in the issue of language and its relationship to sexual oppression. It is very readable and anticipates such subsequent studies as Dale Spender's Man Made Language in many ways.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, so the saying goes, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail. And if you've spent your professional life in modern linguistics- an academic field that has become somewhat marginalized since the 1960s- you no doubt tend to see all problems of society as linguistics.

There are really two books here- two parallel "texts", as the deconstructionists might put it. One is a very clear dissertation on problems of interpretation and communication when there is no general agreement on meaning. Quoting an earlier work, "When talking, men and women draw from the same pool of words and put them together with the same grammatical rules, but they often misunderstand each other" (from Talking Power: The Politics of Language). All very true, of course, but there's nothing terribly ground breaking or novel in that.

The other story is more of a polemic whose thesis is that language is the primary force underlying various social and political conflicts- whoever controls language controls power, as Lakoff has said. There are those who would accept that, and indeed George Orwell made it a central part of 1984. But does anyone seriously believe that the OJ trial, or Hilary Clinton's relationship to the press is a matter of language? Taking Lakoff's quote about communication between men and women, Lakoff wnats to tell us that it is the languge that is at the root of the problem, rather than some dynamic underlying the different interpretation.

Both the OJ story and the Hillary story are, in the end, about the events and history. How you perceive OJ's guilt or innocence depends in large part on your personal experimences with the criminal justice system, and how you perceive Hillary Clinton depends on your core political beliefs. To claim the it is language that shapes the debate is, depending on how deeply you buy into Lakoff's thesis, either trivial or simply unjustified.

Some events you experience directly. Most events you learn about, usually by listening to someone or by reading an account. Because of this, who tells you the story and how that person tells it is important. If you interrupt a fight between two children, you usually expect them to tell different stories about who started the fight and why. In the terms Robin Lakoff uses, multiple narrators frame the story in different ways.

Lakoff's central thesis is that many of our most recent political and social conflicts involve the use and ownership of language and discourse, often as the central point of the "war." This is immediately obvious in the chapters concerned with the history and usage of "politically correct" and speech codes and on the role of Ebonics in education. As Lakoff herself admits, her thesis is more controversial when she discusses the other topics in the book: Clarence Thomas & Anita Hill; public perception of Hillary Rodham Clinton; the O.J. Simpson Trial; and the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr imbroglio.

Lakoff embraces a post-modernist view of language and its use: the speaker's use of language can shape perceptual reality. Words have power and who defines a word is important. As Lakoff argues, many of the assumptions underlying Standard American English derive from the views and experience of a particular constellation of economic, social and ethnic groups, primarily white and led by men. As various minority groups have become more influential or have greater access to center-stage, standing assumptions are challenged. And when the status quo changes, those who liked it react strongly.

Lakoff also reminds us that who gets to talk and ask questions and what are allowable questions and answers is an important practical concern in linguistics. Thus, when considering Hill and Thomas, she is less immediately concerned with the facts than with what questions were asked of whom and how the media and the Senate Judiciary Committee depicted those involved. The depiction of Anita Hill depended in part on a set of definitions of who women are and how they may behave, i.e., on a common understanding of English and its meaning, whether or not this matched reality.

Lakoff writes in a very clear and pleasant style. While she uses linguistic terms throughout the work, she does so in a way that does not overwhelm the non-specialist reader, but also assumes a level of intelligence and ability to learn. Her chapters form coherent wholes, incorporating sufficient background to supplement what knowledge we already have of each incident. Most readers should find something of value in Lakoff's work, even if they don't find it as compelling an argument as others.

The Language War is particularly apropos for those who read or write reviews on Amazon. Lakoff briefly discusses the reviews of It Takes a Village and the techniques used by those who didn't care for Rodham Clinton, regardless of the merit of the book.

Lakoff, a Berkeley linguist, examines several recent controversies from a linguistic point of view. She has chapters on speech codes, Anita Hill, Hillary Rodham Clinton, O. J. Simpson, Ebonics, and Monicagate, but she doesn't discuss the events themselves (although her viewpoint is usually quite clear); rather, she concentrates on the national discourse on the events. Her overarching thesis is that each of these controversies is part of a language war, in which previously downtrodden groups (especially blacks and women) are trying to seize the right to define themselves away from the traditional holders of power over language (i.e., white middle-class men).

She speaks from a post-modern point of view, but much more rationally than I normally associate with the po-mo crowd. Through this book, I have developed much more sympathy for some of the underlying tenets of post-modern thought, if not for the more extreme examples that have turned post-modernism into self-parody (e.g., believing an article claiming that gravity is a social construct). Although Lakoff is somewhat out there at times, she's not too far out, and not all that often; and even when I don't agree with her, I still find myself understanding better the different sides of these very divisive issues, which in itself is a noble goal. And the book is a pure delight to read; Lakoff's style is breezy and pleasant, and she usually remembers to define linguistics jargon for her general audience. She is, however, a self-confessed unrepentant liberal, and more conservative readers may find her point-of-view somewhat hard to take.

My only quibble is that her publisher has fallen prey to the evil of endnotes; they are especially criminal in this case, where the notes are few in number but highly useful. They should have been placed at the bottom of the page, where they belong.