Pronoun Envy: Literary Uses of Linguistic Gender (Studies in Language and Gender) - Softcover

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)

In this interdisciplinary book, 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 nineteenth century to the present. Her goal is to show that rather than being a case of misguided envy, battles over gendered language are central to feminist concerns. This fresh and exciting scholarship will appeal to linguists and scholars in literary and gender studies.