Grammar & Gender

"Amid the flood of recent commentary on Ms. and (s)he—on the multifarious ways, in fact, that antifeminism is embedded in our everyday language and syntax—Dennis Baron's book shines out as a model of both lively learning and hard sense. His scope is suitably wide: he begins not in the 19th century, but in the Renaissance (when, for example Thomas Wilson argued that the locution 'mother and father' is unnatural: the man must come first), and provides compelling examples of how not only our language, but our linguists have subscribed to a notion of the inferiority of Eve's language. The book is chock-full of fascinating nuggets—about how the word 'girl' originally included boy-children as well as girls, and how 19th-century women's colleges, discomfited by the idea of female bachelors and doctors, awarded degrees like 'Maid of Arts' and 'Vestal of Philosophy.' The reader may tire eventually of false etymologies and skewed grammars, but no more compelling condemnation of the English linguistic tradition (following through right into the present) has yet appeared." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)