ourse of the life span (e.g., Mead, 1934; Piaget, 1965; Chomsky, 1969). Competing theorists tend to agree, however, that linguistic development is a feature of cognitive development more generally and that a critical phase of it kicks in at about age 2. No less significantly, language--however and at whatever cognitive point it is acquired and however it may be employed--is seen as a feature not only of individual but also of social experience. Indeed, the discourses of linguistic and sociological theory overlap and converge--in a manner now hostile, now congenial--on a more or less routine basis (e.g., Bergesen, 2004).
It has been said that "oral language is necessarily composed of arbitrary signs" (Englefield, 1977, p. 78). The same might have been said of any form of human communication. The rational capacity, which yields a capacity to engage in complex layers of meaningful coding, distinguishes human beings from other animals, whether such coding takes the form of written language, nonverbal, or oral communication. However, analysis of signs, or symbols, of communication would be incomplete if it focused solely on their existence. The theoretical and analytical discourse of how language functions in the context of psychosocial interaction inevitably involves multiple attributes of experience that unfolds in a context of multiple social and cultural structures, symbols, and cues. When one of the factors of analysis is gender, given the abundance of evidence that access to social goods is quite differential between men and women, it is inevitable that the social and cultural implications of language use will entail social and cultural critique.
Gender-based critiques of the dynamics of linguistics and culture have been mounted on a range of issue fronts. Feminist social critique, when considered as an undifferentiated theory, can be said to dissect the historiography of culture and society in the West in a way that presents evi...