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'Feminism' wrote Marie Shear in 1986, 'is the radical notion that women are people'. But, simple and powerful though this definition is, feminism is not a single, clear narrative. It doesn't begin with a specific event at a particular moment in time, it can't be identified with any one political organization or movement, and it isn't defined by the contributions of a handful of great thinkers. Here, Professor Deborah Cameron unpicks the various strands that constitute one of history's most important intellectual and political movements. In her clear and incisive account, she discusses oppression, sexuality, violence, academic theory and practical activism, shows how feminism can be a way of viewing the world and provides an overview of its history. In an era of #metoo, pay gap scandals and online harrassment, it's impossible to deny that gender inequality is a fact of life. And as long as that continues to be true, we will need to understand and engage with the ideas and history of the feminist movement

E finché ciò resterà vero, avremo bisogno di studiare, capire e fare i conti con le idee e la storia del Movimento femminista. Che – come ricostruisce efficacemente l'autrice – non inizia con un evento specifico e in un momento particolare, non può essere identificato con una particolare organizzazione o movimento politico, e non è definito dalle riflessioni di qualche grande pensatrice o pensatore, ma rappresenta uno dei movimenti intellettuali e politici più importanti della storia. [Testo dell'editore]

In the Sedgewick lecture for 2012, Professor Deborah Cameron investigates the age-old question of whether men and women are different kinds of beings, both physically and intellectually. She begins by noting that in the 19th century that most writers saw men as being intellectually superior to women in their use of language. But she also observes that this position was gradually modified in the 20th century, that is, until the 1990s, when there was a sudden resurgence of the essentialist idea, this time with many writers concluding that women were programmed to be the better language users. Cameron examines closely the claims of a number of popular self-help books on the subject, and then proceeds to show how many of the more supposedly scientific books rely on a form of "neurobabble" to make similar claims about the alleged hard-wired intellectual differences between men and women. The question then becomes, why is it that this essentialist view has caught on? Cameron suggests that it is in part a way of responding to the pervasive anxiety brought about by massive social changes in the roles of men and women. She also cautions that this new essentialism is having potentially drastic consequences on the theories and practice of how boys and girls, men and women, are educated

This collection of articles presents a selection of Deborah Cameron's work on language, gender and sex in one single volume. Arranged thematically, this book covers major developments in Anglo-American feminist linguistics, and Cameron's responses to these, spanning the last twenty years.The collection's overarching theme is the political relationship between language and gender: four distinctly themed sections demonstrate that a variety of forces affect gender relations, and gender representations, in different times and places. Cameron examines the connections between language and the (mis)r

AbstractThis article draws on research which analyses both the actual speech of women in political and public settings and the way their speech is represented in media reports and other commentary. It argues that there is a disconnect between reality and representation, and that the effect is to place a particular burden on women. Women are judged in relation to the belief that they will civilise public discourse thanks to their 'naturally' less adversarial speech style, and when they deviate from this stereotype they are liable to attract punitive responses. The idea(l) of civility is thus a double‐edged sword: while it may be invoked to deplore the abuse to which women in public life are subjected, it can also be deployed to police or discredit women's own public speech. A feminist politics of civility must pay attention to both these manifestations of sexism.

Abstract
Issues related to gender (and sexuality), largely ignored in the early development of sociolinguistics, have emerged as a cornerstone of the field. Spurred on by the feminist movement and new generations of engaged scholars addressing how language use both reveals and embeds gender inequalities, scholarship on such questions is now "mainstream" across a range of disciplines. Deborah Cameron argues that the primary focus in recent decades on social identity and performance, while path-breaking in many ways, has had the unintended consequence of drawing attention away from core issues of power and patriarchy in terms of gender relations.