Language is often considered to be a neutral and passive phenomenon whose main function is to communicate or reflect what is happening in society. Nevertheless, language scholars understand that language is not free; language itself can be a tool of oppression or empowerment. It is not just a reflection of society, but is involved in the construction and perpetuation of social realities. This chapter explores key ways language use can reveal and create gendered behaviors and identities.

Grappling with the wide variety of ways that language reflects society's attitudes concerning gender is vital to understanding the relationship of gender and language. Equally crucial is working to understand how language constructs attitudes towards gender roles and expectations. Consider the way women are sometimes addressed in public discourse as 'girl' (i.e. 'We have a new girl at the office') whereas men are rarely referred to as 'boy' in a similar context. This reality reveals a patriarchal society that benefits in some way by referring to a grown, professional woman as a child. The sentence perpetuates this attitude. The attitude can be spotted in various situations and circumstances where language can be seen to reveal gendered lives as well as to reinforce performances of gender in what, how and why we say the things we do.

Early in the 20th century, Edward Sapir (1929) and his graduate student, Benjamin Whorf, American linguists and anthropologists, proclaimed that 'the limits of one's language are the limits of one's world'. This sentiment, known as the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis, sees a systemic relationship between one's language and how one understands the world around them (Sapir, 1929). This hypothesis suggested that language can only reflect our lived experiences. Current researchers are more critical of this stance because of the very real possibility that we have the ability to experience things that we cannot yet articulate.