This extensive collection of articles is testimony to the continuing topicality and diversity of research in language and gender, spanning a wide range of disciplines, theoretical stances, and methodological approaches and examining gender in a vast variety of linguistic, sociocultural and group-specific contexts. Contributors draw on their backgrounds in linguistics, discourse analysis, anthropology, psychology, education, and even information science and thus reflect the interdisciplinary nature and appeal of current language and gender debates. The Handbook is unique in its endeavor to represent a wide range of languages and thus contains some in-depth analyses of and a large number of references to languages other than English, including Greek, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Gullah Creole, Guyanese Creole, Bislama, Tongan, Tagalog, Malagasy, Lakhota, Japanese, Chinese, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Afrikaans, and Gaelic. This heterogeneity is reinforced by contributions that aim to go beyond a focus on adult, white, heterosexual, middle-class speakers, examining South African gay personal advertisements, the construction of Tongan transgendered identities, or the discursive practices of bilingual Central/Mexican American working-class elementary-school girls and of white Anglo adolescent high-school students from varying social backgrounds. Although the majority of chapters focus on spoken interaction in everyday and in institutional settings, the Handbook also examines grammatical gender and both the construction and the representation of gender in literary and newspaper texts as well as in online communication.

The editors structure the 31 chapters within the five main sections in a way that highlights both common grounds and differences in current language and gender research. On several occasions, one chapter in a section offers an additional or even alternative perspective on a specific issue discussed in the previous chapter, which turns the reading process into an enjoyable and stimulating debate. This thought-provoking effect, however, could have been rendered more accessible, particularly to undergraduate students, if some of these differences and similarities had been commented on explicitly in a brief introduction at the beginning of each section.

After an excellent introductory chapter by Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff, the first section provides historical and theoretical background of the field. The opening chapter in this section is Bonnie McElhinny's challenging scene-setter for many of the following contributions. McElhinny problematizes the notions of gender and sex dichotomies, but her discussion of current constructionist approaches to gender is balanced by her acknowledgment that cultural and economic factors can impose constraints on the agency and flexibility of individuals, particularly outside the linguistic realm. McElhinny therefore argues that both an activity-based and a practice-based approach to gender need to be reconciled with a theorization of gender as a structural principle which, similar to social class and ethnicity, “should be understood as a principle for allocating access to resources, and as a defense for systematic inequalities” (p. 32). McElhinny addresses one further question that dominates most of the subsequent chapters: When or how is gender relevant in interaction? She sums up her stance: “People's horizons of relevance are shaped by tasks in which they are engaged, and in part because knowledge of the world is shaped and regulated by power (Blommaert 1999; Smith 1999)” (36). Although the first part of this quote could support rather than challenge the rigid conversation analytic (CA) definition of relevance of which McElhinny is critical, the second part suggests that participants' realization of (gender) relevance can be influenced by dominant and therefore invisible supra-local discourses of knowledge/power.

Whereas many contributors in this book would probably feel restricted by an exclusive analytic focus on aspects of social identities made explicitly relevant by the participants, Don Kulick goes as far as to argue that analysis needs to include the unconscious. Kulick views (sexual) identities as “consciously assumed or consciously concealed” (5) and argues that a shift of analytic focus to the linguistic manifestations of “desire” is necessary to investigate the unsaid, non-intentional meanings expressed by speakers.

Although the editors view the first chapter in each section as a particularly clear and comprehensive lead-in, it is Mary Bucholtz's contribution in this section that will give undergraduates a more accessible introduction to the diversity of the field. Bucholtz introduces various approaches to discourse analysis, such as ethnography of communication, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, (feminist) conversation analysis, stylistics, and critical discourse analysis. Classical concepts in language and gender, such as the difference and dominance approaches, are tied into a refreshing review of qualitative analytical frameworks and current theoretical debates in the field, with illustrations drawn from a variety of linguistic backgrounds of both spoken and written interaction.

The chapters in part 2 of the Handbook are loosely connected by their focus on “Negotiating relations”. Robin Lakoff investigates the relationship between women and power, exposing androcentric bias in her detailed analysis of a written academic text by Schegloff which critiques the political motivation of (critical) discourse analysis, and in her less well documented investigations of the media discussions surrounding a contentious theater play and women in positions of political power. The diversity of theoretical stances and analytical frameworks is particularly noteworthy in this part of the Handbook. For example, Tannen's exploration of the relationship between power and connection in intra-family interaction is largely restricted to the content level and reflects a comparatively essentialist notion of gender differences; this contrasts with Goodwin's CA-informed investigation of children's (argumentative) communication emphasizing the heterogeneity of gendered practices in relation to class, ethnicity, and interactional goals.

Interestingly, Susan Herring's clearly presented review of the past 13 years of research on gender in the relatively new media of the Internet mirror the findings of early language and gender research on gendered styles in spoken interaction, which was framed by the difference and dominance paradigms. Moreover, Herring shows that in spite of there now being an equal number of women and men users of the Internet, “Top-level control of Internet resources, infrastructure, and content is exercised mostly by men” (218). Thus, this review indicates that in e-mail, chat, instant messaging, and the World Wide Web there is neither gender equality with regard to power nor gender invisibility with regard to message content and style. One of the explanations that Herring offers for women's active role in maintaining gender differences in online communication is “gender pride,” which is explained as “the social approval accorded to individuals for behaving in gender-appropriate ways” (219). This explanation links Herring's paper to one of the most interesting and significant discussions in this Handbook about the relationship between gender ideologies and actual language use, which is developed in Susan Philips's chapter and in part 4.

The first two contributions in part 3, by Niko Besnier and Miriam Meyerhoff, relate to the section heading “Authenticity and place” more explicitly than do the other chapters. Besnier and Meyerhoff explore the (linguistic) practices used by marginalized speakers in Tonga and Vanuatu to challenge ideologies of “authentic” identities and to claim a place of authority in their respective communities. The need to focus on marginalized or “exceptional” speakers is also highlighted by Kira Hall, whose refreshing review of classical concepts and findings in the field praises Robin Lakoff's frequently criticized work on women's language for including a range of deviant groups such as homosexuals, hippies, and academics (!) in her discussion of social and linguistic power asymmetries.

This focus on power is missing from Jack Sidnell's investigation of the male-exclusive culture of the Guyanese rumshop, in which he links conversation analytic and ethnographic frameworks. Sidnell's chapter demonstrates both the merits and the restrictions of micro-level analysis in the vein of CA. After giving some examples that demonstrate the extreme and, in my view, simplistic display of participant orientation that some CA analyses would deem necessary in order to accept the salience of gender or other contextual features, Sidnell subjects his data to a refreshingly detailed analysis of turn-taking. His analysis reveals that (non-present and present but silent) women contribute to the male exclusivity of the setting, which Sidnell views as a “situated accomplishment” (383). However, he does not asks why women play an active role in the accomplishment of their exclusion, and he restricts his analysis to the observation that “for whatever reason Baby [a woman present in the rumshop] […] fails to acknowledge the talk directed to her” (338; emphasis added). This omission undermines the exploration of gender in this asymmetrical interaction and should have led to a consideration of local and probably even supra-local patterns of power, which remain uninvestigated in Sidnell's analysis despite the ethnographic information provided.

Nevertheless, Sidnell's synthesis of analytic frameworks constitutes a valuable contribution to the debate about gender relevance/salience in linguistic data, a debate that is mirrored in Ann Weatherall and Cindy Gallois's chapter in part 4. In their informative comparison of social-cognitive and discursive psychology approaches to language and gender, Weatherall & Gallois (489) explain that whereas the former approach would hold that language both expresses and reflects (gender) identity, the latter views gender as an interactional accomplishment and is influenced by CA theory and methodology. They take the stance that in spite of their differences, both psychological approaches offer “a link between larger social issues and local practices” (505) that is missing from other fields and even from the Community of Practice approach to language and gender.

The other chapters in this section on “Stereotypes and norms,” however, do attend to the “ideological dimension” of gender (505), which Weatherall & Gallois view as being neglected in non-psychological research. Deborah Cameron's chapter highlights the importance of integrating the foci on ideology, representation, and actual use of language in relation to gender. Cameron argues that there has been a recent shift in representation from a model of female linguistic deficit to one of female linguistic superiority (and male deficit), which supports ideologies of a gender dichotomy and of women's “natural” predispositon to work in jobs that require good/feminine communication skills but earn them little money or status. This highlights that not only is it important to explore the dialectic between ideological representation and actual language use, but also that linguistic ideologies themselves can have very powerful effects on the “real” economic or social situation of individuals and groups. Mary Talbot's chapter on gender stereotypes supports Cameron's arguments in many ways by providing more detailed analyses of media texts that demonstrate how the representation of women as good communicators supports rather than challenges male hegemony. Anne Pauwel's chapter focuses on a range of non-sexist language reforms in different languages and aims to investigate the extent to which the introduction of non-sexist generic nouns, naming practices, and titles has been successful in establishing new norms.

The fifth and final part of the Handbook is dedicated to the exploration of gender in institutional discourse. The institutional contexts being investigated range from the European Union Parliament (Ruth Wodak) and the courtroom (Susan Ehrlich) to education (Joan Swann). Whereas Shari Kendall's chapter contrasts the linguistic strategies employed by one woman in two different roles – mother and manager – Janet Holmes and Maria Stubbe present a comparison of “gendered” workplaces which shows that women managers switch between stereotypically “masculine” and “feminine” styles, controlling the talking time and displaying directness when giving instructions in meetings but making use of mitigation and indirectness when dealing with subordinates on a one-to-one basis. The frequent use of humor also serves this dual focus of creating solidarity and maintaining control. Thus, Holmes & Stubbe's own data as well as their review of a range of empirical studies challenge previous findings about stereotypical gender differences in public interaction (e.g. Holmes 1992) by demonstrating that the linguistic practices displayed in work meetings should not be linked to the gender, but instead to the status of the speakers and to the function of the speech event.

Joan Swann's investigation of language and gender in educational settings supports Holmes & Stubbe's deconstruction of the “collaborative/competitive” dichotomy. On the other hand, Swann demonstrates that current educational policy evokes a strict binarism by focusing on boys' (alleged) collective underachievement and thereby marginalizing the needs of girls. This policy, Swann (640) argues, might be difficult for educational researchers (505) to challenge without themselves “bolstering a binary position to gender.”

One of the most central questions that engages authors in the Handbook is how to conceptualize gender. Most contributors distance themselves from the traditional sociolinguistic notion of gender as an independent social variable and from what is frequently perceived as an “essentialist” notion of gender as a (biologically determined) binary. Thus, the majority of papers appear to take a broadly constructionist approach to gender, viewing gender as being accomplished in interaction rather than as a fixed social category. Many chapters also reject the concepts of “feminine” and “masculine” styles of language as being insensitive to the heterogeneity of gender and instead embrace the Community of Practice approach as the appropriate framework for this context- and practice-related conceptualization of performative gender. However, there are some scholars who contradict the overwhelming opposition to “gendered styles” (e.g., Herring, Tannen), and several authors warn against the danger of losing sight of what Holmes & Meyerhoff (9) call the “supra-local” dimension of gender (see especially McElhinny, Lakoff, Herring, Philips, Swann). Indeed, Holmes & Meyerhoff (9) take the stance that “No matter what we say about the inadequacy or invidiousness of essentialized, dichotomous conceptions of gender, and no matter how justifiable such comments may be, in everyday life it really is often the case that gender is ‘essential’.”

These different conceptualizations of gender are reflected in the diversity and combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies advocated by the contributors, ranging from (CA) micro-level analyses and ethnographic case studies to variationist approaches and critical discourse analyses (CDA) of macro-level patterns, and attributing varying degrees of importance to issues such as context, participant roles and orientation, power, and ideology. This heterogeneity of theory and method is one of the main strengths in Holmes & Meyerhoff's Handbook, as it will encourage numerous fruitful debates in the area of language and gender. The chapters in this book constitute a rich resource for scholars and students in the fields of (socio)linguistics, discourse analysis, and applied linguistics, but also in sociology, psychology, anthropology, media studies, and education. Moreover, many contributions will also be relevant to readers outside academia, particularly to practitioners and policy makers in a number of institutional settings (education, media, information technology, law, business). In fact, it is the comparison of academic investigations in language and gender with the gender stereotypes, norms, and practices that prevail outside academia that I view as one of the most significant future directions in the area of language and gender, as it moves scholars toward a more active engagement with public debates and policies.