Gender Matters presents a feminist linguistic analysis of texts - literature, media and lyrics - and conversation. It explores how gender relates to and shapes our understanding of sexism, reading and writing, politeness and public speaking.

Gender Matters 1. Introduction: Why gender matters Section 1: Gender and reading/writing 2. Gender and reading 'Gendering the reader' 3.. Analysing women's writing 'The Gendered sentence' Section 2: Analysing sexism 4. Sexism and Poetry 'Knowing y/our place: feminist contextualised stylistics' 5. Post-feminist text analysis 'Postfeminist text analysis' 6. Transitivity analysis 'Close encounters of a feminist kind: Transitivity and pop lyrics' 7. Third wave feminist text analysis 'Third wave feminism and the analysis of sexism' 8. Feminism and naming 'Caught between anti-sexism, sexism and 'political correctness' Section 3: Gender and politeness 9. 'Gender and politeness' 10.'Gender and impoliteness' 11. 'Class, Gender and politeness' Section 4 : Strong women speakers 12. 'Discourse competence; or how to theorise strong women speakers' 13.'Gender and performance anxiety' 14. Conclusions