More than talking difference

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces the relationship between language on the one hand, and gender and sexuality on the other. It explores the ways in which language creates categories of gender and sexuality, and the ways that people use language to do that categorization and communicate what they expect people of different categories to be like. The book addresses the ways in which things like a person's accent are related to their gender and sexual identities, and how these norms circulate and are perpetuated. Gender is implicated in all the ways that language is used and understood by humans. Language is used by people to do social things in interaction, language is used to reflect the social categories people identify with, and language helps to create and define those very categories.