Reviews

On the basis of abundant linguistic data and social commentaries, the book argues that the polarization of male and female language historically served the social, metapragmatic function of establishing and maintaining gender inequality prescriptions on the rights of use of Chinese-based words would make little sense were these words not frequent in the lexicon of knowledge and academia (a contrast which thus can index progress vs tradition). [...]the books main thesis is that the so-called womens language is the product of historical amnesia: it has not always been there, it is artificially construed as homogeneous, is positively driven by social inequality, and is then arbitrarily coded as natural and inherent to femininity. [...]it is subject to reinterpretations: what is first condemned as vulgar and inappropriate (like Meiji womens teyodawa kotoba) is subsequently recodified as prototypical feminine speech. Much of the work is based on Mills PhD thesis, which in turn relied on extensive fieldwork performed by the author in 1999 and 2000. Since he began his fieldwork, Mills has studied with and occasionally performed alongside his two main informants, Kim Junghee and Jo Jonghun. Because many aspects of Korean shamanism are introduced in a relatively short chapter, the narrative is a little patchy at times.