The aim of this innovative volume is to analyze both the cultural and the biological sources of gender differences in language use. The first two parts of the volume focus on cultural variation in gender-differentiated language use, comparing Western English-speaking societies with others from elsewhere in the world. Part III examines the relationship between language and the brain, showing that although there are differences in males' and females' processing of language in the brain, these do not yield any gender differences in language use. Overall, the volume points to the greater salience...

Language is spoken at a particular time, in a particular place, by a particular person; and certain words, the deictic terms, can only be fully defined by recourse to this extra-linguistic context. Consequently many linguists considered deixis as something peripheral in the working language and its central importance in what Quine has called the ontogenesis of reference has only recently been recognised. In these studies Dr Tanz investigates children's acquisition of the deictic distinctions involved in the (single) personal pronouns, the spatial terms in back of and in front of, the verbs...