Talk is crucial to the way our identities are constructed, altered, and defended. Feminist scholars in particular have only begun to investigate how deeply language reflects and shapes who we think we are. This volume of previously unpublished essays advances that effort by bringing together stellar feminist scholars in the area of language and gender such as Deborah Tannen, Jennifer Coates, and Marcyliena Morgan, as well as rising younger scholars, to tackle such topics as African-American drag queens, gender and class on the shopping channel, and talk in the workplace. It should have a strong appeal to linguists (sociolinguists, and language and gender scholars), as well as anthropologists, sociologists and those in queer studies.