Robin T. Lakoff
Professor Emerita

pragmatics, sociolinguistics

Group: Language & Social Context

Contact information

Email: rlakoff@berkeley.edu

Personal statement

Ph.D., Linguistics, Harvard University, 1967. She has been especially interested in the comparative syntax of Latin and English; the relation between linguistic form and social and psychological context; language and gender; discourse strategies (e.g. indirectness and politeness); discourse genres (e.g. psychotherapeutic and courtroom discourse). Her current research includes the examination of the connections between the politics of language and the language of politics, e.g. in the media treatment of the Hill/Thomas hearings, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the O.J. Simpson trial, and the impeachment (cf. the last publication listed below).

Selected publications

Language and woman's place. With R. Scherr. Harper & Row, 1975.

Face value: the politics of beauty. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

When talk is not cheap. With M. Aftel. Warner, 1985.

Talking power. Basic Books, 1990.

Father knows best: the use and abuse of therapy in Freud's case of Dora. With J. Coyne. Teachers College Press, 1993.

The Language War. University of California Press. 2000.