Robin Lakoff, expert on language and gender, dead at 82
Dr. Lakoff’s thesis that women are raised to accept a secondary role in the world, one enforced partly by the speech they are taught, sets off academic arguments to this day. Her 1973 paper “created a huge fuss,” the linguists Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet wrote in 2012. “Thus was launched the study of language and gender.” Dr. Lakoff observed that women’s speech was marked by hedging phrases (“like,” “y’know”), which convey that the speaker is uncertain; empty adjectives like “ado