SOURCE: “Reproducing Culture through Language: Sex, Gender, and Conversational Style,” in Women's Studies in Communication, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring, 1995, pp. 93-103.

In the following excerpted essay, Crawford discusses the cultural construction of negative female stereotypes and Faludi's critique of such constructions in Backlash.

Popular press books are often used to supplement textbooks in the classroom. The trade books reviewed in this essay were selected because they are relatively recent, fairly well-known, concerned with gender/power issues, and written primarily by women. These criteria ground two purposes: the first explores ways that gender is construed in Western culture. As culture is both produced and reproduced through language, this review considers how the authors orchestrate and advance certain notions of stereotypical male and female behavior in contemporary American society. This essay’s second purpose is to touch on the issue of “backlash” against women. It examines the meaning and implications of...