Robin Lakoff, a distinguished linguist and professor emerita at UC Berkeley, died on Aug. 5. She was 82.
Lakoff joined the Berkeley Linguistics Department in 1972, after teaching at the University of Michigan from 1969 and earning a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard in 1964. As an accomplished young professor tenured in her early 30s in a male-dominated academic world, she paved the way for future female scholars.
Her early work focused on syntax in Latin, but for most of her career she studied the relationship between gender, language and power. Professor Lakoff retired in 2012, after 40 years teaching at Berkeley, but continued to write articles and give visiting lectures.
“There really wasn't a lot of work on gender and language in mainstream linguistics, and she really shaped the field of gender and language, which was just the beginning,” Berkeley Linguistics Professor Emerita Eve Sweetser said. “Her students — like Deborah Tannen and Mary Bucholtz — have shaped the field since, but Lakoff was the one to break the ice.”
Lakoff was a leading figure in the study of gender and the politics of language. Throughout her career, she published nearly 100 scholarly essays and journal articles along with numerous books. Her published works include The Language War (2000), Talking Power (1990) and Language and Woman’s Place (1975).
She is known for exploring how everyday speech patterns reinforce power dynamics, bridging linguistics, politics and gender studies. Her 1975 book, Language and Woman's Place, launched the field of gender and language. Her contributions have been recognized by the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship at Stanford.
“Early in her career, she saw that female scholars were often not taken seriously by their senior male colleagues, and I think that really drove her determination, not only to succeed in her own career, but to mentor and support female graduate students and younger women scholars in their careers,” Lakoff’s son, Andrew Lakoff, said.
Professor Lakoff’s educational impact influenced former grad student and renowned linguist Deborah Tannen at Berkeley, who is best known for her book, You Just Don't Understand, about gender differences in communication.
“The paper I wrote for Robin's class about cultural differences in communicative style became the first paper I delivered at a conference; my first publication (in the conference proceedings); the basis of my master’s thesis; and the germ that developed into my dissertation, first linguistics book, and, in a sense, all of the work I’ve done since,” Tannen said.
In recent years, Lakoff remained active in writing articles about speech, politics and gender. Her book, Language and Woman’s Place (1975), published 50 years ago, continues to be influential beyond linguistics — in fields including sociology, feminism and rhetoric.
The Berkeley Linguistics Department is holding a memorial honoring Professor Lakoff on Nov. 2. For more information, email lingmgr@berkeley.edu