She attended Oberlin College in 1963 as an undergraduate. She is the author or co-author of three books on sociolinguistics, the co-editor of three collections, and author of numerous scholarly papers in the field. Biography Įckert received her PhD in linguistics in 1978 from Columbia University, where she was a student of William Labov.

She served as the president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2018. She specializes in variationist sociolinguistics and is the author of several scholarly works on language and gender. Penelope ' Penny' Eckert (born 1942) is Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Stanford University.

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Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Please help by adding secondary or tertiary sources. But it is precisely the fact that gender seems self-evident which makes the study of gender interesting.This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. This is not easy, for gender is so central to our understanding of ourselves and of the world that it is difficult to pull back and examine it from new perspectives. Doing this requires that we suspend what we are used to and what feels comfortable, and question some of our most fundamental beliefs. It is precisely because gender seems natural, and beliefs about gender seem to be obvious truth, that we need to step back and examine gender from a new perspective. As scholars and researchers, though, it is our job to look beyond what appears to be common sense to find not simply what truth might be behind it, but how it came to be common sense. The world swarms with ideas about gender – and these ideas are so commonplace that we take it for granted that they are true, accepting common adage as scientific fact. Gender is embedded so thoroughly in our institutions, our actions, our beliefs, and our desires, that it appears to us to be completely natural. It is ever-present in conversation, humor, and conflict, and it is called upon to explain everything from driving styles to food preferences.

We are surrounded by gender lore from the time we are very small.

Language and Gender by Penelope Eckert