1: Language and the social construction of gender. - 2: Using language to achieve social goals. - 3: Lexis and gender. - 4: Speaking about men and women. - 5: Speaking as woman/man. - 6: Social relations through grammar.

This book deals with the use of language to actively create difference and inequality between men and women. Stressing the necessity of looking beyond "sexist" words for an understanding of how language creates difference, Poynton pays particular attention to grammatical and textual structure in both speech and writing. She contends that girls and boys become different kinds of people in the process of learning to use language differently in achieving different kinds of social goals.