This article provides a review of some of the major language and gender studies reported pri
marily in the English-speaking world during the past three decades. After pointing to the inade
quacies of formal linguistic and sociocultural approaches in examining the complex ways in
which gender interacts with language use, an alternative theoretical paradigm that gives impor
tance to the sociohistorical and political forces residing in the meanings of the resources as well
as social identity of the speaker who aims to use those meanings is described. The implications of
this shiff from sociocultural to sociohistorical approaches in researching language and gender in
the Indian context are discussed in this article.
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