Lingua e identità di genere

This article invetigates some of the most relevant issues concerning the relation between language and gender, understood as the social elaboration of the properties associated to the sex. It is in this perspective that we can interpret the notion of 'linguistic sexism', that is the whjole of the linguistic devices that the literature deals with as indicators of the different roles and the different power associated to the sexual differences. The analysis of the relation between language and gender naturally implies a more general reflection on the relation between language and thought and on the link between language and spciety, and between linguistic norm and linguistic use.