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This article addresses the current marginalisation of structural gender linguistics within the field of language and gender. Traditional, structuralist-minded approaches to language and gender are briefly reviewed, and it is argued that a revitalisation of the study of gendered language structures can only be achieved when such analyses reflect recent theoretical developments within the field. More specifically, this necessitates a reconceptualisation of (gendered) language structures in the light of discursive or poststructuralist theories, namely as the result of processes of discursive materialisation in language use. Also discussed at a methodological level is how de-essentialisation as a central driving force of discursive approaches to language and gender can be operationalised in various types of structural linguistic analysis. Four basic dimensions of deessentialisation are distinguished for this purpose: first, the contrastive linguistic dimension (de-essentialisation across languages); second, the historical linguistic dimension (de-essentialisation across time periods); third, the lexicogrammatical dimension (de-essentialisation across linguistic gender categories); and fourth, the pragmatic dimension (de-essentialisation across usage contexts). A contrastive sample analysis of the complexities of pronominalisation in English and German complements the discussion.

This article is an attempt to reclaim the term "genderlect" as a valuable sociolinguistic concept. It shows that "genderlect" in its traditional sense as a variety according to speaker sex is just as much a myth as are early sociolinguistic theorisations of "women's/men's language". From a postmodernist perspective, genderlects must be seen as stereotypical resources for gendered stylisation practices that are not to be equalled with how women and men actually speak. This is illustrated by using material from a comprehensive study on linguistic gender stylisation in advertising discourse. Moreover, it is suggested that the strictly binary genderlect concept is abandoned and replaced by another one that sees genderlects as heavily context-dependent, community-based and therefore infinite in number. A postmodernist genderlect concept should be able to deal with hegemonic as well as subversive gender styles and at the same time acknowledge that what is generally judged to be hegemonic in one context might be subversive in another (or vice versa).