Robin Tolmach Lakoff (; born November 27, 1942) is a professor emerita of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her 1975 book Language and Woman's Place is often credited for making language and gender a major debate in linguistics and other disciplines.<ref name=Cuellar>Sergio Bolaños Cuellar, "Women's Language: A struggle to overcome inequality", Forma Y Función 19, 2006.</ref> Biography Lakoff was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a B.A. at Radcliffe College, a M.A. from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard University (1967). She was married to linguist George Lakoff. She taught at University of California, Berkeley from 1972 until her retirement. While an undergraduate at Radcliffe College (in Cambridge, MA), Lakoff audited Noam Chomsky's classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and became connected to the MIT Linguistics Department. During this time, as Chomsky and students were creating Transformational Generative Grammar, Lakoff and others explored ways in which outside context entered the structure of language. Lakoff is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Lakoff received national attention for an opinion piece in TIME titled "Hillary Clinton's Emailgate Is an Attack on Women". Language and Woman's Place Lakoff's influential work Language and Woman's Place introduces to the field of sociolinguistics many ideas about women's language that are now often commonplace. It has inspired many different strategies for studying language and gender, across national borders as well as across class and race lines. Her work is noted for its attention to class, power, and social justice in addition to gender. Lakoff proposes that women's speech can be distinguished from that of men in a number of ways (part of gender deficit model), including: Hedges: Phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "it seems like" Empty adjectives: "divine", "adorable", "gorgeous" Super-polite forms: "Would you mind..." "...if it's not too much to ask" "Is it okay if...?" Apologize more: "I'm sorry, but I think that..." Speak less frequently Avoid curse language or expletives Tag questions: "You don't mind eating this, do you?". Hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation: Use of prestige grammar and clear articulation Indirect requests: "Wow, I'm so thirsty." – really asking for a drink Speak in italics: Use tone to emphasise certain words, e.g., "so", "very", "quite" Lakoff developed the "Politeness Principle," in which she devised three maxims that are usually followed in interaction. These are: Don't impose, give the receiver options, and make the