Research into the many possible relationships, intersections and tensions between language and gender is diverse. This field crosses disciplinary boundaries, and, as a bare minimum, could be said to encompass work notionally housed within applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis, cultural studies, feminist media studies, feminist psychology, gender studies, interactional sociolinguistics, linguistics, mediated stylistics, sociolinguistics, and feminist language reform and media studies.

In methodological terms, there is no single approach that could be said to 'hold the field'. Instead, discursive, poststructural, ethnomethodological, ethnographic, phenomenological, positivist and experimental approaches can all be seen in action during the study of language and gender, producing and reproducing what Susan Speer has described as 'different, and often competing, theoretical and political assumptions about the way discourse, ideology and gender identity should be conceived and understood'.

As a result, research in this area can perhaps most usefully be divided into two main areas of study. first, there is a broad and sustained interest in the varieties of speech associated with a particular gender; also a related interest in the social norms and conventions that (re)produce gendered language use (a variety of speech, or sociolect associated with a particular gender which is sometimes called a genderlect). Second, there are studies that focus on ways language can produce and maintain sexism and gender bias, and studies that focus on the contextually specific and locally situated ways in which gender is constructed and operationalized. In this sense, researchers try to understand how language affects the gender binary in society.

Historically, the study of gender and language in sociolinguistics and gender studies is often said to have begun with Robin Lakoff's 1975 book, Language and Woman's Place, as well as some earlier studies by Lakoff. The study of language and gender has developed greatly since the 1970s. Prominent scholars include Deborah Tannen, Penelope Eckert, Janet Holmes, Mary Bucholtz, Kira Hall, Deborah Cameron, Jane Sunderland and others. Among key works in the field, the 1995 edited volume Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self is often referred to as a central text on language and gender.

The early studies on the notion of language and gender are combined into the fields of linguistics, feminist theory, and political practice. The feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s started to research on the relationship between language and gender. These researches were related to the women's liberation movement, and their goal was to discover the linkage between language usage and gender asymmetries. Since then, feminists have been working on the ways that language is maintaining the existing patriarchy and sexism.

Early work on language and gender began by noticing ways in which women's language deviated from the presumed default, or men's, language practices. In 1975 Robin Lakoff identified a "women's register", which she argued served to maintain women's (inferior) role in society. Lakoff argued that women tend to use linguistic forms that reflect and reinforce a subordinate role. These include tag questions, question intonation, and "weak" directives, among others (see also Speech practices associated with gender, below). This research was influential in questioning research on language that only looked at men's language practices and recognizing that gendered differences in language exist. However, not long after the publication of Language and Woman's Place, other scholars began to produce studies that both challenged Lakoff's arguments and expanded the field of language and gender studies.

Studies such as Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place have been labeled the "deficit approach", since they assume that adult male language is standard, and that women's language is deficient. Descriptions of women's speech as deficient can actually be dated as far back as Otto Jespersen's "The Woman", a chapter in his 1922 book Language: Its Nature and Development, and Origin. While later work has problematized Jespersen's view of women as inferior, Jespersen's contributions are still considered relevant, especially about the prospect of language change based on social and gendered opportunity, lexical and phonological differences, and the idea of genderlects and how gender roles influence language. The "dominance approach" (see below) is considered a refinement of the deficit model, positing that perceived gendered 'deficits' result from power differences in society.

The dual cultures (or difference model) is an approach of equality, differentiating men and women as belonging to different 'sub-cultures' as they have been socialized to do so since childhood. This then results in the varying communicative styles of men and women. Deborah Tannen is a major advocate of this position. Tannen compares gender differences in language to cultural differences. Comparing conversational goals, she argues that men tend to use a "report style", aiming to communicate factual information, whereas women more often use a "rapport style", which is more concerned with building and maintaining relationships. Scholars including Tannen and others argue that differences are pervasive across media, including face-to-face conversation, written essays of primary school children, email, and even toilet graffiti.