1990年，她出版了暢銷書《你就是不懂：男女對話》。（You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation）語言與性別專家Robin Lakoff (1942~2025 羅賓‧萊考夫，享年82歲)她認為語言加劇了兩性之間的權力失衡power imbalance between the sexes，從而啟發了整個學術領域。

 語言與性別專家羅賓‧萊考夫逝世，享年82歲

她認為語言加劇了兩性之間的權力失衡，從而啟發了整個學術領域。

In the Berkeley oral history, looking back on her early years of teaching as the only woman on the linguistics faculty, Dr. Lakoff drew some parallels with female candidates in the 2020 presidential primaries.

在柏克萊大學口述歷史中，萊科夫博士回顧了自己早年作為語言學系唯一女性教師的教學經歷，並將自己與2020年總統初選中的女性候選人進行了比較。

「如何站在男人的角度做女人？」她問。 “你會因為太過專橫、傲慢或愛罵人而受到批評。而且只有女性才會因此受到批評。女性公開發表言論是有麻煩的。”

“How to be a woman in a man’s place?” she said. “You get criticized for being schoolmarmish or overbearing or a scold. And only women are criticized for that. A woman using a public voice is in trouble.”

Robin Lakoff, Expert on Language and Gender, Is Dead at 82

In arguing that language enforces the power imbalance between the sexes, she inspired an entire academic field.

The linguist Robin Lakoff in an undated photo. She maintained that women and men communicate differently, and that women are brought up to speak in a way that triggers their powerlessness.Credit...Peg Skorpinski

語言學家羅賓·萊考夫（Robin Lakoff）在一張未註明日期的照片中。她認為女性和男性的溝通方式不同，女性從小就被灌輸了一種會引發她們無力感的說話方式。圖片來源：佩格‧斯科賓斯基（Peg Skorpinski）

「曾經有一段時間，每一篇關於語言和性別的文章都會以攻擊萊考夫開頭，」萊考夫博士的前研究生黛博拉·坦嫩（Deborah Tannen）說道。 1990年，她出版了暢銷書《你就是不懂：男女對話》（You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation），推廣了萊考夫的一些觀點。這本書在《紐約時報》暢銷書排行榜上停留了近四年。

“There was a period where every article on language and gender would start by attacking Lakoff,” said Deborah Tannen, a former graduate student of Dr. Lakoff’s who popularized some of her ideas in the 1990 blockbuster “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” which spent nearly four years on The New York Times’s best-seller list.