Feminist philosopher, linguist, and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray

is renowned for her analyses of language, studies that can be precise and poetic at the same time. In this volume of her work on language, linguistics, and psychoanalysis, she is concerned with developing a model that can reveal those unconscious or pre-conscious structures that determine speech.

A key element of her method is the comparison of spoken and written language, through which she teases out the sexual and social configurations of speech.