Deborah Cameron, who has died aged 67 of pancreatic cancer, was an influential sociolinguist and feminist activist.

In 2004, when she was appointed the Rupert Murdoch professor of language and communication at Oxford University, there was a delicious irony: one member of the appointment board had, in 1983, been on a panel that rejected the thesis proposal she had submitted to the research board of the English faculty. Disagreeing with the board’s decision, Cameron left Oxford without a PhD. Disadvantaged by this, but undeterred, she had her book Feminism and Linguistic Theory (the subject of her proposed thesis) published in 1985.

So successful was that book that it is now considered a highly influential, foundational text; the first in its field about how language can shape gendered experiences. In it, Cameron argues that differences in speech are not inherent, but contextual and political. Republished in 1992, it remains a key text for students of linguistics at universities worldwide.

Cameron’s numerous academic publications include Verbal Hygiene (1995), coining a term that is now in popular parlance. She used it to describe conscious, “meddling” efforts to manage language, such as correcting grammar and enforcing “politically correct” usage.

Several books on language and gender followed, the most recent being Language, Sexism and Misogyny (2023). Other publications of particular note were Language and Sexuality (2003, co-authored with Don Kulick), and textbooks on research methods and discourse analysis.

She enjoyed collaboration, writing The Lust to Kill: A Feminist Investigation of Sexual Murder (1987) with Elizabeth Frazer. It offers a powerful analysis, asking why the vast majority of sexual killers are men, and how the ideas and phrases available to explain their horrific acts contribute to a culture of misogyny.

The books for which she is best known outside academia are The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? (2007) – with extracts published in the Guardian – challenging attitudes popularised in the early 1990s by writers such as John Gray; and Language and Sexuality.

Born in Glasgow, to Archibald, a salesman and jazz musician, and Alice (nee Molyneux), Cameron was the eldest of three children. The family moved to Beverley, Yorkshire, and she attended Beverley high school.

Between 1977 and 1983 she studied English and linguistics as an undergraduate at Newcastle University and as a postgraduate at Oxford before landing her first academic post, at Roehampton Institute of Higher Education (now the University of Roehampton), in south-west London. There, alongside her research, she immersed herself in feminist activism, primarily within campaigns combating violence against women.

Prior to her return in 2004 to Oxford, based at Worcester College, she held academic positions at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, US (where she met her life partner, Meryl Altman, in 1988), Strathclyde University in Glasgow, and the Institute of Education in London. Cameron also held visiting professorships at Gothenburg University, Sweden, and New York University.

In addition to her academic work, she was recognised as a public intellectual, engaging widely in public communication about linguistic research and feminism.

Quoted in the Guardian in 1994 about the rise of the use of the term “political correctness”, Cameron said that “the way rightwing commentators have established certain presuppositions about political correctness is a triumph of the politics of definition, a linguistic intervention”. She pointed out that these terms (today, one such would be “woke”) have such negative connotations that their use can render people silent.

Asked to comment on the idea of the “ethical slut”, as used by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy for the title of their bestselling 1997 book on non-monogamy, Cameron said: “Reclaiming insults like ‘slut’ does not work. All you get is people using words just as they like, so you get some using the words as an insult, while others are trying to pretend it does not mean something horrible.”

She was an insightful observer of social politics through the methods of discourse analysis. Her books Analysing Conversation (1987, with Talbot Taylor) and Working With Written Discourse (2014, with Ivan Panovic) showed many linguists how to be thoughtful and accountable in analysing everyday language.

Her books on how to talk – in the workplace (Good to Talk, 2000), about the built environment (The Words Between the Spaces, 2002, with Thomas Markus), or about politicians (Gender, Power and Political Speech, 2016, with Sylvia Shaw) demonstrated how powerful those methods could be in practice.

Her blog, of which she was very proud, tackled “linguistic dilemmas confronting feminists in the 21st century”.

One of her final social media posts laid bare her disdain for AI: “My plan to defeat AI’s takeover of the universe (codename: Heads Not Clouds) is now in full effect: I have made a batch of cheese scones using a recipe I keep stored in my brain.”

Many former students of Cameron have gone on to produce influential work as a direct result of her influence; Caroline Criado Perez read Feminism and Linguistic Theory while studying at Oxford, and describes it as her introduction to the concept of the “default male” – which was pivotal to her bestselling book Invisible Women (2019).

I knew Cameron to have been so plain-speaking that she was, on occasion, accused of being rude. But, as she outlined in Verbal Hygiene, attempts to “tidy” the way things are expressed is often due to cowardice and fear, not politeness. She disapproved of censorship: indeed, in 2015, alongside Beatrix Campbell, Cameron organised a letter to the Observer about the trend of “no-platforming” feminists expressing contentious opinions.

Aside from her prolific academic output, she was involved for many years with the feminist journal Trouble & Strife, which she joined in 1993, contributing much of the content. She held her Oxford professorship until 2023, becoming emerita fellow at Worcester. Her final work, The Rise of Dogwhistle Politics, was published in November 2025.

She is survived by Meryl, whom she married in 2019, and her siblings, Kate and Rory.

• Deborah Cameron, sociolinguist, feminist scholar and activist, born 10 November 1958; died 20 January 2026