“No questions? Then, fight me!” A tribute to Deborah Cameron (1958–2026)

Abstract In this tribute, I pay homage to the late Deborah Cameron (1958-2026), a leading feminist linguist whose scholarship shaped sociolinguistics’ understanding of the relationship among language, society, gender, sexuality, and power. The paper traces Cameron’s sustained intervention against biological determinism, romanticised accounts of gender difference, and the assumption that linguistic reform alone can produce social change. Throughout, the tribute highlights Cameron’s distinctive analytic stance: her insistence on complexity, her resistance to consensus, and her commitment to critique as an indispensable scholarly practice. I argue that Cameron’s legacy lies not only in specific theoretical contributions but also in her enduring challenge to treat language as a social phenomenon without mistaking it as a sufficient agent of social transformation. (Sociolinguistics, language and gender, feminism, power, ideology)