Deborah Jane Cameron (10 November 1958 – 20 January 2026) was a British linguist and feminist who held the Rupert Murdoch Professorship in Language and Communication at Worcester College, Oxford University.
Cameron was mainly interested in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. A large part of her academic research was focused on the relationship of language to gender and sexuality. She wrote the book The Myth of Mars And Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages?, which was published in 2007.
Before her post at Oxford University, Cameron taught at the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education, The College of William & Mary in Virginia, Strathclyde University in Glasgow and the Institute of Education in London.
Cameron died from pancreatic cancer on 20 January 2026, at the age of 67.
Cameron, Deborah (1985). Feminism and Linguistic Theory. London Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-37077-5.
Cameron, Deborah; Frazer, Elizabeth (1987). The lust to kill: a feminist investigation of sexual murder. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 9780814714157.
Cameron, Deborah; Frazer, Elizabeth; Harvey, Penelope; Rampton, M.B.H.; Richardson, Kay (1992). Researching language: issues of power and method. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415057226.
Cameron, Deborah (1995). Verbal hygiene (1st ed.). London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415103558.
Cameron, Deborah (2012). Verbal hygiene. Classics in Linguistics (Reprint ed.). London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415696005.
Cameron, Deborah (2000). Good to talk? Living and working in a communication culture. London Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE. ISBN 9781412931557.
Cameron, Deborah (2001). Working with spoken discourse. London Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE. ISBN 9780761957737.
Cameron, Deborah; Block, David (2002). Globalization and language teaching. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780203193679.
Cameron, Deborah; Markus, Thomas A. (2002). The words between the spaces: buildings and language. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780203360361.
Cameron, Deborah; Kulick, Don (2003). Language and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511791178.
Cameron, Deborah; Kulick, Don (2006). The language and sexuality reader. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780203013373.
Cameron, Deborah (2006). On language and sexual politics. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415373432.
Cameron, Deborah (2007). The myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages?. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199214471.
Cameron, Deborah; Scanlon, Joan (2010). The Trouble & Strife reader. London New York: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781849660129.