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Although present everywhere in early modern societies, women’s speech has rarely been the focus of specific research. This article offers a broad but selective reading, focused on early modern France, of a historiography covering several disciplines. It starts with the question of the potential power of women’s speech (long discredited by a discourse scorning it as women’s “chatter”) that considers its functions in society (social control; circulation of information; testimony in court), before moving on to the semi-oral institution of conversation. What emerges is a linguistic imaginary contrasting so-called “natural” feminine speech with so-called masculine speech, the latter seen as based on classical rhetoric. This gendered and social contrast provided an ideological springboard for the formation of the national language. The aim of this brief overview is to highlight the subterranean and structuring role of speech in the development of the economy of the written word, as the site of a discursive and social (re)definition of gender relations.