Best for:
Those interested in learning more about how our language is shaped by – and shapes – society. Everyone who speaks US English.
In a nutshell:
Author Montell explores a variety of aspects of language and how it reinforces and can be used to fight the patriarchy.
Worth quoting:
N/A (but only because it was an audio book and usually I was running while listening so didn’t have a way to note something down)
Why I chose it:
The topic was intriguing to me.
Review:
I wish I’d read a hard copy instead of reading an audio version because I think I would have been underlining a lot and keeping it for future reference. That aid, it was great to listen to the author read her work.
The book explores multiple ways that language reinforces the patriarchy (the English language, specifically). Things like the default for ‘person’ being man, for example. As though men are the standard or the norm, and women are a deviation from that. But also more insidious things, like creating gendered qualifiers for words that theoretically are gender neutral, suggesting again that the default boss is male (hence ‘girl boss’). Or, conversely, some insults again should be gender neutral, but the default for the negatives are female (whore vs manwhore, for example).
Montell argues convincingly that this isn’t just an issue of sticks and stones, its that the words show the values of the speakers overall. She makes the point even clearer in the chapter where she references how some folks complain about how ‘you can’t say anything anymore;’ it’s not that one can’t say things, it’s that what they say and the words they choose reflect their values, and people are allowed to make judgments based on those values.
Each chapter covers a different aspect of language, including language changes from the LGBTQ community, the use of singular they/them, and how women are judged for sounding ‘shrill’ when they speak. This book was written a few years ago, and it’s disappointing to think about how much language and our acceptance of new usages to better reflect reality has been rolled back as more conservatives and more anti-trans folks have gained power.
The section on vulgar language and the slang that exists for penises vs vaginas (spell check wants me to call that vaginae?) was also so interesting. I’ve obviously thought in passing about how gross it is that the worst insults for men are to refer to them by terms associated with female genitalia, but hearing it spelled out here made it even clearer how gross that is.