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A review by ohlhauc
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Not a fan. The only reason you may want to pick this up is if you are completely new to how language has power and reflects power structures in society but even then, I'm sure there are better books. Even picking up another book on anti-racism, gender and sexuality, linguistics, etc. would likely introduce you to these topics.
There were plenty of interesting examples and sociolinguistic terms and ideas were clearly explained, but this book tried to do too little and too much at the same time. It felt like an amalgam of self help and popular science - more style than substance.
I would have liked to see either a deeper dive into etymology and linguistics rather than covering the basics and focusing on minutia and everyday examples OR look at language more in context and examine social structure and power systems that play into language. Neither of those things were done. Any times that context was brought up or social theory introduced, it was glossed over. As a result, the ideas around language were fairly self-contained and quite often, the examples of how to apply them were lacking the nuance of what people would face in real-life scenarios, especially any readers who are not cisgender white women or cisgender gay men. The representation of other groups was sorely underdeveloped, and at least twice, there was even comments that failed to consider the inappropriateness and damage caused by appropriation of AAVE and black culture, and how it's more than just using words that sound "cool". Again, the lack of analysis around power and social structure led to eyebrow-raising claims.
The organization also felt off. There were many, many times when the author's explanation of a topic would raise a question in my mind or make me think of a potential criticism, which wasn't addressed in that chapter. But then, an answer that could apply would be mentioned several chapters later in different contexts. Basically, there was too much self-containment in the chapters and they didn't speak to each other, or build on each other. That isn't necessarily an issue but here, it needed to be done to again, see the context of the ideas.
Finally, many studies and research papers and whatnot were mentioned (although not in full) throughout the chapters but there wasn't a formerly cited reference list so you couldn't look up those studies. That was annoying.
I would not recommend this book.
There were plenty of interesting examples and sociolinguistic terms and ideas were clearly explained, but this book tried to do too little and too much at the same time. It felt like an amalgam of self help and popular science - more style than substance.
I would have liked to see either a deeper dive into etymology and linguistics rather than covering the basics and focusing on minutia and everyday examples OR look at language more in context and examine social structure and power systems that play into language. Neither of those things were done. Any times that context was brought up or social theory introduced, it was glossed over. As a result, the ideas around language were fairly self-contained and quite often, the examples of how to apply them were lacking the nuance of what people would face in real-life scenarios, especially any readers who are not cisgender white women or cisgender gay men. The representation of other groups was sorely underdeveloped, and at least twice, there was even comments that failed to consider the inappropriateness and damage caused by appropriation of AAVE and black culture, and how it's more than just using words that sound "cool". Again, the lack of analysis around power and social structure led to eyebrow-raising claims.
The organization also felt off. There were many, many times when the author's explanation of a topic would raise a question in my mind or make me think of a potential criticism, which wasn't addressed in that chapter. But then, an answer that could apply would be mentioned several chapters later in different contexts. Basically, there was too much self-containment in the chapters and they didn't speak to each other, or build on each other. That isn't necessarily an issue but here, it needed to be done to again, see the context of the ideas.
Finally, many studies and research papers and whatnot were mentioned (although not in full) throughout the chapters but there wasn't a formerly cited reference list so you couldn't look up those studies. That was annoying.
I would not recommend this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing
Moderate: Racism and Sexual content