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A review by carleesi
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell
3.5
A very fun jaunt in the world of feminist linguistics.
As someone with two degrees and 10 years experience in linguistics, it’s always going to be a challenge reading a pop culture linguistics book, but I did enjoy Amanda Montell’s take. I would have loved to read an even deeper linguistic analysis, with less of the rage bait sexist content but the social focus here was still very enjoyable.
I felt sometimes that it strayed into white feminism. Avoiding using the word “appropriation” to describe what non-black English speakers do to AAVE really diminished the impact of the discussion. In a similar vein, wh*re is used to discuss the reclamation of slurs without ever highlighting that it’s a word for sex workers to reclaim, not women as a gender. At times it was also very cis-centric despite the discussions of gender diversity. Those felt standalone rather than enmeshed into the book.
As someone with two degrees and 10 years experience in linguistics, it’s always going to be a challenge reading a pop culture linguistics book, but I did enjoy Amanda Montell’s take. I would have loved to read an even deeper linguistic analysis, with less of the rage bait sexist content but the social focus here was still very enjoyable.
I felt sometimes that it strayed into white feminism. Avoiding using the word “appropriation” to describe what non-black English speakers do to AAVE really diminished the impact of the discussion. In a similar vein, wh*re is used to discuss the reclamation of slurs without ever highlighting that it’s a word for sex workers to reclaim, not women as a gender. At times it was also very cis-centric despite the discussions of gender diversity. Those felt standalone rather than enmeshed into the book.