Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

Amanda Montell’s Wordslut builds on the substantial tradition of analyzing language through a feminist lens. Throughout the book, Montell draws on the research from numerous feminist linguists to show how the English language reflects our society’s long history of sexism against women. She also discusses the different ways feminists have grappled with the links between language and misogyny and attempted to resolve these issues.

Since the 1960s sociolinguists have assessed how sexism can become entrenched in language, even in languages without grammatical gender, such as English. From derogatory language, biased use of male pronouns, and gender socialization and speech, feminist linguists have highlighted how the historical power imbalance between men and women continues to manifest in language. In her own work Montell does not endorse every researcher’s conclusions, but she uses them to show the different ways in which language and linguistic features can be interpreted through a feminist lens. 

Importantly, Montell also shows how linguists and laypeople come to different conclusions about how language could be used to resolve ongoing inequalities between men and women. For instance, in the 1970s Robin Lakoff pioneered the study of language and gender with her groundbreaking book Language and Woman’s Place (1975).