Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Wordslut: Sexist Language + How it Shapes Us: with Linguist Amanda Montell

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Wordslut: Sexist Language + How it Shapes Us: with Linguist Amanda Montell · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:04
Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:08
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
0:12
Speaker 1: and I have conversations.
0:13
Speaker 2: That put a new spin on pretty. This is pretty smart.
0:19
Speaker 1: I don't use the word bitch, and I'm aware that
0:22
Speaker 1: that's probably. No, it's not probably. It is old fashioned
0:26
Speaker 1: of me. But let me explain. You've probably heard the
0:30
Speaker 1: phrase our words have power. I believe that wholeheartedly. But
0:35
Speaker 1: why Why is language important? Just like most things in
0:39
Speaker 1: the world. I think the importance can be split up
0:42
Speaker 1: into two categories, internal and external. Internally, words are crucial
0:48
Speaker 1: because language is what we use in our own heads
0:52
Speaker 1: to tell ourselves the story of who we are. Words
0:57
Speaker 1: make up how and what we think of ourselves, and ultimately,
1:00
Speaker 1: how we communicate that concept of self our story to
1:04
Speaker 1: the world. Externally, language is one of the most important
1:09
Speaker 1: parts of any culture.
1:10
Speaker 2: It's actually the basis of our entire worldview and way
1:13
Speaker 2: of life.
1:14
Speaker 1: It's the way people communicate, build relationships, create community, communicate
1:19
Speaker 1: social norms and customs like rules and values. It's how
1:23
Speaker 1: we share histories and stories, religion, and some art forms.
1:28
Speaker 1: That's why language can build people up or tear them down.
1:33
Speaker 1: I'd go as far as to say language can build
1:35
Speaker 1: nations or tear down nations as well. There are roughly
1:40
Speaker 1: six five hundred spoken languages in the world today, and
1:44
Speaker 1: each is unique in a number of ways. And the
1:47
Speaker 1: language we speak guides the way we experience life. It's
1:52
Speaker 1: kind of like a chicken or and egg thing. Here
1:55
Speaker 1: are a few examples. In English, one might say I
1:59
Speaker 1: have three beautiful ties children, or I've been married to
2:02
Speaker 1: my lovely wife for twenty years. If this were translated
2:05
Speaker 1: directly into Japanese, it would not only be considered extremely strange,
2:09
Speaker 1: but also very arrogant, because Japanese people would think that
2:13
Speaker 1: you're bragging that you have three great children and a
2:16
Speaker 1: lovely wife. Humility by Japanese people is not only just
2:21
Speaker 1: shown in their culture and their actions, but by various
2:24
Speaker 1: forms of politeness and speech. I can't help but think
2:28
Speaker 1: that we can see the roots of a lot of
2:30
Speaker 1: behavior via language. Think of German Many. German people are
2:34
Speaker 1: terrified of being late. They also have a tendency to
2:37
Speaker 1: walk extremely quickly. In German, one of the standard ways
2:41
Speaker 1: of asking the time is to literally ask how late
2:44
Speaker 1: is it? My homeroom teacher in high school was German,
2:47
Speaker 1: and she always said there are no bells in the
2:50
Speaker 1: real world.
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Speaker 2: Girls.
2:52
Speaker 1: That was a bad impression, but you get what I mean.
2:54
Speaker 1: She was obsessed with our punctuality. German language influences their
2:59
Speaker 1: cultural norm. I mean this is sort of a tangent,
3:03
Speaker 1: but I became very aware of the way language lands
3:06
Speaker 1: when I started going to therapy.
3:09
Speaker 2: What if I asked you, can you send the deck
3:11
Speaker 2: to me by Monday?
3:12
Speaker 1: Versus are you able to share the deck with me
3:14
Speaker 1: before Monday? Just by using the word share, it changes everything.
3:20
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I read an article about the
3:22
Speaker 1: Yiddish language and Jewish humor. A lot of Jewish humour
3:26
Speaker 1: is sarcastic, descriptive, and sometimes complaining, but never at the
3:31
Speaker 1: expense of other people's misfortunes.
3:34
Speaker 2: Think of Jerry Seinfeld.
3:35
Speaker 1: Right. All of those qualities can be traced back to
3:39
Speaker 1: Yiddish and the words and phrases Jewish people used via language.
3:43
Speaker 1: An entire sense of humor could be derived from language.
3:48
Speaker 2: How about aave?
3:49
Speaker 1: Aave is African American vernacular English. It was born in
3:53
Speaker 1: the American South out of slavery Black Americans, by and large,
3:57
Speaker 1: as we all know, did not voluntarily move to North
4:00
Speaker 1: America with people of a shared language and cultural background
4:03
Speaker 1: like the wave of European immigrants did. Rather, they were
4:07
Speaker 1: torn from their homeland, sold into slavery, and systematically separated
4:11
Speaker 1: from speakers of their own languages. Can you imagine the history,
4:15
Speaker 1: the stories, the culture that was lost? And because of
4:19
Speaker 1: this they had to take bits and pieces from the
4:21
Speaker 1: words they could understand to create their own dialect and vernacular.
4:26
Speaker 1: Fast forward to current day, AAVE has largely been co
4:29
Speaker 1: opted by other communities. You may have heard words like
4:32
Speaker 1: slay or period on TikTok and Instagram. These words have
4:36
Speaker 1: become so popular that they're often referred to as Internet
4:39
Speaker 1: slaying or Internet culture, when really they're attributed from AAVE.
4:44
Speaker 2: The word woke comes to mind.
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Speaker 1: Journalist Joshua Adams says woke initially came out of the
4:49
Speaker 1: Black community. It meant that if you were saying stay
4:52
Speaker 1: woke or be woke, there was a kind of seriousness
4:55
Speaker 1: and playfulness that you need to be aware of the
4:58
Speaker 1: social conditions of America to survive. It has since been
5:01
Speaker 1: co opted to represent concepts such as cancel culture and
5:05
Speaker 1: political correctness, and speaking of that language can either be
5:10
Speaker 1: inclusive or exclusive. I'm sure everyone's thinking about pronouns right now.
5:15
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the first place my head went to.
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Speaker 1: But also think about the way we make assumptions with
5:21
Speaker 1: our words. For instance, one study showed that a relatively
5:25
Speaker 1: harmless sentence such as girls are as good as boys
5:27
Speaker 1: at math can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the
5:32
Speaker 1: statement's grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math
5:36
Speaker 1: is more common or natural for boys than girls.
5:39
Speaker 2: Researchers say this can have.
5:41
Speaker 1: A huge effect on interest and competency for girls in math,
5:46
Speaker 1: which brings me back to the evolution of bitch.
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Speaker 2: People throw around the.
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Speaker 1: Word bitch as a term of endearment nowadays, and I
5:53
Speaker 1: get it. It's really not that deep. I also think
5:56
Speaker 1: that a lot of language is about knowing where you
5:58
Speaker 1: are and who you're with. So you use the word
6:00
Speaker 1: bitch with your friends, and you all understand how and
6:03
Speaker 1: why you're using it. It's one thing, But to use
6:06
Speaker 1: it as a description of a person bugs me. And
6:09
Speaker 1: it bugs me because it means an unpleasant woman, which
6:12
Speaker 1: is so gendered. And if I'm going to describe someone
6:15
Speaker 1: as unpleasant, I'd rather describe them as an unpleasant person
6:19
Speaker 1: instead of an unpleasant woman. Think about the words diva, slut, whorror.
6:24
Speaker 1: There's just a few. Among histories, many English slurs hurled
6:28
Speaker 1: at women, and that brings me to our episode today.
6:35
Speaker 3: Basically every word in the history of the English language
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Speaker 3: that has ever been used to reflect femininity or to
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Speaker 3: describe women has at some point been used as a slur.
6:48
Speaker 1: Today we are talking about language and it's connection to power,
6:53
Speaker 1: and while much of this episode is focused on gender
6:56
Speaker 1: in particular, it's impossible to have this discussion without mentioning
6:59
Speaker 1: race and culture as a whole. Our guest today is
7:02
Speaker 1: Amanda Montell. She's a writer and linguist with a degree
7:05
Speaker 1: in linguistics from NYU. She's the author of two critically
7:09
Speaker 1: acclaimed books, word Slued, a Feminist Guide to Taking Back
7:13
Speaker 1: the English Language, and Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism. She's
7:18
Speaker 1: also the creator and host of the hit podcast Sounds
7:20
Speaker 1: Like a Cult. Word Sled is a book you've probably
7:23
Speaker 1: seen me post on Instagram. If you haven't, take a
7:26
Speaker 1: look at the book recommendations I do on my instant
7:28
Speaker 1: story highlights and I post about this book because it
7:32
Speaker 1: really impacted me. Amanda deconstructs language from insults and cursing, gossip,
7:38
Speaker 1: cat calling, to grammar and pronunciation patterns. She reveals the
7:43
Speaker 1: way language has been used for centuries to keep women
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Speaker 1: and other marginalized genders and groups from power.
7:49
Speaker 3: Consistently, young women are our languages linguistic innovators. Every generation
7:55
Speaker 3: proves that to be true. Oh yeah, if you want
7:57
Speaker 3: to hear what language is going to sound like across
7:59
Speaker 3: the board twenty years, listen to a young woman.
8:02
Speaker 1: You ever wondered why so many people are annoyed when
8:04
Speaker 1: women talk with vocal fry or use the word like
8:07
Speaker 1: as filler, or why certain gender neutral terms stick and
8:11
Speaker 1: others don't, or where stereotypes of how women and men
8:14
Speaker 1: speak even come from in the first place. This book
8:18
Speaker 1: is filled with fascinating information about the sexist history of
8:23
Speaker 1: our language, and the main message that Amanda wants readers
8:27
Speaker 1: and people to take away from this book and conversation
8:31
Speaker 1: is to be able to feel empowered and represented by
8:33
Speaker 1: language instead of silenced by it, because, as Amanda says,
8:38
Speaker 1: every time we say something, we breathe reality into being.
8:48
Speaker 4: Amanda, why does our language matter?
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Speaker 3: Oh gosh, Well, language is the medium with which we
8:55
Speaker 3: construct our reality. With language, we have no identity, we
8:59
Speaker 3: have no commune, we have no beliefs. Whole esoses can
9:04
Speaker 3: be constructed and perpetuated with language alone, even if you're
9:09
Speaker 3: not in the same room as a person. But we
9:11
Speaker 3: take it for granted because it's invisible, and we pick
9:13
Speaker 3: it up so organically that we often fail to stop
9:16
Speaker 3: and think about why we use the language we do.
9:19
Speaker 1: So. I think anybody who loves to write or read
9:22
Speaker 1: loves words.
9:23
Speaker 4: Yes, I think about words all the time.
9:26
Speaker 1: And as I was preparing for this, I was like,
9:28
Speaker 1: why do I love words?
9:29
Speaker 4: Why do I love language?
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Speaker 1: And I realized that it doesn't just shape how we
9:35
Speaker 1: perceive the world, but our words shape how people perceive
9:40
Speaker 1: us as well.
9:41
Speaker 4: It's the story that we're telling one thousand percent.
9:44
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Well, to get nerdy, there's this linguistics theory,
9:48
Speaker 3: the supure wharf hypothesis. We'll say it again, the supure
9:51
Speaker 3: wharf hypothesis. I can't believe I'm getting to this already,
9:54
Speaker 3: but it's fascinating. It's the theory that language doesn't determine
9:59
Speaker 3: our thoughts, but it heavily influences them. And there's another
10:04
Speaker 3: idea the idea of linguistic performativity, which says that language
10:08
Speaker 3: doesn't simply reflect our reality, it creates our reality. So
10:13
Speaker 3: if you think of, you know, wedding efficient saying I
10:16
Speaker 3: now pronounce you married, that is the most sort of
10:20
Speaker 3: obvious example of linguistic performativity. But every time we say something,
10:27
Speaker 3: we breathe reality into being. And language is what we
10:32
Speaker 3: use in our own heads to tell ourselves the story
10:35
Speaker 3: of who we are. And I find myself doing that
10:38
Speaker 3: a lot, as you mentioned, as a writer, as a
10:41
Speaker 3: lover of language, I narrativize the living daylights out of
10:44
Speaker 3: my life, and that can be a really beautiful and
10:47
Speaker 3: empowering thing. In my book Words That I talk a
10:51
Speaker 3: lot about the pros and cons of labels to describe
10:54
Speaker 3: your identity, your gender, identity, your sexual orientation, etc. But
10:57
Speaker 3: it can also be limiting if the story you tell
11:00
Speaker 3: yourself is confined to these linguistic boundaries.
11:06
Speaker 1: So that was actually what I was just going to say,
11:08
Speaker 1: if you don't have the vocabulary for something. I remember
11:11
Speaker 1: taking a political economy class in college and there were
11:16
Speaker 1: all these financial terms I'd never heard of, and the
11:18
Speaker 1: professor said, I'm not going to grade you for the
11:20
Speaker 1: first third of the course.
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Speaker 4: I just want you to learn this new vocabulary.
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Speaker 1: And I just kept thinking, thank you, because I didn't
11:27
Speaker 1: have the words to describe what he was talking about.
11:30
Speaker 4: And from a very sort of preliminary.
11:32
Speaker 1: Level, if you don't have the words to describe what
11:36
Speaker 1: your ambitions are or how you love somebody, how limiting.
11:41
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, my favorite book when I was a
11:44
Speaker 3: little kid was My Pocket the Source. I got a
11:47
Speaker 3: a source for my birthday, and it cracked my world open,
11:50
Speaker 3: you know. And something that I really aim to do
11:54
Speaker 3: with my work, and something that people tell me is
11:57
Speaker 3: meaningful to them, is when I'm able to articulate a
12:01
Speaker 3: frustration or a theory that has caused you know, a
12:06
Speaker 3: lot of turmoil or strong feelings and sort of hard
12:12
Speaker 3: to organize thoughts in the mind of a reader, that
12:14
Speaker 3: finally they're like, that's it. That's what I've been thinking
12:17
Speaker 3: all along. And I've had the privilege of being able
12:20
Speaker 3: to talk to so many academics for my work, from
12:23
Speaker 3: linguists to sociologists to folkloris, whose work often gets contained
12:29
Speaker 3: to like the niche of academia. It's on this high
12:33
Speaker 3: pedestal of academia and a lot of what I do
12:36
Speaker 3: is package their ideas in a way that is a
12:40
Speaker 3: lot more accessible to the everyday reader.
12:43
Speaker 1: You wrote, our words send invisible signals telling people who
12:46
Speaker 1: we are. In the wrong hand, speech can be used
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Speaker 1: as a weapon, but in the right ones, it can
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Speaker 1: change the world.
12:52
Speaker 3: I'm so earnest, like I wrote words lut when I
12:56
Speaker 3: was like twenty five, twenty six. Yeah, and I don't
13:00
Speaker 3: know about you, but how old are you?
13:02
Speaker 4: Thirty one, thirty one?
13:03
Speaker 3: I'm thirty, and I feel like something happened when I
13:06
Speaker 3: turned thirty. I feel like I became that. I don't know.
13:10
Speaker 3: I'm so my thirtieth birthday party, This is kind of
13:13
Speaker 3: a tangent, but I had this nineties rom com themed
13:15
Speaker 3: birthday party and I dressed up a share from Clueless,
13:17
Speaker 3: and I remember at the end of the night, I
13:19
Speaker 3: was sitting with just a circle of my dearest friends
13:21
Speaker 3: who were there until like two am or whatever, and
13:24
Speaker 3: a close friend of mine who was actually a linguistics
13:26
Speaker 3: major with me at NYU. She was very good at syntax.
13:29
Speaker 3: Shout out Tori. But she I remember, she like put
13:32
Speaker 3: her hand on my shoulder and she was like, Amanda,
13:34
Speaker 3: you were always meant to be thirty, and I'm so
13:36
Speaker 3: glad that you're finally thirty.
13:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, you caught up with your brain.
13:39
Speaker 3: I maybe that's it or something. But you know, when
13:44
Speaker 3: I reflect on the ways that I would write when
13:46
Speaker 3: I was twenty five and twenty six, it feels it
13:49
Speaker 3: feels like me, but it feels like such a sort
13:51
Speaker 3: of sparkly, wide eyed version of me. And this has
13:55
Speaker 3: to do with the topic that we were discussing earlier,
13:57
Speaker 3: which is like the language that you you're self use
14:01
Speaker 3: changes as you get older. And there's so much like
14:05
Speaker 3: faux feminist self help advice out there about how women
14:08
Speaker 3: need to, you know, lay off the vocal fry and
14:12
Speaker 3: the up talk and the like every other word and
14:14
Speaker 3: stop using so many exclamation points and emails. But that
14:18
Speaker 3: is all feutile because if you don't sound like your
14:21
Speaker 3: authentic self, people are going to drag you if you
14:25
Speaker 3: are a woman or a feminine presenting person either way.
14:29
Speaker 3: And something that I've really learned post thirty, like whatever
14:32
Speaker 3: it is like nine months into being thirty, is that
14:35
Speaker 3: like I just I don't care like as.
14:38
Speaker 1: You're going to we're gonna get into the vocal fries
14:41
Speaker 1: and all of that. Yeah, I have a question for you. Okay,
14:44
Speaker 1: does language change culture or does culture change language?
14:49
Speaker 3: They work simultaneously, hand in hand. As culture changes, language changes,
14:54
Speaker 3: language pushes culture. But you can't force someone to use
14:58
Speaker 3: language a certain way and expect their beliefs to change.
15:02
Speaker 3: It kind of has to happen the other way around.
15:04
Speaker 3: But one of the reasons why older folks the okay
15:08
Speaker 3: boomers of the world. Now, I sound like a boomers
15:11
Speaker 3: using that like obsolete slang terminology. But the reason why
15:16
Speaker 3: older generations are consistently so critical of the way that
15:20
Speaker 3: young people, particularly young marginalized people, young women, young women
15:24
Speaker 3: of color, use language is because it's a sign of
15:28
Speaker 3: social change. It's the grounds of social change quaking beneath them,
15:33
Speaker 3: and the language is symptomatic of that. You know. The
15:36
Speaker 3: truth of the matter is that the most marginalized populations
15:39
Speaker 3: have always used language as a form of power in
15:43
Speaker 3: a culture that doesn't give them a lot of other
15:46
Speaker 3: power tools. And young women living in cosmopolitan environments or
15:52
Speaker 3: now I think maybe it's a little different because the
15:54
Speaker 3: Internet has democratized language, made it so much more accessible
15:57
Speaker 3: all over the world. But consistently young women are our
16:01
Speaker 3: languages linguistic innovators. Every generation proves that to be true.
16:05
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, wait, how so well.
16:08
Speaker 3: There are a number of theories as to why this
16:10
Speaker 3: might be. One of them is due to some combination
16:14
Speaker 3: of nature and nurture, women are slightly more attuned to
16:18
Speaker 3: one another's linguistic needs, and so they you know, collaborate
16:22
Speaker 3: to invent language. Another is that just socially, women feel
16:26
Speaker 3: a little more free to be flamboyant with language. Consistently,
16:31
Speaker 3: linguists have found that the least innovative linguistic population the
16:36
Speaker 3: non mobile, older, rural male, and they've given these people
16:41
Speaker 3: the acronym norms, which I find entertaining. The norms are
16:45
Speaker 3: the least innovative. But the theory linguistically, yes, yes, linguistically.
16:50
Speaker 3: The theory I like best is that, you know, women,
16:54
Speaker 3: especially women of color, have always used language as a
16:58
Speaker 3: social power tool. There's this story that I tell in
17:02
Speaker 3: wordslot about a linguist named Susan Gall who in the
17:05
Speaker 3: late seventies traveled to a Hungarian speaking village in Austria.
17:10
Speaker 3: It had ended up on Austrian soil after the borders
17:13
Speaker 3: had changed post World War One. This was really bad
17:16
Speaker 3: luck for these Hungarian speakers, because now all of a sudden,
17:18
Speaker 3: they were citizens of a country that spoke German. This
17:21
Speaker 3: wasn't such a big deal for the men in the
17:23
Speaker 3: village because they're working class blue collar jobs paid pretty
17:27
Speaker 3: well in mines and on farms. But women couldn't easily
17:31
Speaker 3: access those jobs. If they were to be employed that way,
17:34
Speaker 3: those environments wouldn't be hospitable, so they had to get
17:37
Speaker 3: what were called pink collar jobs, like as a secretary,
17:40
Speaker 3: but those jobs required them to learn German. They had
17:43
Speaker 3: to pick up these new linguistic skills as a means
17:46
Speaker 3: of climbing the socio political ladder so that they didn't
17:50
Speaker 3: have to be attached to a husband. And that's a
17:52
Speaker 3: sort of microcosm for how women in all different communities
17:57
Speaker 3: all over the world use language, whether it's code switching
18:00
Speaker 3: to a different dialect, or learning an entire new language,
18:04
Speaker 3: or innovating with slang or creating a secret code language
18:08
Speaker 3: like you find in queer communities to avoid persecution or
18:11
Speaker 3: to avoid abuse. Language in marginalized communities has always been
18:16
Speaker 3: a really material form of power.
18:18
Speaker 4: I love your book, Words Flat. I want to show
18:21
Speaker 4: everybody I love this book so much. Thank you. You
18:24
Speaker 4: say it's a feminist guide to taking back.
18:26
Speaker 1: The English Language, and you start off with a bang.
18:30
Speaker 4: The first chapter is a bunch of slurs.
18:34
Speaker 3: Yes, can you list a few? Offer us?
18:37
Speaker 1: You want me to.
18:38
Speaker 3: Curse on your podcast? Oh yeah, gladly. What I found
18:42
Speaker 3: researching this book and what I learned in college, and
18:44
Speaker 3: really my college education in feminist socio linguistics was like
18:48
Speaker 3: the backbone of this book is that basically every word
18:53
Speaker 3: in the history of the English language that has ever
18:56
Speaker 3: been used to reflect femininity or to describe women, has
19:00
Speaker 3: at some point been used as a slur. And there
19:02
Speaker 3: are just way more feminine skewing slurs in our language
19:07
Speaker 3: than there are masculines, way more skewing slurs. We have bitch, slut,
19:12
Speaker 3: cuntor but even for even even things like tart and harlot.
19:23
Speaker 3: You know these sort of old timey terms that we
19:25
Speaker 3: now think of as passe spinster. You know these terms,
19:30
Speaker 3: many of them started out as perfectly innocuous, having neutral
19:35
Speaker 3: or positive meanings, and they went through a process of
19:38
Speaker 3: semantic change known as peguration, where a word starts out
19:42
Speaker 3: meaning something totally harmless and then over time devolves to
19:46
Speaker 3: mean something abusive. And that process really reflects something about
19:51
Speaker 3: our culture. Our fears are prejudices. You know, the word
19:56
Speaker 3: slut back in Chaucer's day was used to describe as
20:00
Speaker 3: slovenly untidy person and was sometimes used to describe men.
20:05
Speaker 3: Chaucer used the word sluttish to describe male characters in
20:08
Speaker 3: his poetry. And now it's a sexual slur. And that
20:12
Speaker 3: is the fate of so many feminine miscuing terms. You write.
20:16
Speaker 1: If you want to insult a woman, call her a prostitute.
20:19
Speaker 1: If you want to insult a man, call him a woman.
20:22
Speaker 1: It's true we reject anything feminine. And also, like this
20:26
Speaker 1: word diva always bothered me because I think there's no
20:29
Speaker 1: male parallel totally.
20:31
Speaker 3: Oh, there is no male parallel for most female I mean,
20:35
Speaker 3: think about it. For slut, we have man slut. But
20:37
Speaker 3: I think we can all agree that that is much
20:40
Speaker 3: jokier and more harmless than slut. I mean, these terms
20:43
Speaker 3: have been wielded to keep women from power and to
20:47
Speaker 3: keep women in their place for generations, for decades.
20:51
Speaker 1: Well, one thing that I learned from your book, and
20:53
Speaker 1: it's something you just mentioned, is if you have to
20:55
Speaker 1: put the qualifier man in front of something, it means
20:59
Speaker 1: we think it as female.
21:00
Speaker 4: So man bun, guyliner, you talk.
21:03
Speaker 3: About man bag, right, male nurse. I mean it doesn't
21:08
Speaker 3: just have to do with insults, it has to do
21:10
Speaker 3: with professions. I mean, this language is not arbitrary. It
21:15
Speaker 3: says something about the gender and power dynamics of our
21:18
Speaker 3: culture at large. I'll give one more example of a
21:21
Speaker 3: minimal pair of one word that meant something masculine and
21:25
Speaker 3: neutral and one word that meant something feminine and neutral.
21:28
Speaker 3: Or the masculine term ameliorated became more positive over time
21:32
Speaker 3: and the feminine term became more negative. How about master
21:35
Speaker 3: and mistress. So master and mistress back in the day
21:39
Speaker 3: were just female and male heads of household, but master ameliorated,
21:43
Speaker 3: it became more positive and meaning. Now it's someone who is,
21:47
Speaker 3: you know, an expert in a craft, master chef. Mistress
21:50
Speaker 3: went the other way. Now it means ahead of a brothel.
21:53
Speaker 3: So that is just one of many or side chick
21:57
Speaker 3: exactly exactly.
22:00
Speaker 1: When you say words in power, language has always been
22:02
Speaker 1: used to reflect power structures. The example that you give
22:05
Speaker 1: is like, we think of models as women, so we
22:08
Speaker 1: say male model. Exact, it's a man, nurses, prostitutes, all
22:12
Speaker 1: default female.
22:13
Speaker 3: Female doctor though woman's scientific, women's scientist. My mom is
22:17
Speaker 3: a woman's scientist. Shut out.
22:18
Speaker 4: This one was really interesting to me.
22:20
Speaker 1: You talk about mom preneur and girl boss and you
22:23
Speaker 1: say it may come off like an emblem of girl power,
22:26
Speaker 1: but there's implicit sexism attached.
22:28
Speaker 3: Oh of course. Well, First of all, girl boss is
22:31
Speaker 3: inherently diminutive. We would never say boy boss. We would
22:36
Speaker 3: never call a grown adult man a boy So there's
22:38
Speaker 3: something infantilizing there. But also, per our entire discussion, when
22:43
Speaker 3: you have to tack a feminine qualifier as the prefix
22:47
Speaker 3: onto this word boss, there is this explicit implication that
22:52
Speaker 3: a boss is male by default. Some people think girl
22:56
Speaker 3: boss is this like sparkly term of empower, but I
23:00
Speaker 3: think at this point it has been co opted and
23:03
Speaker 3: bastardized enough by the multi level marketing industry that we
23:06
Speaker 3: could probably retire it for good.
23:09
Speaker 1: Well, I think this brings me to my next question,
23:11
Speaker 1: which is about reclaiming words. So you did it with
23:14
Speaker 1: the title of your book. Actually it's called word slut.
23:17
Speaker 1: You reclaim the word slut.
23:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I've like spent so long sort of
23:22
Speaker 3: censuring these feminine insults. But language is nothing without context.
23:27
Speaker 3: Language doesn't mean anything without the larger picture. And you know,
23:32
Speaker 3: with a term like slut, when the population that that
23:37
Speaker 3: term has been used to suppress then turns it around
23:41
Speaker 3: and says, no, I'm going to use this as an
23:43
Speaker 3: in group form of empowerment. It can start there, and
23:48
Speaker 3: then you, as a woman can choose yourself only to
23:52
Speaker 3: use slut in positive contexts, to never use it to
23:55
Speaker 3: describe a woman as contemptibly promiscuous, but to say like, oh,
24:00
Speaker 3: I'm about to have like slut era. I'm seeing it now.
24:02
Speaker 3: The term slut era did not exist when I wrote
24:04
Speaker 3: word slut, but I'm seeing it become more and more reclaimed,
24:08
Speaker 3: and I proudly identify as a word slut. I love
24:11
Speaker 3: it when women say, you know, like oh, I'm about
24:13
Speaker 3: to have like the sluttiest night out, like wish me luck.
24:16
Speaker 3: And then you know, as the next generation comes up
24:19
Speaker 3: only hearing slut and positive context, that is the work
24:23
Speaker 3: of reclamation.
24:24
Speaker 1: So I have to tell you, because you talk about
24:26
Speaker 1: reclamation versus abolishing words, yes, and my instinct was like
24:30
Speaker 1: just abolish, just get rid of it. I don't like
24:32
Speaker 1: when somebody comes up to me and is like, hey, bitch, yeah,
24:36
Speaker 1: I'm offended and it happens, and I'm like, Danielle, it
24:39
Speaker 1: means something different to them that.
24:40
Speaker 4: It does to you. You know, like, let go oh
24:42
Speaker 4: my god.
24:42
Speaker 3: You're completely entitled to that, and we're all going to
24:45
Speaker 3: have very personal relationships to these emotionally charged words. You're
24:48
Speaker 3: not wrong. There are feminist scholars who think it is
24:51
Speaker 3: a mistake for me to title my book words lot. No,
24:54
Speaker 3: there really are, and I've heard that through the grapevine.
24:56
Speaker 1: But you know, I think that what you I'm sorry
24:59
Speaker 1: to interrupted, but what you did was brilliant marketing because
25:02
Speaker 1: it brought.
25:03
Speaker 3: About that nobody.
25:04
Speaker 1: It brought language to our generation in a way that
25:08
Speaker 1: we haven't had in a mainstream way.
25:10
Speaker 4: It was brilliant.
25:10
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, you know.
25:12
Speaker 2: I it was.
25:13
Speaker 3: A journey arriving at this title, Pina Sloot. I was
25:17
Speaker 3: feeling really coquettish about it for some reason, even though
25:20
Speaker 3: the chapters of my book are titled things like you know,
25:23
Speaker 3: fuck it and o tocursing well female, you know, I
25:26
Speaker 3: was so nervous to title it word slut. But the
25:29
Speaker 3: voice as a scholar, yeah, well, I mean I am,
25:32
Speaker 3: but I'm also the conduit between academia and the zeitgeist.
25:37
Speaker 3: Like I don't have a PhD. The reason why I
25:40
Speaker 3: felt almost a responsibility to write this as someone with
25:44
Speaker 3: a bachelor's in the subject matter but hasn't been in
25:46
Speaker 3: academia for the past ten years, is because I can
25:49
Speaker 3: sort of use my like internet know how to inspire
25:53
Speaker 3: people who would never otherwise pick up a linguistics book,
25:57
Speaker 3: you know, something with a more in group terminology heavy title,
26:02
Speaker 3: but words lut we can all kind of guess what
26:03
Speaker 3: that means.
26:04
Speaker 1: And just I only know this because I read your book,
26:06
Speaker 1: But for anybody who hasn't yet in group and out
26:09
Speaker 1: group when you talk about in group means like we're
26:11
Speaker 1: women who were in group, yeah, group as men in
26:13
Speaker 1: this case.
26:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there are so many in group outgroup dynamics,
26:17
Speaker 3: and they're all going to have like very individual experiences
26:21
Speaker 3: with these words.
26:22
Speaker 1: I mean.
26:22
Speaker 3: One of the most successful examples of a reclaimed slur
26:26
Speaker 3: is the word queer. You know, not that long ago
26:29
Speaker 3: that was a great point. Yeah, that was just a
26:31
Speaker 3: homophobic slur, and now it's largely you know, this umbrella term.
26:36
Speaker 3: It can have many the queer community. Yeah, and you know,
26:40
Speaker 3: my hope personally is that the same fate will come
26:45
Speaker 3: of slut and bitch and all these other slurs. But
26:48
Speaker 3: there are still some people who find queer really offensive
26:51
Speaker 3: because they remember a time when it purely was okay.
26:55
Speaker 1: I have this like diabolical conundrum that I need you
27:00
Speaker 1: to sell.
27:00
Speaker 3: Oh my god, we'll see.
27:03
Speaker 1: So the word woman and the word girl, yes, then
27:08
Speaker 1: you have man and.
27:09
Speaker 4: You have boy.
27:11
Speaker 1: There is no word to describe someone like me and you.
27:15
Speaker 1: Are we a woman or are we?
27:17
Speaker 4: There's a gal?
27:19
Speaker 1: But nobody really says gal, like if I say, for instance,
27:22
Speaker 1: years ago, I really made an effort to stop saying
27:25
Speaker 1: hey guys, yeah, because.
27:27
Speaker 4: I'm not speaking to just Matt.
27:28
Speaker 3: I don't say it anymore either, right, I abolished that one.
27:31
Speaker 1: Hey cowards kidding kidding, so hey guys is out of
27:37
Speaker 1: our vocabulary.
27:39
Speaker 4: I hate everyone, but that doesn't feel warm.
27:42
Speaker 1: So I want a term that's for women that's not
27:45
Speaker 1: me saying hey girls, because it's not hate women. Right.
27:49
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think you can get really creative
27:51
Speaker 3: with it. Not everybody is going to like it, which
27:55
Speaker 3: sucks because everybody likes hey guys. There's this cozy masculine
28:00
Speaker 3: solidarity with guys with dude. And that's because there's this
28:04
Speaker 3: cozy solidarity with just masculinity in general. We just sort
28:07
Speaker 3: of prize it more. It's more chill.
28:10
Speaker 4: I love hey, y'all, but I'm not Southern, so I
28:12
Speaker 4: can't get away with it.
28:12
Speaker 3: I think it's okay. I think y'all is Southern, but
28:16
Speaker 3: nowadays it's also like kind of woke and convenient, super convenient.
28:20
Speaker 3: It's only one syllable. It's great, it's amazing.
28:23
Speaker 4: Okay, I walk.
28:23
Speaker 3: Into a room and like, depending, you know, the best
28:26
Speaker 3: thing you can do with language is read the room,
28:28
Speaker 3: and not to be sort of cantankerous and curmudgeonly about it,
28:32
Speaker 3: but to be curious about it and to want to
28:34
Speaker 3: listen and to want to adapt. That is a statement
28:39
Speaker 3: that requires its own context, because having to code switch
28:42
Speaker 3: and having to adapt is something that speakers of marginalized
28:45
Speaker 3: dialects like African American Vernacular English have had to do
28:49
Speaker 3: out of necessity for a really long time forever. But
28:52
Speaker 3: it's something that people of privilege should learn how to
28:55
Speaker 3: do as well. You should be able to walk into
28:56
Speaker 3: a room and be able to tell should I address
28:59
Speaker 3: all of these people as hey, guys? Hey everyone, or
29:03
Speaker 3: hey fuckers.
29:05
Speaker 4: Oh my god, aggressive.
29:07
Speaker 1: I mean we do it with children, right, we don't
29:08
Speaker 1: speak to kids, So we're used to code switching in
29:10
Speaker 1: some way, totally gender stereotypes subtly hide in language. Absolutely,
29:15
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by the subtle subtleties of language. So women
29:19
Speaker 1: as an object is one of the patriarchy's largest tropes.
29:23
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this one really in your book. Wow, So
29:28
Speaker 1: you talk about penetration and you say it implies and
29:31
Speaker 1: reinforces that sex is from the male perspective.
29:35
Speaker 4: The opposite would be an.
29:36
Speaker 1: Envelopment or enclosure. How different would life be if we referred.
29:40
Speaker 4: To sex that way?
29:41
Speaker 3: Isn't that a mind fuck? Literally, penetration is from the
29:45
Speaker 3: male perspective? Oh yeah, I mean this even applies to
29:50
Speaker 3: medical terminology. I mean we use the word vagina to
29:54
Speaker 3: describe oftentimes when we really want to say vulva, Like
29:58
Speaker 3: the vagina is just the knap straight up, Like you
30:02
Speaker 3: don't shave your vagina, the vagina's inside of you.
30:06
Speaker 1: Wait, speaking of how many words are there for vagina
30:08
Speaker 1: versus penis? Oh?
30:10
Speaker 3: I mean I talk about this in the book because
30:11
Speaker 3: I have a whole genitalia naming chapter. It's fascinating stuff
30:15
Speaker 3: because the slang that we use to describe sex in
30:19
Speaker 3: our bodies just says something enormous about how we approach
30:22
Speaker 3: sex in general. Right, So there are way more terms
30:26
Speaker 3: for penises than there are for volvas. I'm bringing back
30:29
Speaker 3: a volva, bring it back, bring it back. I like
30:32
Speaker 3: it better than vagina. Like, I just don't like the
30:35
Speaker 3: phonetics of it.
30:35
Speaker 4: It's a crunchy word.
30:36
Speaker 3: It's crunchy, it's cringing. Well, and we can unpack why
30:39
Speaker 3: it's crunchy and cringing. But you know, really like the
30:42
Speaker 3: metaphors that we used to describe a penis versus a
30:46
Speaker 3: volva in slang, they are so disturbing when you unpack them,
30:52
Speaker 3: Like a penis is like a pocket rocket or a
30:55
Speaker 3: meat sword. It's like always something violent and of a
31:00
Speaker 3: or a volva is like a meat wallet, or like
31:04
Speaker 3: a fucking axe wound. It's soli. Oh my god. Well,
31:09
Speaker 3: there were information. There was this lexicographer named John Green
31:13
Speaker 3: who put together this timeline of almost all of the
31:17
Speaker 3: slang terms he could find for our genitalia across the
31:21
Speaker 3: gender spectrum, dating back centuries, and there was this very
31:26
Speaker 3: consistent pattern where like sex was always violence, a penis
31:29
Speaker 3: was always a weapon of vulvar. Vagina was always this
31:32
Speaker 3: like empty space for a penis to go.
31:35
Speaker 4: It's eye opening.
31:37
Speaker 1: Now we've discussed how women are talked about, but we
31:41
Speaker 1: haven't talked about how women talk to each other, which I.
31:45
Speaker 4: Think is fascinating.
31:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, you say that women use hedges which are I
31:50
Speaker 1: feel and affirmations like right or yes, and men might
31:54
Speaker 1: hear those as signs of interruptions or insecurity.
31:57
Speaker 4: I didn't understand what you meant. Can you elaborate on that?
31:59
Speaker 1: Oh?
32:00
Speaker 3: Okay, so maybe you've come across some self helpy type
32:04
Speaker 3: article online that's like, ladies, we need to stop saying like,
32:09
Speaker 3: you know, I feel well actually, because it's making us
32:12
Speaker 3: sound inauthoritative, and you need to like reclaim your linguistic power.
32:18
Speaker 3: I mean, I hear this so much because I have
32:21
Speaker 3: a podcast now, and certain listeners, not just men, women
32:26
Speaker 3: who've been conditioned to accommodate to the patriarchy will be
32:31
Speaker 3: ultra sensitive to hedges and filler words, thinking they're just
32:34
Speaker 3: a sign of insecurity or vapidness or stupidity, when really
32:39
Speaker 3: linguists have found doing empirical studies that not only do
32:42
Speaker 3: men and women use hedges in equal measure, though not
32:45
Speaker 3: in the exact same way, But each one of these
32:48
Speaker 3: hedges serves a very specific purpose and or multiple purposes,
32:54
Speaker 3: depending on the context of the statement. So whereas you
32:58
Speaker 3: know a man might use you know or write a
33:02
Speaker 3: tag question like that sometimes to communicate insecurity, we're not
33:06
Speaker 3: going to be as sensitive to that because men enjoy
33:09
Speaker 3: a position of default power in this culture, and so
33:12
Speaker 3: when we hear them say like or use upspeak or
33:14
Speaker 3: vocal fry or hedges, we're just going to default hear
33:17
Speaker 3: the sound of authority. Meanwhile, when women do it, they're
33:20
Speaker 3: under this microscope.
33:21
Speaker 1: As chapter four is, women didn't ruin the English language,
33:24
Speaker 1: they like invented it. Hah So you say today's sharpest linguistics. However,
33:29
Speaker 1: have data suggesting that teenage girls speak is one of
33:32
Speaker 1: the most loathed and mocked language styles. But it's actually
33:36
Speaker 1: what standard English is going to sound like in the
33:37
Speaker 1: near future.
33:38
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. If you want to hear what language is
33:40
Speaker 3: going to sound like across the board in twenty years,
33:43
Speaker 3: listen to a young woman.
33:44
Speaker 4: Okay, I don't know how.
33:45
Speaker 1: I feel about this, hahaha. I feel great that women
33:49
Speaker 1: are leading language. That's fine to me, but in general,
33:53
Speaker 1: I find people speaking improperly all the time. Like my
33:58
Speaker 1: cousin and I will joke we watch cable news and
34:00
Speaker 1: everybody uses her and she wrong and we will like,
34:04
Speaker 1: he taught me this because he's way better with grammar.
34:06
Speaker 4: But this is us is improper grammar.
34:08
Speaker 3: It's this is we Okay, But here's the thing we
34:12
Speaker 3: all love That gotcha feeling of catching someone in a
34:15
Speaker 3: grammar infraction, No, because I do it wrong all the
34:19
Speaker 3: time too.
34:19
Speaker 1: Like I'm not like trying to be like you did
34:21
Speaker 1: it wrong, but I just feel like like, okay, keep going.
34:26
Speaker 3: Well, my question is what is improper grammar? I mean,
34:29
Speaker 3: oftentimes grammatical policing is classist. It is racist, sometimes even sexist.
34:35
Speaker 3: I mean, the grammar rules that we have in English
34:39
Speaker 3: were created arbitrarily by a bunch of stuffy white men
34:43
Speaker 3: who were working at the printing presses at the time
34:45
Speaker 3: and were in a position of privilege to be able
34:47
Speaker 3: to come up with the grammar guides. And they based
34:50
Speaker 3: a lot of our grammar rules on Latin just because
34:54
Speaker 3: there was, you know, a glamorization of Latin, even though
34:56
Speaker 3: they're really confusing.
34:57
Speaker 4: I mean this whole like, where did it come from?
35:00
Speaker 1: If you go back to the origins who made up
35:01
Speaker 1: the rules, Yeah, they these guys working at grammar guides
35:05
Speaker 1: and Latin you know, was very romantic to them.
35:08
Speaker 3: So the reason why we're so confused about when to
35:11
Speaker 3: use like she versus her or you versus me, Like
35:15
Speaker 3: people say all the time between you and I instead
35:17
Speaker 3: of between you and me. And that's known as grammatical
35:20
Speaker 3: hyper correction. And you often find a lot of grammatical
35:24
Speaker 3: hyper correction in the speech of women of a lower
35:27
Speaker 3: socioeconomic class because, to our point before, they're trying to
35:31
Speaker 3: ascend the socioeconomic ladder. Language is their best tool. And
35:34
Speaker 3: sometimes they overshoot the mark and will say, you know, oh,
35:37
Speaker 3: between you and I, even though like technically it's between
35:40
Speaker 3: you and me, you and I goes as the subject
35:42
Speaker 3: of the sentence, but it sounds right. They're doing that
35:45
Speaker 3: because it sounds fancy, because they're half right about how
35:48
Speaker 3: to use this grammatical rule. So we need to sort
35:51
Speaker 3: of check ourselves sometimes, and I often find this, you know,
35:53
Speaker 3: if someone's getting into say a political debate on Twitter
35:56
Speaker 3: or something like that, if someone typos in their tweet,
36:00
Speaker 3: someone will be so quick to critique their grammar rather
36:05
Speaker 3: than the content of their statements, so it's really low
36:08
Speaker 3: hanging fruit and oftentimes misses the mark and seems really pedantic,
36:13
Speaker 3: and pedantry is really just prejudice dressed up in like
36:16
Speaker 3: a fancy academic uniform.
36:18
Speaker 4: That is so brilliant.
36:19
Speaker 3: You are right, You're like, I'll change forever. I know,
36:23
Speaker 3: I know, but you're right.
36:25
Speaker 4: It's like who made up the rules and why did
36:26
Speaker 4: I follow them?
36:27
Speaker 1: My sixth grade English teacher and Missus Felix taught me,
36:29
Speaker 1: And so now I'm that's.
36:31
Speaker 3: It, Missus Felix.
36:32
Speaker 1: And also I feel so much well, I've learned so
36:35
Speaker 1: much about language from people who are of different class,
36:39
Speaker 1: differently different religion, all of it.
36:41
Speaker 3: And what's considered grammatically incorrect now may very well be
36:45
Speaker 3: accepted by grammar guides in the future. For example, there
36:48
Speaker 3: is a hullabluo less so now, but very much when
36:52
Speaker 3: I was writing words lud about singular they and so
36:56
Speaker 3: many people argue against gender neutral singular thing, non binary
37:01
Speaker 3: folks using them pronouns because it is ungrammatical it makes
37:05
Speaker 3: no sense. But first of all, we all use singular
37:09
Speaker 3: they without even noticing it all the time someone left
37:11
Speaker 3: their umbrella under the table. When we don't know the
37:14
Speaker 3: gender of a person, we use it perfectly naturally. Jane
37:17
Speaker 3: Austen used singular they throughout her texts for a long time.
37:21
Speaker 3: Grammar Guides again like generic singular key was only based
37:28
Speaker 3: on the Latin rule, and it's sexist. Why should he
37:32
Speaker 3: be the default singular pronoun. It should just be there,
37:35
Speaker 3: It should just be they.
37:36
Speaker 1: Well, I want to unpack this a little bit more
37:38
Speaker 1: because we talk about changing language and the takeaway from
37:42
Speaker 1: the book. For me, the main takeaway, aside from all
37:45
Speaker 1: the awesome examples, but the main takeaway of the book
37:48
Speaker 1: was that you should feel empowered by language instead of.
37:51
Speaker 2: Silenced by it.
37:52
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and the changing language is an important part of
37:55
Speaker 1: that because using they for example versus he or she
37:59
Speaker 1: is a part of that. So what do you say
38:01
Speaker 1: to people who are like, it's just not in my vocabulary.
38:04
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up using it, and I'm uncomfortable and
38:06
Speaker 1: I don't mean anything poorly by it.
38:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it really depends on the intention of
38:13
Speaker 3: the person that I'm talking to, But by and large
38:17
Speaker 3: I would just encourage people rather than getting defensive about
38:21
Speaker 3: language or afraid of linguistic change, because it's inevitable and
38:26
Speaker 3: it's going to happen whether we like it or not.
38:28
Speaker 4: It's happened since the beginning of time.
38:30
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Of course, try to think like a
38:33
Speaker 3: linguist and be curious and excited about it, because language
38:37
Speaker 3: will embrace you if you embrace it.
38:39
Speaker 1: If you criticize someone's language, you are oftentimes criticizing someone's
38:43
Speaker 1: identity to go hand in hand.
38:45
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, those are your words.
38:47
Speaker 3: I'm like, that sounds so true.
38:48
Speaker 4: It is so true.
38:50
Speaker 1: And you say a lot of slag comes from innovation
38:52
Speaker 1: and also oppression, solidarity, community, and survival. Oh yeah, I mean, so,
38:58
Speaker 1: talk to me about slang total, well, almost all of
39:02
Speaker 1: our beloved slang in English comes from African American vernacular English,
39:06
Speaker 1: everything from the use of bad to mean good to
39:09
Speaker 1: the phrase twenty four to seven. Actually, I spoke to
39:12
Speaker 1: a linguist of black linguists for the book named Sonya Lainehart,
39:16
Speaker 1: who told me that the first time she ever saw
39:18
Speaker 1: a white male news anchor on TV used the phrase
39:21
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven, she nearly spat out her drink
39:23
Speaker 1: because she was like, oh no, like white people are
39:26
Speaker 1: like mainstream society as well, co opt black words all
39:30
Speaker 1: the time. I think Time one hundred percent woke all
39:33
Speaker 1: of these OCAs.
39:35
Speaker 3: Yes, and more specifically, a lot of our most beloved
39:39
Speaker 3: slang terms now that we might think of as like
39:41
Speaker 3: TikTok slang or Internet sling. Gen Z slang specifically comes
39:45
Speaker 3: from ballroom culture, which was a community whose heyday was
39:48
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighties Harlem, New York, where black and LATINX Latino,
39:53
Speaker 3: gay and trans drag performers would get dressed up and
39:56
Speaker 3: prayed down the runway and use this language as a
39:59
Speaker 3: form of of solidarity, a secret code. And the category
40:03
Speaker 3: is yes, yes, yas will greading you know, like it's funny,
40:09
Speaker 3: Like part of a fun of studying linguistics is that
40:11
Speaker 3: you get to talk about so much fun language and
40:15
Speaker 3: use words like cunt and yus and just speak about
40:19
Speaker 3: them in this very academic tone of voice. It gives
40:22
Speaker 3: me great pleasure. It gives me a kick every time.
40:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, and that language was in a way sort
40:30
Speaker 3: of parodying the language of black women. So yes, consistently,
40:35
Speaker 3: the most marginalized communities who've been oppressed the most will
40:40
Speaker 3: almost need this language and the creativity is a byproduct
40:45
Speaker 3: of the oppression in many ways.
40:47
Speaker 1: I really found it interesting to think of language and
40:51
Speaker 1: identity tiede.
40:53
Speaker 4: It really is true.
40:54
Speaker 3: It's so true.
40:55
Speaker 1: I mean and culture, like I think based on like
40:58
Speaker 1: what culture you grew up with?
41:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, can't you just like clock immediately when someone
41:04
Speaker 3: says like machugar nut or uses some kind of Yiddish
41:07
Speaker 3: slang that like only someone who grew up Jewish or
41:10
Speaker 3: like Jewish adjacent in New York or something like that
41:12
Speaker 3: would use, and then you instantly feel sympatico with them,
41:15
Speaker 3: You instantly feel familiar with them. That can cut both ways,
41:19
Speaker 3: Like you can use language to instantly connect with someone,
41:22
Speaker 3: you can use language to instantly alienate someone.
41:24
Speaker 4: Yes, and you have to be careful.
41:26
Speaker 1: I've noticed, actually when might because when I interview people,
41:29
Speaker 1: I'm so sensitive to how my words land with them. Yeah,
41:33
Speaker 1: and I very precisely feel when my words don't land
41:38
Speaker 1: the way I'm intended.
41:40
Speaker 4: And so you're right, Like it's true.
41:41
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I also feel like and
41:45
Speaker 3: I the internet makes everyone look so sensitive and really
41:48
Speaker 3: brings out the overthinker in us all but in person
41:52
Speaker 3: and natural discourse between people we're so good at being
41:56
Speaker 3: able to pick up on one another's facial expressions and
41:59
Speaker 3: one another there's disposition. And when you feel as though
42:02
Speaker 3: you fumbled, and when I feel as though I've fumbled
42:05
Speaker 3: with language, it's easy enough to sort of backtrack and
42:09
Speaker 3: get on the right foot. And because we're not all
42:12
Speaker 3: going to use language right all the time. And my
42:15
Speaker 3: crusade is not to push forward political correctness necessarily, but
42:20
Speaker 3: it's to push forward the idea that language is always
42:22
Speaker 3: changing and that words matter, and that we should be
42:25
Speaker 3: attuned to that whenever possible.
42:27
Speaker 4: Curious instead of critical.
42:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the most frustrating chapters is about how
42:33
Speaker 1: hard it is to be a woman in the public eye,
42:36
Speaker 1: in a position of power because of the societal expectations
42:39
Speaker 1: that we place on women. Yeah, you talk about something
42:43
Speaker 1: called the linguistic double bind.
42:45
Speaker 4: Can you explain this, sure?
42:47
Speaker 3: Well, the double bind is the sort of double edged sword,
42:50
Speaker 3: this tiny type rope that women have to walk in
42:54
Speaker 3: the public sphere where you know, the public stage and
42:58
Speaker 3: authority is something that we been conditioned to associate with
43:01
Speaker 3: masculinity and the private sphere, and daintiness and niceness is
43:06
Speaker 3: something we've been conditioned to associate with femininity. Actually, I
43:10
Speaker 3: recently learned researching my current project, my current book, I
43:13
Speaker 3: learned from a medieval scholar that it wasn't considered natural
43:18
Speaker 3: for women to be in the home until the Enlightenment,
43:22
Speaker 3: when we were first discovering science. And we you know,
43:25
Speaker 3: we're a patriarchy then and now all of a sudden,
43:28
Speaker 3: science was the excuse for why women naturally belong in
43:32
Speaker 3: the domestic sphere, in the home, away from public life.
43:36
Speaker 3: So our gender expectations for women and our expectations for
43:40
Speaker 3: what a public figure should look like and sound like
43:43
Speaker 3: are fundamentally incongruous because of these centuries of conditioning. So
43:47
Speaker 3: when a woman attempts to approximate masculine authority, she's often
43:52
Speaker 3: censured or criticized for coming across as a shrew, shrill,
43:57
Speaker 3: a bitch like Hillary Clinton. And when she comes across
44:01
Speaker 3: as too nice to dainty, well, now she's unfit to lead.
44:05
Speaker 3: And you know that might be someone like Sarah Pentalin,
44:08
Speaker 3: who was unfit to lead for many reasons. Her language use.
44:11
Speaker 4: Was not one of them that ac I don't know,
44:15
Speaker 4: but I don't know. Maybe her language use.
44:17
Speaker 3: Was, Yeah, her language probably was one of them.
44:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always do a rapid fire, but for this interview,
44:24
Speaker 1: we're gonna call it word economy. Okay, So can you
44:27
Speaker 1: name five English words that are rooted in patriarchal misogyny?
44:31
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yes, hysterical, crazy, girl, boss, slut.
44:39
Speaker 4: Simp, that's a new Chico.
44:41
Speaker 3: That's a new one.
44:42
Speaker 4: What's your favorite English word?
44:44
Speaker 3: Okay? Well, I actually have it in my bio, in
44:47
Speaker 3: word blood in my author bio. It's like I think
44:51
Speaker 3: it's the end of the paperback. But I said in
44:52
Speaker 3: there that my favorite English word is the word nook.
44:56
Speaker 3: I love how like cozy and it sounds what if
45:01
Speaker 3: the word plosive mean plosive means like a stop consonant.
45:05
Speaker 3: Some part of your mouth is stopping the air from
45:08
Speaker 3: moving and then releasing it explosively.
45:10
Speaker 4: Plosive words are fun words, but I was trying.
45:15
Speaker 1: I like like ephemeral, fem exemal. I like whimsical words.
45:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love whimsical words too, I mean, I love
45:21
Speaker 3: I love Oh those are fun okay. So, like English
45:25
Speaker 3: has two sort of categories of phono symbolism because our
45:30
Speaker 3: language is derived in part from Romance languages and in
45:34
Speaker 3: part from Germanic languages. So for every Latin like fancy
45:38
Speaker 3: multi Slavic sounding word, there's a much shorter, more Germanic
45:42
Speaker 3: sounding alternative. So for example, we have chew, but we
45:45
Speaker 3: also have masticate. You know what I mean.
45:49
Speaker 4: Favorite slang word?
45:50
Speaker 3: I mean, I love tea?
45:51
Speaker 4: Oh t spell the tea? Yeah, yourshook your language?
45:55
Speaker 3: Pet peet oh, I try not to have them my language.
46:00
Speaker 3: Pet peeve is when people try to police others language.
46:05
Speaker 3: Love it.
46:06
Speaker 4: What is the wildest thing you've ever done for love?
46:09
Speaker 1: Oh?
46:09
Speaker 3: My god, the world I've ever done for love? Oh well,
46:14
Speaker 3: I've I've traveled across continents and oceans for love.
46:18
Speaker 4: A book you think everybody should read?
46:21
Speaker 1: Words lap, I'm just kidding, they should, like, what's a
46:24
Speaker 1: book that changed your life?
46:26
Speaker 3: Okay, because a book that everyone should read, I mean
46:28
Speaker 3: probably like, oh gosh, a book that everyone should read
46:31
Speaker 3: be like I don't know, Tony Morrison, the Bluest Eye,
46:33
Speaker 3: or like the Bell Jar. So we have a book
46:36
Speaker 3: that changed my life. I mean, the books that made
46:40
Speaker 3: me want to be a writer in high school were
46:42
Speaker 3: David Sidera's books, really humor essays.
46:45
Speaker 4: I love that.
46:46
Speaker 3: That's why my books, even though they're about linguistics, which
46:48
Speaker 3: is the reputation is boring. I think my books are
46:52
Speaker 3: kind of funny.
46:53
Speaker 4: They are, okay, I do a pretty smart question? Amazing,
46:58
Speaker 4: So pick which everyone speaks to you?
47:00
Speaker 3: Like taro?
47:02
Speaker 4: People always choose the card they're meant to get.
47:04
Speaker 3: Okay, Sure, what gift do you most often give? Do
47:11
Speaker 3: I regift? Is this a two parter? What gift do
47:14
Speaker 3: I most often give? I do love to gift and
47:18
Speaker 3: experience a weekend away a concert ticket.
47:22
Speaker 4: Can't regift those.
47:24
Speaker 3: You cannot regift those. But I also love a quirky sock.
47:30
Speaker 4: That feels so on brand for you.
47:32
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
47:33
Speaker 4: Okay, Amanda Montel, what is the smartest decision you've ever
47:36
Speaker 4: made to.
47:37
Speaker 3: I can't believe I'm like telling on myself here, but
47:40
Speaker 3: I started college as a theater major, and within a
47:45
Speaker 3: few weeks I realized I wanted to pursue linguistics instead.
47:50
Speaker 4: So cool. But you're still theatrical. You still bring it out.
47:53
Speaker 3: I'm a theatrical linguist, you are, ye, Thank you, thank you.
47:59
Speaker 4: This is awesome. You like blessed us with so much
48:02
Speaker 4: knowledge today.
48:03
Speaker 3: Oh it's my pleasure.
48:04
Speaker 1: I learned so much and I'm going to stop pleasing
48:07
Speaker 1: this as we and this is.
48:08
Speaker 3: Our Oh okay, but I hate the movie title crazy
48:13
Speaker 3: Stupid Love Yes, because it's like it's a speech. I
48:18
Speaker 3: hope you've got that on the podcast. Yeah, I know,
48:21
Speaker 3: I do. I am annoyed by that. I'm like, couldn't
48:24
Speaker 3: we have? Yeah, like thought about that twice.
48:32
Speaker 1: I want to thank the people that make the show possible.
48:35
Speaker 1: Colleen O'Neill, Jill Slama, Carrie o'keeth, and Phil Speed Tech. Okay,
48:40
Speaker 1: you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
48:42
Speaker 1: To have a good day.
48:44
Speaker 2: I'll see you next week.