Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stephan
Speaker 1: Ever told you protection of I Heart Radio. Today, we
Speaker 1: are very excited to be joined by Amanda Montell, who
Speaker 1: is a writer and a linguist, an author of the
Speaker 1: book Words Splut, a Feminist Guide to taking Back the
Speaker 1: English Language. Thank you so much for being with us, Amanda, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. I I'm often
Speaker 1: told that I come with a wealth of information that
Speaker 1: people's mom's never told them, So I thought this would
Speaker 1: be a perfect fit. I'm thrilled to be here. I mean,
Speaker 1: to be fair. In your book, you do talk to
Speaker 1: moms about their outdated language, so that's kind of like
Speaker 1: even better, you tell moms what they don't know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. I um. I found that moms really enjoy
Speaker 1: words slut. I think the phrase word slut is you know,
Speaker 1: it's scandalous, but it's not too scandalous for a mom.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a juxtaposition of a sort of like
Speaker 1: nerdy word, which is word, and then an agy word
Speaker 1: which is slut. But you put them together and it's
Speaker 1: sort of the crown nut of of an expletive that
Speaker 1: mom seem to be okay, with which is good because really,
Speaker 1: this is a book about feminist socio linguistics that people
Speaker 1: of of all of all genders and all ages, especially
Speaker 1: those in their middle age, probably need. So uh, first
Speaker 1: of all, I'll give you a point for just just
Speaker 1: saying crown nut in any kind of analogy. So good job.
Speaker 1: Oh well, anyone, anyone who knows who knows that I
Speaker 1: am a portmanteau slut portmanteau, portmanteau being a hybrid of
Speaker 1: of two different words to create a new one, like brunch, frenemy, angry, affluenza,
Speaker 1: man splain. There are a great many portmanteau is that
Speaker 1: the feminist movement has come up with in order to
Speaker 1: name previously unspoken experiences like man splain her story, frat
Speaker 1: trie archy is a fun one, um, so that's one
Speaker 1: from Oh yeah. Frat triarchy is what some social scientists
Speaker 1: have used to describe the setup of our contemporary culture,
Speaker 1: which is run less by the fathers and more by
Speaker 1: networks of the brothers. So you know, uh, an example
Speaker 1: would be you know, Donald Trump and his bus bros.
Speaker 1: And that access Hollywood recording would be a perfect example
Speaker 1: of frat triarchy. You know, bros engaging in locker room
Speaker 1: banter in order to oppressed women. We're really getting into
Speaker 1: this quickly. All I said, all I said was grownut
Speaker 1: and here we are. Look. Yeah, yeah, anyway, that is
Speaker 1: all to say that I love a portmanteau even more
Speaker 1: than a pun. Then we have a battle. Now she
Speaker 1: loves she's a queen of puns. Yes, I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a big language nerd listeners of this show. No, so
Speaker 1: I'm very very excited to have this conversation. Um, I
Speaker 1: love the title, and congrats on writing a book. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know that's no easy thing. So oh that that's
Speaker 1: that's very kind of you. Yeah, that was that was
Speaker 1: the dream all along, you know. And um the fact
Speaker 1: that I got to marry my two loves, that being
Speaker 1: linguistics the science of language, and creative writing, the art
Speaker 1: of it. Um, that was just you know, that was
Speaker 1: the cherry on top, because my dream had always been
Speaker 1: to write nonfiction. Um, and I I never could have
Speaker 1: predicted that this sort of um useless nerdy undergraduate degree
Speaker 1: that I got would would help me in any sort
Speaker 1: of fruitful way. Um, but I'm I'm thrilled that I
Speaker 1: was able to write about this stuff that I love
Speaker 1: so much and talk about in my everyday life and
Speaker 1: and bring it to a general audience of people who
Speaker 1: might not even know what linguistics is. So that's been awesome,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, and it was. It was wonderful to read,
Speaker 1: super fun, very entertaining. Definitely listeners check it out. UM,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about yourself and
Speaker 1: about the inspiration behind this more than just getting to
Speaker 1: marry the things that you Yeah, absolutely so. UM. I
Speaker 1: grew up a total language nerd, hardcore. I was obsessed
Speaker 1: with what I would later learn was a field called
Speaker 1: socio linguistics UM, which is where language and sociology and
Speaker 1: culture intersect. You know, I was always so fascinated by
Speaker 1: the way that UM people spoke and how it could
Speaker 1: inform our perceptions of them, and the way that I
Speaker 1: spoke and the way that it informed other people's perceptions
Speaker 1: of me. You know, why was it that UM, when I,
Speaker 1: as sort of a small woman, would would curse or
Speaker 1: maybe even use um ten dollar words, UM, people would
Speaker 1: be sort of surprised or scandalized, whereas and my male
Speaker 1: colleagues would do so they didn't get the same reaction.
Speaker 1: And and then you know, I was always just obsessed
Speaker 1: with the thesaurus, Like I just loved big old words,
Speaker 1: and I loved you know, the the swish and flack
Speaker 1: of different you know, sounds. And I would later learn
Speaker 1: that that stuff was called phonetics and phonology. Um. But
Speaker 1: I I, yeah, I was obsessed with foreign languages and dialects.
Speaker 1: And again how um, speaking of foreign language or or
Speaker 1: having a certain accent or dialect feature could change the
Speaker 1: way that a person saw you. So then when I
Speaker 1: got to college and signed up for my first linguistics
Speaker 1: one on one class, having no idea what the field was,
Speaker 1: and learned there was this whole you know, small but
Speaker 1: mighty um group of people studying formally um these subjects.
Speaker 1: I I was so smitten. And the gender and language
Speaker 1: classes that I took really inspired me and like lit
Speaker 1: a fire, um more than anything else, because they they
Speaker 1: highlighted these hidden gender biases and stereotypes um that we
Speaker 1: all grow up using in our everyday language. UM. And
Speaker 1: they're they're they're all over the way that we speak,
Speaker 1: not only in English but in other languages. To like
Speaker 1: languages with grammatical gender um, where gender is literally built
Speaker 1: into the grammatical system. Um. We don't have that in English, um,
Speaker 1: other than you know, our third singular pronouns he and she,
Speaker 1: which you know, there's a reason why are our gender
Speaker 1: third singular pronouns have become such a topic of contention
Speaker 1: in in our language because they are really the only
Speaker 1: um unit of grammar that we have in English that
Speaker 1: is gendered. UM. And so that's you know, the little
Speaker 1: category of language that's become sort of politicized. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, I was so fascinated um and sort of
Speaker 1: horrified but also inspired um to learn about all the
Speaker 1: ways that gender and gender stereotype are lurking beneath the
Speaker 1: surface of our language. Everything from you know, how we
Speaker 1: use gendered insults and how there's such a such a
Speaker 1: more robust wealth of of insults for women or referencing
Speaker 1: femininity in English than there are for men, to the
Speaker 1: ways that we criticize and perceive women's voices. Um, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, using a certain feature like up talk um,
Speaker 1: where you end a declarative sentence in the upward intonation
Speaker 1: of a question, or vocal fry, which is a vocal
Speaker 1: quality where your larynx are very relaxed that sounds like this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure as a as podcast hosts here
Speaker 1: no stranger to criticisms of your voices. UM. And it
Speaker 1: was really cool to learn about how so many judgments
Speaker 1: not only of women's speech, but of the speech of
Speaker 1: so many marginalized communities, UM, have so little to do
Speaker 1: with the speech itself at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and very much to do with our preconceived notions of
Speaker 1: those speakers. UM. And just you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: of of male defaultness in our in our culture and
Speaker 1: in our language, and how the way that men UM,
Speaker 1: specifically you know, middle aged, white, straight cis gender men,
Speaker 1: the way that they use language is um, what we
Speaker 1: default consider prestigious and normal in our culture. UM, even
Speaker 1: though UH linguists have found time and time again that
Speaker 1: young women and communities of color are our languages linguistic innovators, UM,
Speaker 1: because these are the groups that use language as a
Speaker 1: form of power and a culture that doesn't give them
Speaker 1: a lot of other ways to do that. UM. The
Speaker 1: other example of male defaultness and speech that I that
Speaker 1: I like to give because it's sort of like it
Speaker 1: tends to shock people, as it shocked me when I
Speaker 1: first thought about it. Was just the way that we
Speaker 1: describe sex, like as penetration. You know that that word
Speaker 1: places you know, penises as the protagonists and the narrators
Speaker 1: of sex. You know, the opposite might be something like envelopment,
Speaker 1: were enclosure, or if you want to approach it from
Speaker 1: a sling angle, something like she thing. And I was
Speaker 1: just like, that is wild. How how word choice um
Speaker 1: with regard to gender and so many other identities something
Speaker 1: that we don't even think about because we grow up
Speaker 1: using language so organically. UM. And so you know, the
Speaker 1: the opportunity to bring UM, some of these empirical studies
Speaker 1: that are kind of inaccessible and only really read by
Speaker 1: linguistic students UM to a general audience was really exciting
Speaker 1: to me. UM. But yeah, I guess you asked me
Speaker 1: to talk about myself and then I just tended you
Speaker 1: talking about linguistics. But but but yeah, I am, I am.
Speaker 1: I'm a writer and I always dreamt of being a writer. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm writing my second book now, which is about
Speaker 1: the language of cults, from scientology to soul cycle um.
Speaker 1: And how the how these groups, you know, the wide
Speaker 1: spectrum of groups that the word cult can be applied
Speaker 1: to in contemporary culture, from those as a notorious and
Speaker 1: destructive as jonestown to those as um, you know, seemingly
Speaker 1: innocuous and and constructive as something like peloton um. How
Speaker 1: these groups use language to do things that occult or
Speaker 1: a cult following would need to do, like create community
Speaker 1: and solidarity and still ideology, creating us versus them, mentality, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So I guess the the general theme with me is
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm really interested in in language and culture
Speaker 1: and um, so that's that's what I'm doing. But I
Speaker 1: want to write about all kinds of things over the
Speaker 1: course of my career. So yeah, as you should. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So that was a great answer, and there's so much
Speaker 1: to impact there, and I think we will because I
Speaker 1: want to start with a sample, super easy question. Can
Speaker 1: you give us a brief rundown on the history of
Speaker 1: the English language and perhaps particularly when it comes to
Speaker 1: this question of is it sexist? Because you talked about
Speaker 1: that a little bit in the book, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, the English language has such a storied
Speaker 1: past um as as many languages do. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: and this is the other fun thing about socio linguistics
Speaker 1: is that you get to track how things like wars
Speaker 1: and epidemics actually to to you know, be talking book
Speaker 1: all about it. Um can inform how languages evolve. So
Speaker 1: let me think of how I wanna tell this story
Speaker 1: in a succinct manner. So basically we can start back
Speaker 1: in the fifth century a D. This was long ago,
Speaker 1: folks Um. The fifth century a D. That's when this
Speaker 1: trio of Germanic tribes from Scandinavia showed up in the
Speaker 1: British aisles unannounced. Um. And you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: if it was peaceful or violent, but you know, probably violent.
Speaker 1: And Um. Those tribes spoke this language called English UM.
Speaker 1: I actually don't quite remember how to pronounce the name
Speaker 1: of the language that they spoke, but it sounded like
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings language. Um. And so this lingo,
Speaker 1: along with some of the North Germanic languages spoken by Vikings,
Speaker 1: pushed Britain's Celtic languages to the outskirts of the country UM.
Speaker 1: And so the product of all of these languages intermingling
Speaker 1: um is what we call Old English UM. And it's
Speaker 1: totally incomprehensible today, but you know, you might have come
Speaker 1: across some Old English UM if you took nerdy language
Speaker 1: courses in college like I did. UM. Anyway, Old English
Speaker 1: was spoken until precisely the year ten sixty six a d.
Speaker 1: And that's when the Duke of Normandy Um, who was
Speaker 1: from France, this terrifying little man came in Um. It
Speaker 1: came into England and murdered a bunch of people and
Speaker 1: brought with him an early form of French UM. And
Speaker 1: so that happened, and it was all very violent. But
Speaker 1: then what was even more violent, speaking of epidemics, was
Speaker 1: that the Black Death swooped in and killed off about
Speaker 1: a third of the population UM. And so by the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, Um English had become the dominant language of Britain. Again,
Speaker 1: not not Old French, but at this point English had
Speaker 1: been influenced so heavily by Old French UM that it
Speaker 1: gave us a new form, which was Middle English. And
Speaker 1: then a few centuries go by, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff happens, like the Great vowel shift UM. And by
Speaker 1: the fifteen hundreds, the traveled enabled British have started mingling
Speaker 1: with you know, a ton of different people around the world,
Speaker 1: and so globalization was starting to happen a little bit.
Speaker 1: The European Renaissance was starting to happen a little bit,
Speaker 1: and UM the printing press was invented, which was really
Speaker 1: important for UM language standardization. So all of this starts
Speaker 1: to happen. The first Webster's Dictionary was printed. Actually, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was Websters. The first dictionary was printed.
Speaker 1: It had about dred words. The sixteen hundreds come along.
Speaker 1: Colonization of North America takes place, and that North American
Speaker 1: English UM starts to evolve, and that influenced by French
Speaker 1: and Spanish and the West African slave trade, UM, and
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution happens, and then the Internet happens, and
Speaker 1: UM a bunch of happens, and then we have contemporary
Speaker 1: American English. It was a great timeline. I like it.
Speaker 1: Sorry that was kind of long winded, but the history
Speaker 1: of English is so dramatic. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: sacctly describe it. Yes, Yes, that was a very big question,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you. I think you did a really
Speaker 1: great job getting that together. Yeah. So, going off of that,
Speaker 1: you kind of discuss um how the English language isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily sexist so much as like the people in power
Speaker 1: have used it absolutely. Yeah, So there's nothing inherent about
Speaker 1: the thousand consonants of English that would make it inherently sexist. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, as the story of the history of
Speaker 1: English shows culture and human beings and how we interact
Speaker 1: with each other and how we colonize and how we standardize,
Speaker 1: really has a huge effect on on the way that
Speaker 1: language moves. And so you know, many of the characters
Speaker 1: in the story of the history of English our men,
Speaker 1: you know, the army dudes, and the aristocracy, and the
Speaker 1: merchants and labors and the printers um, who you know,
Speaker 1: invented the printing press, um, and um started printing standardized
Speaker 1: English grammar guides, UM. The dictionary makers, the industry and
Speaker 1: technology folks. You know, because we live in a society
Speaker 1: where historically it hasn't been as easy for women and
Speaker 1: other marginalized folks to to do cool things from a
Speaker 1: high position of power. UM. It's it's been hard for
Speaker 1: them to define the world from the top down. Uh.
Speaker 1: But you know, as it turns out, women do have
Speaker 1: a huge, huge, enormous impact on how language evolves from
Speaker 1: the bottom up, which is its own um sort of
Speaker 1: even more important kind of power. UM. And that's what
Speaker 1: the rest of words. Let us about really, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: um so sort of really I know you talk about
Speaker 1: and we've talked about this in an episode we did
Speaker 1: in the past, of this sort of devolving of words
Speaker 1: like if you look at um like master and mistress
Speaker 1: for example. UM, so can you talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit? Yeah, absolutely so. UM. In English we have
Speaker 1: these two forms of semantic change called pejuration and amelioration.
Speaker 1: And pejoration describes a process of how words over time,
Speaker 1: where a word that starts out with a neutral or
Speaker 1: positive meaning eventually devolves to mean something negative, and amelioration
Speaker 1: is the opposite it process. So sadly, nearly every word
Speaker 1: the English language offers to describe a woman has at
Speaker 1: some point during its lifespan been colored some shade of obscene. Um.
Speaker 1: And there was this linguist name Muriel Schultz Um who
Speaker 1: wrote this nine paper called the Semantic Derogation of Woman,
Speaker 1: and in it she describes this process and looks at
Speaker 1: so many of the words um, for which this process
Speaker 1: is true. Um. And you know, it's no coincidence that
Speaker 1: she wrote this paper in nineteen because you know, the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, with the second wave feminist movement, that's when
Speaker 1: we really saw the dawn of the study of feminist
Speaker 1: socio linguistics. So it is relatively new, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: expanding all the time and becoming more intersectional all the time.
Speaker 1: And when when young readers of the book, who who
Speaker 1: hold a complex intersection of identities come to me and
Speaker 1: they tell me, like, I want to write about linguistics now,
Speaker 1: it's just like makes me so be because we're really, um,
Speaker 1: we're missing a lot of voices in the world of
Speaker 1: feminist social linguistics. And there are a ton of people
Speaker 1: doing really important work um in the field, but not
Speaker 1: enough of them. So that's another conversation. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we can compare certain minimal pairs of words, like
Speaker 1: you talked about master and mistress. You know, these terms
Speaker 1: come to English by way of old French, and and
Speaker 1: initially both of them indicated a person in a position
Speaker 1: of authority, like a male and female heads of household. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, mistress obviously, as we know, it devolved
Speaker 1: over time to mean, you know, a sexually promiscuous woman
Speaker 1: with whom a married man um for indicates. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: master um continues to describe a man who's in charge
Speaker 1: of something like a household or an animal, or a
Speaker 1: person who's conquered a difficult skill, like like a chef
Speaker 1: or a karate master. Another example is buddy and sissy um,
Speaker 1: which you know you to mean. They were just synonyms
Speaker 1: for brother and sister. But of course buddy ameliorated to
Speaker 1: mean you know, a comrade or a pal. You know,
Speaker 1: it has this friendly, cozy connotation, while sissy devolved to
Speaker 1: come to mean you know, sort of a weak, overly
Speaker 1: effeminate man who God forbid reminds you of a woman. Um.
Speaker 1: Sir and madam is another minimal pair. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: you come across a lot of those. But it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, so many of the words that
Speaker 1: we think of as incredibly degrading towards women, like oh god,
Speaker 1: and here's where I'm going to have to skirt around
Speaker 1: some of these curse words. So slut actually started out
Speaker 1: as a fairly neutral term. Um. You know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: years ago it was used to describe a sort of
Speaker 1: messy or untidy woman, and um, it was sometimes used
Speaker 1: to describe men as well. Um. Chocer at a point
Speaker 1: describes a male character as sluttish, which I find entertaining
Speaker 1: um to describe you know, this character slovenliness. UM. But
Speaker 1: what we find with slut, and what we find with
Speaker 1: so many terms for women, is that over time they
Speaker 1: they come to mean a sexual slur. That's where they
Speaker 1: end up. And that really reflects the position of women
Speaker 1: in our culture. UM. You know, when we go to
Speaker 1: insult a woman, we can't help but reduce her to
Speaker 1: a sexual object. UM, whether that's by way of calling
Speaker 1: her some type of animal or some type of edible
Speaker 1: treat um, or just plain old, you know, calling her
Speaker 1: a prostitute, which in itself is a problematic word. Um.
Speaker 1: As you know, sex work is completely legitimate. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean that that was a fascinating thing to discover,
Speaker 1: and then what was also cool was to to learn
Speaker 1: and share the information about reclamation um, because a reclamation
Speaker 1: is sometimes you know, a controversial subject too, because you know,
Speaker 1: not everybody is going to agree on which words deserve
Speaker 1: to be abolished rather than reclaimed. And you know, something
Speaker 1: that we see in culture is that, um. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes gendered insults will go out of style as soon
Speaker 1: as the underlying belief in them does. So it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why you never hear someone you know
Speaker 1: call a woman an old maid or a spinster in earnest,
Speaker 1: you know, really trying to damage them or disparage them anymore,
Speaker 1: because it's no longer completely reprehensible to be a woman
Speaker 1: who's over you know, thirty five and unmarried. Um. And
Speaker 1: so you know, there were people, there were, you know,
Speaker 1: feminists who I respect, who thought it was you know,
Speaker 1: who would not have named their book word slut because
Speaker 1: they think that slut is one of those words that
Speaker 1: deserves to just go away entirely because it's problematic to
Speaker 1: have a special word for women's promiscuity at all. Um.
Speaker 1: And I agree with them there, but you know, I
Speaker 1: might be slightly more of an optimist um when I
Speaker 1: think about reclamation, because I like to think, you know,
Speaker 1: if if we can only choose to use rendered insults
Speaker 1: in positive contexts, so words slut or talking about you know, sluttiness,
Speaker 1: even if it has to do with sex in in
Speaker 1: a positive way, like I had such a slutty night
Speaker 1: last night, it was amazing. But if we can only
Speaker 1: use bitch in context of like bad bitch, badass, bitch,
Speaker 1: me and my bitches, um, And by the way we
Speaker 1: have women in hip hop in nineties hip hop largely
Speaker 1: to thank for the reclamation of the word bitch. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we can almost they almost singlehandedly um or
Speaker 1: responsible for reclaiming that word. Um. If we can only
Speaker 1: use these terms in positive context, then as the next
Speaker 1: generation comes up hearing those contexts, then they will no
Speaker 1: longer think of a slut or a bitch in a
Speaker 1: negative light. Um. And you know, if we can do that,
Speaker 1: and then when we go to insult people, because Lord knows,
Speaker 1: I love to insult people, if when we insult people
Speaker 1: we can target their behavior rather than their gender, then
Speaker 1: we can be more inclusive, more specific, more incisive. We
Speaker 1: can be meaner in fact when we when we criticize
Speaker 1: their behavior, because we're actually addressing the thing about them
Speaker 1: that we don't like, rather than just saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a bitch, you're a slut, you're a c U
Speaker 1: n t um. And the history of that word is
Speaker 1: also fascinating and it and again did not start out
Speaker 1: as a negative thing. Um. But yeah, that's why I
Speaker 1: you know, the naming the book word slot was sort
Speaker 1: of this um, the statement of of reclamation and my
Speaker 1: belief and in using words only in in positive context
Speaker 1: that have so long been used against us, because you know,
Speaker 1: a more equal world is also one where less offense
Speaker 1: is taken to language because there's um, there's nothing disempowering
Speaker 1: about it, and language can really um work to empower
Speaker 1: or disempower people in a in a truly material way.
Speaker 1: So that's my long way to answer to your question,
Speaker 1: perfect Um. Yeah, it's it's funny because I've I've shared
Speaker 1: this story before on the show. But yes, as podcasters,
Speaker 1: we do get a lot of criticism on our voices
Speaker 1: and what we say. And one of my favorites is
Speaker 1: back before I was even a voice, I was just
Speaker 1: a producer. Um. I got a comment that said, I
Speaker 1: know the producer of this show and she's a huge slut.
Speaker 1: And I think about that all the time. I'd like
Speaker 1: to I actually know me who are out of nowhere
Speaker 1: like he put out of his way to insult the producer. Um.
Speaker 1: But has anybody ever called Angelos slut? There's that? Well.
Speaker 1: I do think it's interesting that um and it and
Speaker 1: it highlights some of that that male defaultness again when
Speaker 1: we have words like man slut, um, which highlights the
Speaker 1: notion that you know, someone who's contemptuously promiscuous must be female. Um.
Speaker 1: If we have to attack that masculine model, fire onto
Speaker 1: it um in order for that to apply to men. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, we see the same thing or similar
Speaker 1: thing with with words like man, bag, man, bun, guideliner,
Speaker 1: you know, which which served to imply that objects often
Speaker 1: thought to be frivolous, like makeup and purses, are inherently feminine.
Speaker 1: And I in a in a former career, I was
Speaker 1: a beauty editor, so I can talk about the history
Speaker 1: of makeup and and men and how it is not
Speaker 1: actually inherently feminine. But that's another podcast. Um yeah, and
Speaker 1: how you know, and my other sort of pet peeves,
Speaker 1: and we all have language pet peeves. But the fun
Speaker 1: thing about being a linguists and some something that I
Speaker 1: try to communicate is that we're not interested in the
Speaker 1: way that people should talk. We're interested in the way
Speaker 1: that people do talk. And so um, you know, correcting grammar.
Speaker 1: That's something that people sometimes ask me when they hear that.
Speaker 1: You know, I've studied linguistics that are like, oh, are
Speaker 1: you always correcting people's grammar in your head? And I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: just the opposite. You know, I'm not a pedant, I'm
Speaker 1: not a grammarian. I'm I'm interested in the precise opposite,
Speaker 1: you know. I want to know how people really do
Speaker 1: talk in their most natural state and what that says
Speaker 1: about their background and their experiences. And so I try
Speaker 1: to remain as a non judgmental and as curious as
Speaker 1: possible about language. And I think that in general that's
Speaker 1: a that's a really good way to approach it. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I do. That said, I do have my
Speaker 1: own little pet peeves, and some of them are are when,
Speaker 1: you know, when people say things like, you know, girl
Speaker 1: boss and she e O and mom preneur, you know,
Speaker 1: they sort of like cutesify um terms that are are
Speaker 1: not inherently gendered um, which highlight and perpetuate the notion
Speaker 1: that the words boss and entrepreneur and CEO are sort
Speaker 1: of tacitly coded male um. Even when people call me
Speaker 1: a girl boss as a compliment, like I just cringe
Speaker 1: because I'm like, what, First of all, I'm not the
Speaker 1: boss of anyone. I literally have no employees. But also
Speaker 1: if you're gonna call me that, please don't call me
Speaker 1: a girl boss because let's not let's not perpetuate and
Speaker 1: reflect these stereotypes, shall we right, And that's not a
Speaker 1: double whammy in itself, because obviously a girl is a
Speaker 1: juvenile to begin with diminutive. Yeah, not only does it
Speaker 1: have to be hey, oh you're something special because you're
Speaker 1: not male, so we have to say you're a female
Speaker 1: of swords, but not only that you're a child or
Speaker 1: you're a girl. So stop. I know, can you imagine
Speaker 1: calling some six year old man a boy boss? It
Speaker 1: would be so silly. I just wouldn't make sense going
Speaker 1: to now, Yeah, I know, give it a try. We
Speaker 1: have some more for you listeners, but first we have
Speaker 1: a quick break for word from our sponsor and we're back.
Speaker 1: Thank you sponsored. Because, as we've discussed, the media, love Love,
Speaker 1: Love Love loves to critique female women voices, um, how
Speaker 1: to stop vocal fry, how not to up talk, stop
Speaker 1: saying sorry, stop using emoji, stop using exclamation points, and
Speaker 1: emails and largely it seems like what it's boiling down
Speaker 1: to is telling women and other marginalized communities to to
Speaker 1: fit into this conform to this male dominated workspace. So
Speaker 1: what are some ways that you have found or that
Speaker 1: you think that we can find our own voices and
Speaker 1: own our own voices in those spaces. Yeah, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, Um, these spaces. I mean, culture in general
Speaker 1: wants women and and folks of other marginalized identities who
Speaker 1: don't speak quote unquote standard English, which is of course
Speaker 1: the standardized English um that was put in place by
Speaker 1: you know, stuffy old white men. They want, they want
Speaker 1: everyone else to accommodate to that standard because we all
Speaker 1: grew up thinking that that is proper English. Um, it's
Speaker 1: prescriptive grammar. Um, that's the grammar that your English teacher
Speaker 1: teaches you. Um. But really there is nothing inherently better
Speaker 1: about it. And in fact, attempting to keep language from
Speaker 1: moving forward or changing is a feudal effort because it
Speaker 1: is going to change, and young women are you know,
Speaker 1: going to be the ones to to change it. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's what linguists have found time and time again
Speaker 1: that young people tend to, you know, be quicker on
Speaker 1: the uptake of linguistic change than older generations, and young
Speaker 1: women tend to be about half a generation ahead of
Speaker 1: young men. And so you know, really, when it comes
Speaker 1: to linguistic innovation, we should be celebrating that and and
Speaker 1: that doesn't only have to do with you know, innovations
Speaker 1: that young women make, but you know, especially with with
Speaker 1: everything that's that's going on in our country right now,
Speaker 1: I can't not address how so often African American English
Speaker 1: is criticized as being improper English or poorer grammar without acknowledging.
Speaker 1: And this is something that you learn in linguistics, and
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for that that it is such a
Speaker 1: complex and sophisticated systematic dialect um that is a product
Speaker 1: of Black Americans oppression but also their innovation. Um. And
Speaker 1: Black Americans grow up learning from an extremely young age
Speaker 1: to code switch so that you know, in in certain
Speaker 1: communities they're speaking one dialect and then maybe in an
Speaker 1: office spaces or or white spaces, they're they're learning to
Speaker 1: speak another dialect. And that's a form of bilingualism that
Speaker 1: should be celebrated rather than condemned. But you know, I
Speaker 1: remember growing up in Baltimore, you know, my English teachers
Speaker 1: in middle school in high school criticizing Black students voices
Speaker 1: when they weren't in class, when they were in the hallway,
Speaker 1: um and you know, telling them not to use this
Speaker 1: verb tense or or you know that pronunciation and um
Speaker 1: that really perpetuates stereotypes and in an extremely negative, profound
Speaker 1: way that that does keep people um from power, and
Speaker 1: that does promote racism. But yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you know, when you're talking about only your voice in
Speaker 1: some of these spaces, it is challenging because sometimes a
Speaker 1: person's most authentic voice will you know, be a hindrance
Speaker 1: to them, even though there's nothing inherently wrong with their speech.
Speaker 1: In fact, their speech is probably more sophisticated and more
Speaker 1: inventive and more communicative than the speech of you know,
Speaker 1: their bosses. And actually, linguists have an acronym for the
Speaker 1: least innovative population of English speakers there, non mobile, older
Speaker 1: rural males, and linguists call them norms, which I just
Speaker 1: think is fantastic. Um. So you know, when we're when
Speaker 1: we're at work, or or certainly when you're you know,
Speaker 1: running for political office, or when you're you know, vying
Speaker 1: for any sort of position of power, the expectation is
Speaker 1: for you to accommodate to the speech of norms. And
Speaker 1: you know, in in some workplaces, it's going to be
Speaker 1: more acceptable to push back against that, you know, say,
Speaker 1: oh hey, I read in words slut that UH had,
Speaker 1: vocal fry and up talk and using like every other word. Um,
Speaker 1: these are actually signs of linguistic savvy. And I can
Speaker 1: point you to a number of empirical studies that disprove
Speaker 1: these problematic standards that you've always held. UM. But obviously,
Speaker 1: and not every workplace that is that going to be appropriate.
Speaker 1: So sometimes what I like to tell people is that
Speaker 1: when you get criticisms from a boss or something like that,
Speaker 1: that you need to stop using vocal fry or so
Speaker 1: many filler words or exclamation points in your emails or
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is. Um. You might have to briefly,
Speaker 1: you know, temporarily accommodate in order you know, not to
Speaker 1: get fired in order to keep your job. UM. But
Speaker 1: then you can go back to your desk, or you
Speaker 1: can go home, not wasting any time second guessing yourself.
Speaker 1: It's really, you know, it's almost a form of gas
Speaker 1: lighting when someone tells you that there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: your speech, even though there's actually something wrong with their standards. UM.
Speaker 1: But you can go back to your desk, or go home,
Speaker 1: or log off Skype or Zoom or whatever service you're using,
Speaker 1: and you can at least not waste any time worrying
Speaker 1: that there is something inherently wrong about you, that your
Speaker 1: voice is you know, naturally inauthoritative, and that you need
Speaker 1: to change. You know, we all know what we need
Speaker 1: to do in those spaces. Temporarily, we need to you know,
Speaker 1: just talk like our bosses for the time being. But
Speaker 1: at least you will have the confident knowledge that your
Speaker 1: speech is there for a logical, powerful, provable reason. And
Speaker 1: so in you know, a couple of years, a few years,
Speaker 1: when you become the boss, you can resist perpetuating those
Speaker 1: standards when you now have young women and other folks
Speaker 1: coming up under you. Um, because you know, so many
Speaker 1: of the criticisms that I myself have received in the
Speaker 1: workplace of saying like too much or you know, being
Speaker 1: to quote unquote opinionated or allowed or um any of
Speaker 1: these other criticisms. Yes, so so much of them have
Speaker 1: come from female bosses, and often their criticism is even
Speaker 1: harsher because they figured, you know, I had to do this,
Speaker 1: I had to fight tooth and nail to climb the
Speaker 1: corporate ladder. And these are always white women, by the way, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Karen's of the world. They they you know,
Speaker 1: they think I had I had to accommodate, I had
Speaker 1: to fight my way up the corporate ladder. So this
Speaker 1: is just par for the course, and you need to
Speaker 1: do it too, and I'm going to hold you to
Speaker 1: an even stricter standard. UM. Meanwhile, like these these speech qualities,
Speaker 1: like like in vocal fry and and so, which of
Speaker 1: the slaying that comes from African American and English that
Speaker 1: you know, eventually within a few years ends up taking
Speaker 1: a seat at the table of everyday English. Um. These
Speaker 1: are qualities that everybody ends up using um in a
Speaker 1: in a number of years. It's just that there are
Speaker 1: these growing pains because when norms here this language, they
Speaker 1: you know, subconsciously feel the grounds of linguistic change quaking
Speaker 1: beneath them, you know. And this is a sign that
Speaker 1: the that a new generation is rising up and coming
Speaker 1: into power, and they don't like that, especially when those
Speaker 1: people are people of color or women or both. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my advice is really just to not let it
Speaker 1: get you down, not let these criticisms get you down,
Speaker 1: not let them distract you. Remain open minded about your
Speaker 1: speech and non judgmental about your speech, but also non
Speaker 1: judgmental of the speech of others who who aren't like you,
Speaker 1: and then when you're the boss, make it an inclusive,
Speaker 1: empowering space for folks who aren't norms. Right. And I
Speaker 1: did love reading in your book when you were talking
Speaker 1: specifically about when the fact that the black community would
Speaker 1: coin these terms or um language like woke had been
Speaker 1: really taken over. It's now blown obviously all kinds of
Speaker 1: ways um and it's kind of ignored whence it becomes
Speaker 1: popular and becomes a term that is acknowledged that it
Speaker 1: was ever started. It began with the black community and
Speaker 1: trying to beg those people that are not black to
Speaker 1: understand what is happening in whatever political or even just
Speaker 1: humanitarian a lot types of ways that their rights were
Speaker 1: being taken away in any type of form. And I
Speaker 1: did like that you did talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little more, And I know it
Speaker 1: wasn't too big of an excerpt, but you were talking
Speaker 1: about how it has originated there and how it kind
Speaker 1: of just how big of an influence it does have
Speaker 1: in everyday life. Oh. Absolutely, I mean, we have we
Speaker 1: have African American folks and speakers of African American English
Speaker 1: to think for all of our treasured slang terms in English,
Speaker 1: you know, terms as new as woke and squad and
Speaker 1: boy and as old as the use of bad to
Speaker 1: mean good and the phrase I mean. I talked to
Speaker 1: this amazing linguist um at the University of Texas at
Speaker 1: Austin named Sonia Lainhardt, who studies African American English and
Speaker 1: women um, and she told me that the first time
Speaker 1: she ever heard a white male news anchor on the
Speaker 1: television use the phrase, she nearly spit out her drink
Speaker 1: because that derived from African American English. And you know,
Speaker 1: not only that, but so many of today's most beloved
Speaker 1: slang terms that we see used on social media all
Speaker 1: the time, like throwing shade and read and work and
Speaker 1: yass um and iconic. These are terms that are so
Speaker 1: often attributed to you know, broad City or the Internet,
Speaker 1: but they derive from ballroom culture, which was a community
Speaker 1: of extremely marginalised black and Latin X you know, trans
Speaker 1: and gay drag performers, m whose heyday was in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties ballroom New York. And we so often fail to
Speaker 1: recognize and you know, it's not, you know, explicitly everyone's fault.
Speaker 1: It's just it's our culture. You know, we don't want
Speaker 1: to give credit where credit is due, and we don't
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge, um, the originators of some of this language.
Speaker 1: And by the way, like sort of like what you
Speaker 1: were saying, these folks don't create slang because they think
Speaker 1: it will be trendy and catchy and they want to
Speaker 1: create a hashtag and they want to become Instagram famous.
Speaker 1: They create this language because it's a matter of solidarity
Speaker 1: and survival. You know, when when ballroom performers were using
Speaker 1: some of that language in the eighties, it was so
Speaker 1: they could identify who was safe to trust, who was
Speaker 1: a part of their their group, um, So that they
Speaker 1: could avoid persecution, so that they could avoid violence. UM.
Speaker 1: And that is so much of why so many queer
Speaker 1: communities and communities of color in with language, UM, because
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're at the risk of of really
Speaker 1: you know, real life violence. UM. And that's such an
Speaker 1: important thing to recognize. And so it's like it's like
Speaker 1: everything else, you know, we're seeing so much communication right
Speaker 1: now about how you know, we wish that America loved
Speaker 1: black people as much as they as we love black culture.
Speaker 1: And that has to do with music and um and
Speaker 1: fashion and very much has to do with language. And
Speaker 1: so you know, the least we can do if we're
Speaker 1: going to use some of the products of of these
Speaker 1: communities is to support them at every turn. And I
Speaker 1: talked a lot with Sonia Laine hard about this, and
Speaker 1: she very generously told me, you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: to stop using words like like woke and boy and
Speaker 1: seven um. And these are just a few of the
Speaker 1: countless examples. But what we have to do is show
Speaker 1: up for these communities or else we're hypocrit it's um
Speaker 1: and because at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: our language and our politics are connected, our language and
Speaker 1: our ethics are connected, UM. And we need to remember that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for bringing that up. I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I loved in your book how you described women's conversations
Speaker 1: like jazz and then particularly black women's conversation sort of
Speaker 1: like speech building, a community building and consensus, because I've
Speaker 1: never thought of it in that way, but that was
Speaker 1: a really cool way to think of it because a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that we do demonize the likes,
Speaker 1: which I also like how you broke down there four
Speaker 1: different types of them, and they oh there are six.
Speaker 1: There are six six. Oh my gosh, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Those things that we demonize are sort of a way
Speaker 1: of yes, I hear you. I'm like with you as
Speaker 1: we're going through this conversational journey and you're building something
Speaker 1: absolutely yeah. Yeah. So right, so you're talking about how
Speaker 1: there's this linguist who has dedicated a lot of her
Speaker 1: career to understanding the many forms of the word like
Speaker 1: in English, and they're actually six of them, and they
Speaker 1: all serve a very distinct purpose. And um, we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't even notice or acknowledge that, because
Speaker 1: we just blame you know, teenage girls for all these
Speaker 1: likes and for ruining the English language, even though um,
Speaker 1: most people of all ages and all genders use all
Speaker 1: six um, because they all are extremely useful. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you were talking about them. You know, this the style
Speaker 1: of talk that this one linguist, in particular, Jennifer Coates noticed, um.
Speaker 1: In women's conversations, um is is likened to a jam session,
Speaker 1: like a jazz jam session. UM, Because in conversations among women,
Speaker 1: you'll often hear overlapping talk, you know, speakers repeating one
Speaker 1: another or rephrasing one another's words, UM, and everyone is
Speaker 1: sort of working together to construct meaning. UM. And so
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of like one speaker at a
Speaker 1: time rule doesn't apply even though you see that one
Speaker 1: speaker at a time structure and a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: among men because you know, and these are these are
Speaker 1: large generalizations obviously, but um, it's interesting to think about
Speaker 1: how a lot of the time, you know, women are
Speaker 1: conditioned also, these are these are not you know, ways
Speaker 1: of talking that we are born understanding. We're we're conditioned
Speaker 1: to understand them and to use them. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: women often you know, perceive the conversational floor on a
Speaker 1: horizontal level as a way to you know, create meaning
Speaker 1: and build solidarity, whereas men oftentimes see it um as
Speaker 1: a in a vertical way, um, in order to express
Speaker 1: individual achievement. Um. And so that's why you see this
Speaker 1: this jam session E style. In in the talk of
Speaker 1: women and um and yeah, Sonia Elainhardt Um had talked
Speaker 1: about how minimal responses are something you so often see
Speaker 1: in the speech of of black women's communities and how
Speaker 1: they especially are are incredibly savvy at using things like
Speaker 1: minimal responses and those are our words like mm hmm,
Speaker 1: and you're right, and yes, um, to build on one
Speaker 1: another's points and to uh support one another and um
Speaker 1: sort of emotionally support each other. Um. And these are
Speaker 1: things that are criticized even though they're not inherently bad. Actually,
Speaker 1: as recently as yesterday, somebody tagged me in an Instagram post,
Speaker 1: a new Instagram post where someone was, you know, perpetuating
Speaker 1: this information that we see all the time, where they
Speaker 1: were saying, like, ladies, we need to stop using filler
Speaker 1: words like just you know actually, and I feel like
Speaker 1: because these are just words that we have all learned
Speaker 1: to use to soften the confidence of our convictions. And
Speaker 1: just as we have been taught to express insecurity about
Speaker 1: our appearance, we've been taught to use these hedges or
Speaker 1: filler words. They don't even know the word hedge. Um.
Speaker 1: We've been taught to use these filler words to express
Speaker 1: us insecurity of what we're saying. And we need to
Speaker 1: stop using them because that is just telling men that
Speaker 1: we really are insecure. But that's just a first impression
Speaker 1: and it's based on nothing, it's based on no studies.
Speaker 1: The linguists who have empirically looked into hedges, um, that's
Speaker 1: a synonym for filler words. These are also known as
Speaker 1: discourse Markers have found that they are so rarely used
Speaker 1: to communicate insecurity UM, and that they are much more
Speaker 1: often used to to do some of those same things
Speaker 1: like build solidarity and check for the face needs of
Speaker 1: everyone in a conversation UM. And linguists have found that
Speaker 1: often speech lacking in legs you knows and actually comes
Speaker 1: across as two careful and robotic and unfriendly and these
Speaker 1: these you know legs and you knows. And actually these
Speaker 1: hedges are only used more by women than men because
Speaker 1: women more often than not dive into sensitive territory during
Speaker 1: their discussions, so men aren't having as sensitive of conversations
Speaker 1: and so these speech characteristics aren't as useful to them. UM.
Speaker 1: But when women are talking about everything from families to
Speaker 1: relationships to therapy to you know, politics, UM, to social justice,
Speaker 1: you know, you need some of these hedges in order
Speaker 1: to account for the face needs of everyone in a
Speaker 1: discussion and to sort of soften really sensitive, oftentimes harsh
Speaker 1: and hard to hear sentiments. So yeah, I'm so right
Speaker 1: when I start to think like, oh, everybody already knows
Speaker 1: this word slept stuff I like get tagged in a
Speaker 1: post like that and I'm like, oh, no, they do not.
Speaker 1: We have a little bit more for you listeners, but
Speaker 1: first we have one more quick break for work from
Speaker 1: our sponsor and her back. Thank you sponsor. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I have so many things I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: but we would be remiss if we didn't talk about cursing. Um,
Speaker 1: because this is actually something I've been thinking about a lot.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who, uh, she's actually my other
Speaker 1: podcast host over on Savor Lauren. She curses a lot,
Speaker 1: and she pointed out to me, like a month ago,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, you know, we say motherfucker,
Speaker 1: what if we said father, say son of a bit? Like,
Speaker 1: it's always an assault towards women. That's in the end. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned the history of the sea word
Speaker 1: and a bitch and slut and me claiming these things.
Speaker 1: Is there like a particular one that you would like
Speaker 1: to dive into the history of and just women in
Speaker 1: cursing in general, because we do have a real anxiety
Speaker 1: about that, as you sort of alluded to. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So there was this study. So basically I guess to
Speaker 1: give a little bit of context because we are talking
Speaker 1: about so many topics the this book words lit. I'm
Speaker 1: sure some readers who are are listeners who are unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: like what is this book that talks about so many things? Basically,
Speaker 1: Like every chapter tackles a different subject having to do
Speaker 1: with language and gender, from insults to grammatical gender, to
Speaker 1: the conversations among women when men aren't around, and myths
Speaker 1: about gossip and things like that too, cursing to genitalia,
Speaker 1: naming slang throughout history. It like runs the gamut. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a big old beast. Um, it's a one
Speaker 1: on one. It's it's a big one introduction. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny that you say that because I in the
Speaker 1: early days of like putting together, UM, the outline for
Speaker 1: this book, I kind of based it on my first
Speaker 1: sex Gender and Language college syllabus the because I figured, like,
Speaker 1: if I fell in love with this material in this class,
Speaker 1: then that then probably work on other people too. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it has gotten pretty far from my college syllabus. Um.
Speaker 1: There there is no chapter in my Sex, Gender and
Speaker 1: Language class called get an ode to Cursing while Female,
Speaker 1: which is the chapter that you're referencing. Um. But I'm
Speaker 1: a potty mouth too, and so I had to include it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I was really interested in talking about cursing
Speaker 1: because I do curse so very much, and I'm also
Speaker 1: like so resentful of the stereotypes that people who curse
Speaker 1: just can't think of anything better to say. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I really And also, you know, I I
Speaker 1: was so mystified by why I, as a female, was
Speaker 1: perceived as being you know, even more crass or almost
Speaker 1: more intriguing in a way for cursing, um than men.
Speaker 1: And so I found this study that was looking into
Speaker 1: young men's and women's self reported reasons for cursing, and
Speaker 1: it was it was pretty interesting because, um, I related
Speaker 1: to a lot of the answers that the women in
Speaker 1: this study gave. Um, you know a lot of them
Speaker 1: talked about how there are reasons for cursing. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I want to mention that linguist who studied
Speaker 1: cursing have found that cursing is not inherently aggressive or violent,
Speaker 1: even though it is perceived that way, which is also
Speaker 1: why it's perceived as an inherently more masculine thing. But
Speaker 1: in very few instances of everyday cursing are people using
Speaker 1: it to convey aggression or violence. You know, there are
Speaker 1: in fact forms of polite cursing, as in the sentence
Speaker 1: oh my god, this banana breag you just baked is
Speaker 1: the ship or I thing love your jacket? You know,
Speaker 1: these are actively polite forms of cursing. They might be crassed,
Speaker 1: they might be bleeped on I Heart radio, but you
Speaker 1: know they are not inherently um violent. Um So. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that some of these self reported reasons for cursing by
Speaker 1: women interested me because they were having to do with
Speaker 1: um personality and emphasis and crafting a certain identity. You know,
Speaker 1: these were some of the reasons why women cursed, where
Speaker 1: men self reported that they cursed just because it was expected.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was interesting because people have this
Speaker 1: sort of um awareness that there are these gender disparities
Speaker 1: in our expectations of how men and women should use
Speaker 1: language with regard to cursing. And I was thinking in
Speaker 1: my head, you know, like I do that too. I
Speaker 1: cursed for emphasis, for personality, for hutzpuff, for shock value.
Speaker 1: Um never because it's expected. Sometimes I'll actively do it
Speaker 1: just to like shake things up in a business meeting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Just like Let's see what
Speaker 1: if I throw up, if I throw an F word
Speaker 1: out here on one of these stuffy people in suits,
Speaker 1: gonna do um and that, and that's sort of an
Speaker 1: act of, you know, rebellion against expect asians and an
Speaker 1: act of crafting a certain identity. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of women do with cursing. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of curse words to um like
Speaker 1: to your point, are reflecting a masculine point of view,
Speaker 1: and we talk about and some of them are are
Speaker 1: profoundly homophobic as well. UM. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: I love cursing, and I love the phono symbolism of cursing,
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, hard plosive consonants, the cuz
Speaker 1: and the puzz and the puzz and the uz. I
Speaker 1: just like love the power and those sounds. Um. Those
Speaker 1: are also some of the first sounds that babies utter
Speaker 1: in their babbling phase, so they're sort of some of
Speaker 1: our favorite sounds from birth. And so UM. You know
Speaker 1: something that that I sometimes like to experiment with and
Speaker 1: invite other people to experiment with, is um like creating
Speaker 1: our own curse words, like in the in the book.
Speaker 1: At a point I suggest us and do I buy
Speaker 1: any means envision our culture doing away with our current
Speaker 1: vocabulary of curse words and replacing them with you know,
Speaker 1: more feminist ones. No, but it is fun to think
Speaker 1: about it. It is fun to kind of reframe our
Speaker 1: perception of language um as you know, as one of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can get creative with this stuff. So um. One
Speaker 1: of the ones that I that I suggests holy clit,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of fun. Um. You know. Obviously.
Speaker 1: The other thing too, that's really interesting is that our
Speaker 1: curse words really reflect, um, the standards and fears of
Speaker 1: our culture. So in um Canadian French, for example, so
Speaker 1: many of their curse words have to do with religion
Speaker 1: and Catholicism, like tabianic like which means tabernacle, or I
Speaker 1: don't even know how to say that I'm Jewish, so um.
Speaker 1: But but um in in English, so many of our
Speaker 1: curse words have to do with sex, right, and that
Speaker 1: really you know, it's it's the puritanism of it all,
Speaker 1: and and the scandal of sex um is what that
Speaker 1: really reflects. But we also have a whole category of
Speaker 1: cursing that's you know, schatology, um, like asked which I
Speaker 1: know because you told me will be bleeped. I think
Speaker 1: that's so funny. Why is asked not blieped, but asked?
Speaker 1: I guess because asked is sort of subtly implying just
Speaker 1: the cheeks, and then asked was a little more internal.
Speaker 1: You could probably get away with you know, it's a
Speaker 1: donkey thing or whatever. Like my favorite, like two of
Speaker 1: my favorites, would be asked hat because I don't think
Speaker 1: it's used. Just find that as a funny vision. That's
Speaker 1: like it was a literal thing. I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's you have an ask for a hat or you know,
Speaker 1: something like Dick. Like that's one of my other favorite
Speaker 1: was because it was a funny is not many I thought,
Speaker 1: it's not as known as what do you mean Dick?
Speaker 1: And I was like, but you know, he's a dick
Speaker 1: or there a dick, you know stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like people kind of confus if I'm
Speaker 1: not saying, you know, any other car sports. But also
Speaker 1: because of the sounds, is a really hard Yeah yeah exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true like so so many of our and Dick
Speaker 1: is like sort of the one outlier that paints um
Speaker 1: you know, fallacism, and is that even a word fatacism
Speaker 1: in a negative light? Um? Whereas we have so many
Speaker 1: that portray you know, Volva's in in a negative light. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean not to men like douchebag, like
Speaker 1: all these terms. Oh my god. This is a story
Speaker 1: that I don't think I've ever told, like in an
Speaker 1: event or a podcast or anything before. But I remember, like,
Speaker 1: it's so funny when you're experimenting with cursing for the
Speaker 1: first time when you're a kid, because you're like so
Speaker 1: intrigued by this language that you know is taboo. You
Speaker 1: just like have a feeling is taboo. But but you
Speaker 1: don't know what these individual words mean, and the only
Speaker 1: way to learn what they mean is to like use them.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you use them in a context that's like
Speaker 1: so it's just like such a misstep. Like I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I ever used the word douche, I
Speaker 1: called my mom a douche. I was like seven. I
Speaker 1: don't know where I heard it. I must have heard
Speaker 1: it at school, uh, And I called my mom a
Speaker 1: douche and she was just like what, Like, where did
Speaker 1: you hear that? My mom was like a very composed scientist.
Speaker 1: By the way, like my mom, I didn't really curse
Speaker 1: in front of my parents in the way that I
Speaker 1: genuinely do in my everyday life until I was like
Speaker 1: in my twenties, because I just didn't think they could
Speaker 1: handle it, because they're not really that vulgar. They're these
Speaker 1: very like mild mannered scientists. But um yeah, I like
Speaker 1: called my mom a douche and she was like, Amanda,
Speaker 1: do you know what that is? And then of course
Speaker 1: she very clinically described this like yeast infection causing even
Speaker 1: like product that was invented because our culture thinks that
Speaker 1: vaginas are dirty, um, when really there's some cleaning folks. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyways, um yeah, that's just a funny story about
Speaker 1: how like we just the way that we come to
Speaker 1: use curse words or come to learn curse words is
Speaker 1: such an awkward process. So like, why not make that
Speaker 1: awkward process for the next generation just a little more feminist,
Speaker 1: you know, have your seven year old come to you
Speaker 1: and be like, holy clip, pepper pig is on again
Speaker 1: or whatever that is. As soon as I thought, I
Speaker 1: don't think I have ever thought I would hear, so
Speaker 1: thank you for that. I enjoyed that one. So right
Speaker 1: now as we record this, probably by the time it
Speaker 1: comes out it's no longer true. But right now it
Speaker 1: is Pride month, um, and we are seeing this massive
Speaker 1: social push for change and protesting, and and your book
Speaker 1: you you write um about how in the right hands, uh,
Speaker 1: language can change the world, and that you say it
Speaker 1: may sound melodramatic, but it isn't. Um. Yeah, so can
Speaker 1: you I guess to close this out because this we
Speaker 1: have talked. We've talked a little bit about those things,
Speaker 1: about how the black community and the gay community has
Speaker 1: given us so much and they've been like these innovators
Speaker 1: in language. And you have a chapter on the gay voice.
Speaker 1: And while lesbians don't really have a gay voice, and
Speaker 1: I feel like they are. There's so many things we
Speaker 1: do take for granted when just to tag on because
Speaker 1: this is a complete sub different subject. But I know
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about gender specifically, and obviously that's
Speaker 1: a really big topic right now with some of the
Speaker 1: um things with our novelists who people want to love.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to call her she who shall not
Speaker 1: be named, but just that conversation, I know you had
Speaker 1: a whole chapter on that and I found it really
Speaker 1: fascinating because you kind of just instead of like being antagonistic,
Speaker 1: you took down the actual history of it. So if
Speaker 1: you can align both of those things. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that's two different No, No, I think like I think
Speaker 1: the through line really is that you know, there's there
Speaker 1: was some French philosopher who said that language is the
Speaker 1: medium for humans, just as water as to fish. Like,
Speaker 1: we create the world with language. We don't just reflect it,
Speaker 1: we don't just describe it. We actively create the world
Speaker 1: through the repetition of language through everything we say. And
Speaker 1: that's a a theory called linguistic performativity, and it was
Speaker 1: in part pioneered by the feminist icon Judith Butler, who
Speaker 1: talked about gender performativity. And that's a whole that that's
Speaker 1: kind of that's like gender studies class now. But um,
Speaker 1: but it is it is so true that we cultivate
Speaker 1: our beliefs through language. There is no other way to
Speaker 1: do it. We don't have beliefs without language what we do.
Speaker 1: And that's another theory called linguistic determinism versus linguistic relativism.
Speaker 1: Um but yeah, but um, And this actually relates to
Speaker 1: you know, some of what I'm I'm writing about in
Speaker 1: the cult book UM as well is that you know,
Speaker 1: ideology could not be instilled or proliferated without language. And
Speaker 1: so the way that we describe things, whether it's gender
Speaker 1: or sexuality or race, it not only you know, reflects
Speaker 1: what we believe, but it creates a world. It creates
Speaker 1: a system of beliefs, a culture of beliefs. And so
Speaker 1: becoming aware of the histories of some of these words
Speaker 1: and the history of how language develops UM can really better.
Speaker 1: It can help us make better informed decisions about how
Speaker 1: we want to use language. It can help us create
Speaker 1: the world that we want to live in, or continue
Speaker 1: to perpetuate a world that that isn't equal, and it
Speaker 1: is problematic, and that is oppressive. And this isn't stuff
Speaker 1: that we learn in elementary or middle or high school.
Speaker 1: We don't learn about these things. We just come to
Speaker 1: use language so naturally. And so my whole mission with
Speaker 1: with socio linguistics, and it's one that I so hope
Speaker 1: continue is far past what I'm able to write is
Speaker 1: that I don't want to police anyone's language or force
Speaker 1: anyone to say anything. I don't want my language to
Speaker 1: be policed. I don't want people to tell me that
Speaker 1: I can't name my book words let I don't want
Speaker 1: people to tell me that singular they is ungrammatical. I
Speaker 1: don't want people to tell me any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But really, what this information and why I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: to these linguists, why this stuff is important, is because
Speaker 1: it's allowing us to become more educated, so then we
Speaker 1: can make our own decisions about how we want to
Speaker 1: use language to create the world that we want to see. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, there was this amazing linguist that I
Speaker 1: talked to a ton for this book named Lao Zaman
Speaker 1: who um studies language and gender, particularly as it relates
Speaker 1: to transgender communities. He's at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
Speaker 1: and he and I, he and I were really share
Speaker 1: a lot of of points, because you can get really
Speaker 1: pessimistic about a lot of things, UM, particularly when you
Speaker 1: see how like whenever there's a push for inclusive language,
Speaker 1: a lot of the times the opposition is like more
Speaker 1: powerful than the initial than the initial movement, and you
Speaker 1: have all this backlash and all this hate speech because
Speaker 1: people don't want to see language change, because people don't
Speaker 1: want to see culture change. Um, but he's incredibly optimistic,
Speaker 1: and like the last line in in my book, UM says,
Speaker 1: like he says, I have to be optimistic to make
Speaker 1: it through. You have to believe it's possible. You know
Speaker 1: you have and this and this has to do with activism.
Speaker 1: It has to do with language, It has to do
Speaker 1: with everything, Like you have to believe that if you
Speaker 1: put forth the effort to educate yourself and make sure
Speaker 1: that your actions and your language is reflecting that education,
Speaker 1: you have to believe that that will create a better world.
Speaker 1: And and languages a is an incredibly peaceable way to
Speaker 1: do that, and you don't even have to leave your house. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, language change and ideological societal cultural change
Speaker 1: go hand in hand. You cannot force someone to use
Speaker 1: language a certain way and expect their ideology to follow.
Speaker 1: So you have to get people on board with the
Speaker 1: ideology first. But if you are already on board with equality,
Speaker 1: with gender equality, with you know, with certain sexual and
Speaker 1: gender identities that maybe weren't approved of fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: with racial quality, then goodness knows, our our speech and
Speaker 1: our language should reflect that. And you know what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do is give people the tools to make
Speaker 1: that happen. Just some of the tools. Um. So that
Speaker 1: those are kind of generalized statements, but they can apply
Speaker 1: to to so many communities. I think, yes, Um, and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for for joining us and having
Speaker 1: this conversation, for writing the book. Um, there's so many
Speaker 1: things listeners if you want to know, like about the
Speaker 1: history of gender, which is much shorter than I thought
Speaker 1: it was the word gender, yet it is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like, what the history of curse words? Um? Our
Speaker 1: thoughts about sex, which we didn't get to get into,
Speaker 1: but how words shape our our thoughts about sex and
Speaker 1: our bodies. That's all in this running of the Gamut book,
Speaker 1: the defense of y'all, which I really appreciated since her
Speaker 1: in the South. As Georgians, we definitely really appreciated that.
Speaker 1: Oh hell yeah, I will always go to bat for
Speaker 1: you all. I have felt so judged for so long,
Speaker 1: but I feel it's being more accepted now. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: can you tell the listeners where they can find you,
Speaker 1: where they can get your book all those things? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find me on Instagram at Amanda Underscore Montell
Speaker 1: and there I postum some little short mini lessons about
Speaker 1: language and gender. Um quite a lot. So if you
Speaker 1: want even more of the stuff in micro doses, you
Speaker 1: can find it there um And then you can find
Speaker 1: word Slut wherever books are sold. It's also available in
Speaker 1: e book and audiobook and I recorded it so nice, nice, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you again, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Definitely go check Amanda out. Listeners, go read word Slut.
Speaker 1: It was a very fun, wonderful read um. And if
Speaker 1: you would like to find out as you can, you
Speaker 1: can email us at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at i
Speaker 1: heeart media dot com. You can find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Stuff I've Never Told You, are on Twitter at
Speaker 1: mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks. It's always to our superproducer Andrew Howard.
Speaker 1: Thanks and thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never
Speaker 1: Told You. This protection of I Heart Radio more podcast
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