Sociolinguist Amanda Montell has issued three nonfiction books that basically each addresses a quote by Lal Zimman, PhD, that she cites in the first, Wordslut: “Getting people to understand that language itself is a means through which people can be harmed, elevated, or valued is really important…”
The topics:
- Marginalized individuals and groups
- Cults
- Cognitive biases.
I. Wordslut: A Hilarious and Informative Exploration of Gendered Language and Its Impact on Women by Amanda Montell (2019)
Selected Quotes
Language is not always about making an argument or conveying information in the cleanest, simplest way possible. It’s often about building relationships. It’s about making yourself understood and trying to understand someone else.
One of our culture’s least helpful pieces of advice is that women need to change the way they speak to sound less “like women” (or that queer people need to sound straighter, or that people of color need to sound whiter). The way any of these folks talk isn’t inherently more or less worthy of respect. It only sounds that way because it reflects an underlying assumption about who holds more power in our culture.
…(T)hey’re actually keeping women in a constant state of self-questioning–keeping them quiet–for no objectively logical reason other than that they don’t sound like middle-aged white men.
II.
As stated by the publisher, “Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of ‘brainwashing.’ But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.”
Selected Quotes
Modern cultish groups also feel comforting in part because they help alleviate the anxious mayhem of living in a world that presents almost too many possibilities for who to be (or at least the illusion of such). I once had a therapist tell me that flexibility without structure isn’t flexibility at all; it’s just chaos.
…(L)anguage doesn’t work to manipulate people into believing things they don’t want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they’re already open to.
Totalitarian leaders can’t hope to gain or maintain power without using language to till a psychological schism between their followers and everyone else.
III.
“In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters,” says the publisher, “Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the ‘halo effect’ cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the ‘sunk cost fallacy’ can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves…”
Selected Quotes
The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously in a nation living in fantasies…You will face reality, you will not delude yourself.
Information transmission research suggests that folks with higher anxiety are quicker to engage with, and slower to disengage from, negative information; so “as a trait and state,” anxiety itself perpetuates paranoid thinking.
Studies of phone addiction have found the little hits of dopamine that keep users jonesing for notifications come with a tragic side effect. They actually inhibit the amount of dopamine we feel when exposed to real-life novelty. Said another way, phone addiction decreases our ability to enjoy new experiences in the physical world. When you’re hooked on novelty in electronic form, new foods and flowers lose their magic.
