Wordslut is such a fun book. Despite this being my first exposure to Amanda Montell, I can’t help but feel that her voice shines beautifully throughout the work. Her writing is lively, conversational, both-serious-and-not. There’s a real levity to her analysis that makes the book a truly entertaining read. It probably helps that she herself reads the audiobook and is really able to sell the tone.
At a glance, a number of the chapters come across as being silly. Consider, for example, the first chapter: “Slutty Skank Hoes and Nasty Dykes: A Comprehensive List of Gendered Insults I Hate (But Also Kind of Love?)”. Another chapter is “Cyclops, Panty Puppet, Bald-Headed Bastard (And 100+ Other Things to Call Your Genitalia)” and another is called “Fuck it: An Ode to Cursing While Female”. While these chapter titles give the impression of a crass-for-fun approach, there’s something more powerful happening throughout Wordslut.
The book is a sociolinguistic exploration of sex and gender. It’s told in such an approachable, personal way that it is a beautiful entry point for people thinking about language or gender studies. It’s corrective without being accusatory. It’s informative without being pedantic. One example is when Montell breaks down the class and race-based use of “y’all” and critiques the haters of this second person plural that makes language more clear than saying “you” to multiple people or “you guys” to people that don’t all identify as boys and men.
The book touches on a number of ideas around the misogyny embedded in language. Some of the ground has been covered before (for instance, doing a statistical analysis of how many derogatory words there are for women as opposed to men), but it is always done with a fresh set of eyes and empathy for the language users most often criticized (i.e. women, people of colour, and 2SLGBTQ+ folks).
To give a few examples, Montell discusses differences in communication between socialized women and men. She discusses phenomena like hedging the conversation, affirming comments, and so on, among women. Even the phrase “like,” disproportionately (and erroneously) attributed to valley girls, serves a valuable linguistic function. Montell even goes into detail on why “the gay voice” is a phenomenon. The book is progressive and, at every turn, Montell makes a case against prescriptive linguistics and for embracing the linguistic shifts that happen naturally as the English language develops.
A number of the specifics are fascinating, but it’s a little beyond my capacity to summarize all of the specific details. All I can really do is encourage you to read the book—and better yet, listen to the audiobook so that you can hear all the fun percussive curses that come from Montell’s mouth.
Happy reading!
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