《Wordslut》简介：

A brash, enlightening, and wildly entertaining feminist look at gendered language and the way it shapes us, written with humor and playfulness that challenges words and phrases and how we use them.

“I get so jazzed about the future of feminism knowing that Amanda Montell’s brilliance is rising up and about to explode worldwide.”—Jill Soloway

The word bitch conjures many images for many people, but it is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn’t refer to gender at all—it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy—which simply meant housewife—or slut, which meant an untidy person and was also used to describe men. These words are just a few among history’s many English slurs hurled at women.

Amanda Montell, reporter and feminist linguist, deconstructs language—from insults and cursing, gossip, and catcalling to grammar and pronunciation patterns—to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women and other marginalized genders from power. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women talk with vocal fry or use the word like as a filler? Or why certain gender-neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or where stereotypes of how women and men speak come from in the first place?

Montell effortlessly moves between history, science, and popular culture to explore these questions and more—and how we can use the answers to effect real social change. Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but both downright hilarious and profound, demonstrated in chapters such as:

Slutty Skanks and Nasty Dykes: A Comprehensive List of Gendered Insults

How to Embarrass the Shit Out of People Who Try to Correct Your Grammar

Fuck it: An Ode to Cursing While Female

Cyclops, Panty Puppet, Bald Headed Bastard and 100+ Other Things to Call Your Genitalia

Montell effortlessly moves between history and popular culture to explore these questions and more. Wordslut gets to the heart of our language, marvels at its elasticity, and sheds much-needed light into the biases that shadow women in our culture and our consciousness.

《Wordslut》摘录：

Language can be an empowering resource for women who wish to move up in the world; it has been for generations. A striking example: In 1978 award-winning linguist Susan Gal traveled to Austria to study a small, poor Hungarian-speaking village that had ended up on Austrian soil due to how the borders changed after World War I. This border shift was bad luck for these Hungarian villagers, because now they were forced to live in a country where everyone else spoke German. So, the women—the young women at least—began learning it. This was a smart move because having some German under their belts would allow them to leave the village, get better jobs, marry hot Austrian husbands if they were into that sort of thing, and generally climb the socioeconomic stepladder. Gal noticed that it was too l...

《Wordslut》目录：

Chapter 0: Meet Sociolinguistics: What All the Cool Feminists Are Talking About
Chapter 1: Slutty Skank Hoes and Nasty Dykes: A Comprehensive List of Gendered Insults I Hate (But Also Kind of Love?)
Chapter 2: Wait . . . What Does the Word Woman Mean Anyway?: Plus Other Questions of Sex, Gender, and the Language Behind Them
Chapter 3: “Mm-hmm, Girl, You’re Right”: How Women Talk to Each Other When Dudes Aren’t Around
Chapter 4: Women Didn’t Ruin the English Language—They, Like, Invented It
Chapter 5: How to Embarrass the Shit Out of People Who Try to Correct Your Grammar
Chapter 6: How to Confuse a Catcaller (And Other Ways to Verbally Smash the Patriarchy)
Chapter 7: Fuck It: An Ode to Cursing While Female
Chapter 8: “Cackling” Clinton and “Sexy” Scarjo: The Struggle of Being a Woman in Public
Chapter 9: Time to Make This Book Just a Little Bit Gayer
Chapter 10: Cyclops, Panty Puppet, Bald-Headed Bastard (And 100+ Other Things to Call Your Genitalia)
Chapter 11: So . . . In One Thousand Years, Will Women Rule the English Language?
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