Words Matter

Words shift over time because they are bound up with how people live together and how power works. The same vocabulary can wound, as with racial and sexual insults, or can help marginalized groups push back and redraw the terms of social life. Sally McConnell-Ginet draws on current events to show this, looking at slurs, the pronouns people ask others to use, the labels given to ethnic and racial groups, and even a sitting president's posts on Twitter.

The book is organized around three questions: how language helps people form social identities, how it guides them through social environments, and how it fuels arguments over social and linguistic change. Throughout, the author asks readers to question their own assumptions about what language is and how it relates to conflict and transformation. Her examples trace a continuous back-and-forth between what people say and the world they live in, offering a clear account of why particular words carry so much force.