Words Matter

History and current affairs show that words matter - and change - because they are woven into our social and political lives. Words are weapons wielded by the powerful; they are also powerful tools for social resistance and for reimagining and reconfiguring social relations. Illustrated with topical examples, from racial slurs and sexual insults to preferred gender pronouns, from ethnic/racial group labels to presidential tweets, this book examines the social contexts which imbue words with potency. Exploring the role of language in three broad categories - establishing social identities, navigating social landscapes, and debating social and linguistic change - Sally McConnell-Ginet invites readers to examine critically their own ideas about language and its complicated connections to social conflict and transformation. Concrete and timely examples vividly illustrate the feedback loop between words and the world, shedding light on how and why words can matter.

'Writing from her own experience, McConnell-Ginet shares valuable insights from scholars and experts, ceding authority to others who can add their expertise to her work. This is academic writing at its best and its most generous. Both timely and timeless.' R. Shapiro, Choice, '… an impressive accomplishment and a valuable resource on its own, and the illuminating applications of linguistic theory make the resource yet richer … McConnell-Ginet's extensive use of case studies and the application of a wide variety of theoretical tools will serve as useful resources for researchers who wish to address any of the socially important linguistic phenomena that McConnell-Ginet presents … it will be a useful tool for teaching at a variety of levels, as it provides brief, accessible discussions of a wide variety of tools from researchers from various disciplines, as well as helpful applications to concrete cases.' Gretchen Ellefson, Metascience

Sally McConnell-Ginet is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Cornell University and a Past President of the Linguistic Society of America.