Words matter : meaning and power / Sally McConnell-Ginet, Cornell University.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Labeling: "What are you, anyway?" Shifting ethnic/racial labels for a single individual? ; What do ethnic and racial identity labels label? ; Deep historical antecedents to recent labeling ; Disputes: Latino vs Hispanic ; Creating labels to mobilize groups: the case of Asian American ; "My mom says it's not polite to call someone Black" ; Tracking people: sex/gender labels ; "One name to rule them all": strategic labeling ; Dances ; Labeling vs describing -- Marking/erasing: "Instead of saying 'normal Americans,' you can just say 'Americans'". Marking and erasing: first pass ; Us vs them marking ; How did English man lose its generic inclusiveness? ; Squeezing marked subcategory members out: where are the women ; Who is an 'unmarked' -- 'normal' -- American? ; Modifiers and marking ; "Jocks, you're not aware of it": becoming 'normal' ; People ; Trying to mark dominant groups: the politics of cisgender and its kin -- Generalizing: "All the women are white, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave." Implicit stereotypes and prejudices ; Colorblind? ; Black lives matter...or should! ; Quantificational generalizing: who counts? ; Generic generalizations: when do they essentialize? ; Norms -- Addressing: "All right, my man...keep your hand on the steering wheel." Vocatives ; Power and solidarity ; English address (and reference) resources ; Naming, nicknaming, and authority ; Being (in)considerate, (dis)respectful, (im)polite -- Putting down: "[They] aren't people -- they're animals." "Words will never hurt me" ; Malevolent metaphorical moves ; Escalating language games ; S-words nearer to my home ; Native American team names and mascots: "In whose honor?" ; Slurs targeting women ; Other insults and (apparent) name-calling ; Reclamation: a success story? -- Reforming/resisting: "It's like a kind of sexual racism." The Birth of sexism ; Reshaping existing linguistic resources: The Case of racism and racist ; Is it about language: Redefining rape ; Preferred gender pronouns ; Euphemism vs "identity-affirmation" or "correction" -- Authorizing: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean...[but who] is to be master?" Dictionaries ; Division of Linguistic labor: expertise ; Dueling experts: the Pluto wars ; Courts authorizing meanings: fruit and marriage ; Inclusive language guidelines: prescribing and proscribing ; Politically correct (PC): virtue-signaling and mockery ; Empowering first-person semantic authority ; Communities are the ultimate semantic authorities -- Concluding. Does it seem crazy? Why? ; Using language recommendations to expand minds ; Naming frontiers ; Typographical distinctions: boundary-policing and dog-whistling ; "Why don't you go back where you came from?" ; Framing the free speech debate ; Linguistic change can be painful.

"Words (and meaningful silences) matter enormously in our lives. They enable us to cooperate, collaborate, and ally with one another-as well as to exclude, exploit, and subordinate one another. They script our performances as certain kinds of people in certain social locations. They are politically powerful, both as dominating weapons that help oppress and as effective tools that can resist oppression. But words in and of themselves are impotent. It is the socially structured practices and historically situated circumstances constituting our social lives that pour content into words, endow them with meaning and power. This book explores how such meaning-making works by examining a number of concrete examples of linguistic practices, many of them very current. Written not for specialists, although I hope some may find it useful, but for anyone willing to join me in examining critically their own ideas about language and its complicated connections to social conflict and change. As that invitation suggests, also writtent to help clarify the author's own understanding of these often complex and contentious issues. The author does not expect that readers will always agree with her perspectives, either before or after reading the book. But hopes that they will, rethink familiar assumptions"-- Provided by publisher.