To me there’s nothing powerful or subversive about this lexicon: it smacks more of a (literally) infantile fixation. Which makes it difficult to see why women would want to reclaim it.

This month we learned that the linguist Robin Lakoff had died at the age of 82. If you’ve heard of Lakoff you will probably know her as the author of Language and Woman’s Place (LWP), an early and very influential contribution to the field of language and gender studies.

The sentiment behind this project is good, but parts of it seem insane:

Avoid using idioms and jargons. These can exclude people who don’t have particular specialized knowledge, and many idioms don’t translate from country to country. Additionally, these sometimes have origins in negative stereotypes.

Jargon is a crucial part of technical communication. Yes, jargon can cause friction when a person is getting inducted into a field, but our goal should not be to remove all friction from our work. And no idioms whatsoever? That’s just nonsense. But perhaps I’m just over-reacting to “my words being taken away.”

In my view, the effectiveness of what most people understand to be “linguistic engineering”—banning words, redefining them by fiat, trying to force people to use new words invented by engineers—is seriously overrated. If it were held to the same standard as actual engineering (does this work? Can we rely on it to keep working?), it would fail almost every time. Which is not to say we shouldn’t criticize it (though I’d prefer it if we didn’t only criticize the other side’s version while giving our own side a free pass); but I think we should probably focus less on the idea that “they” are messing with our minds, and more on the other, more prosaic tools which are used to crush dissent and enforce compliance.

I think there is much to be done regarding making linguistic engineering a legitimate field.

Last week the bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk ended in a spectacular war of words on social media. As the world watched, the US president and his “First Buddy” traded accusations, threats and insults. But while some people just reached for the popcorn, others apparently saw a golden opportunity to expound their pet…

because: Montell, Amanda. Wordslut. Nero, 2019.