Amanda Montell is a language scholar who takes her readers on a trip through social history using linguistics. I read and enjoyed Montell’s Wordslut two years ago, and in her second book, Cultish, Montell is interested in examining the edges of our culture that can exhibit some unhealthy habits by examining the way language is used in them, and that is the kind of thing I am going to sign up for every time.
Utilizing both storytelling and independent research Montell exposes the linguistic elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing not only how cult language affects followers of notorious groups that make headlines when their followers are harmed, but also pervades modern start-ups, fitness brands, and our Instagram feeds. This book is incisive and darkly funny (but never punches down, Montell has ample respect for people who have found themselves members of cults built from her father’s experiences as a teenager) and delivers an important view on the power linguistic structures have in our day to day lives.
We tend to throw around the word cult, and while Montell does not exactly land on an answer to why, she gives us the necessary information to come to our own conclusions. For me, it is that cults are so difficult to define in the first place (a concept backed up by the researchers Montell spoke to for the book) that we go to the word to describe when something feels wrong about a group dynamic. It is in those group dynamics, both amongst members and between members and leaders, where the linguistic mechanics identified by Montell are most pervasive. When discussing things that are cult-ish there are a few categories to consider but language is, perhaps, the most crucial.
Montell breaks down how the way popular culture codifies the way people think about cults and the images that come to mind when they do, how it leads us to focusing on the horrific (mass murder in Jonestown, the fires and deaths in Waco, the Heavens Gate suicides) instead of the commonplace. Most importantly though, is Montell’s focus the way the term “brainwashing” has become a catch-all piece of terminology when what we really mean is a massive change in someone’s way of thinking, because brainwashing is not a thing, but small, specific linguistic tricks can get to the outcome that we on the outside view as brainwashing. Montell breaks down how charismatic leaders use a variety of techniques to exploit people’s desire for community and inclusion (and have for as long as we have had societies). If only for the sections on love-bombing and thought-terminating clichés this book is worth reading, and it will help explain how multi-level marketing schemes are so successful at recruiting.