Cultish - Amanda Montell

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⭐ 8.0/10

(Originally written by Magdalene)

More linguistics! This focuses on the language used in cultish circumstances - by actual cult leaders, but also anyone who is trying to encourage complete devotion, like MLMs and CrossFit. Compared to her last book, Wordslut, this book is less focused on traditional linguistics and more on sociolinguistics, and is more about the phenomenon of cults and in-groups in general, so I liked it less, but it was still very fascinating and great for anyone interested in the topic. I personally appreciated the look at Christianese and how that's also cultish by only allowing insiders to understand fully.

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