Genderspeak: Men, Women, and the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense

The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense was fantastic. Genderspeak is equally valuable. The book contains a useful metaphor between language traffic and automobile traffic. I finally realized the effect my language has on my physical health as well as the health of my relationships with others. This book is worth 10 years of therapy.?Because people can?t immediately see the results of language traffic violations, they don?t realize that there?s a connection between their language behavior and the negative consequences?for themselves as well as for others?that only appear later.""Hostile language can kill you as surely as hostile driving can. The most serious risk factor for heart disease is chronic exposure to hostile language interactions. Hostile language hurts and frustrates and confuses people. It makes blood pressures soar and hearts pound and stomachs churn. It causes ulcers and strokes and migraines and depression. It makes people so flustered that they have dangerous accidents, in their homes and workplaces and in their cars. It can drive people to physical violence. All this is well known. The problem is that?unlike what happens when you run head-on into a speeding car in the wrong lane?the damage usually takes place slowly, over time, and the wounds aren?t readily visible. It?s easy to see that violating the rules on the road is dangerous; it?s much harder to see the dangers when the space being shared is linguistic space.?

Suzette Haden Elgin has written a number of sf/f novels illustrating the principles explicated in GENDERSPEAK, but here you can learn them in a matter of a few hours reading. As a professional sf writer as well as an online teacher of writing, I have found her insights to apply not only to daily interactions among people, but to the understanding of anthropology and social speech patterns that every writer must grasp to create dialogue. GENDERSPEAK and the other Verbal Self-Defense books by Elgin are lucid, clear, easily applied manuals of how to conduct a conversation without turning it into mortal combat for control of the agenda or power over other people's emotions, or conversely how to turn any innocent exchange into mortal combat at the drop of an intonation or idiom. It isn't just the verbally abused who need to read these books and take her course. This book is most truly vital reading for those who know no other way of dealing with people (intimately in family interactions or in the business world) without putting them down, undermining their self-confidence, or attempting to dominate. Each of us has a speaking style that is both ideosyncratic and belongs to a short list of stylistic patterns which Elgin identifies. Read this book to learn the pattern you are using, and you will gain command enough to change that pattern and thus your destiny in life. Read this book to raise your consciousness of how speech patterns mark us as victims or abusers. Non-native speakers of American Standard English need to read this book. It will solve many mysteries for you. Give this book as a gift to your friends who are not getting the promotions they deserve on the job, or who fight agonizingly with their spouses. Live Long and Prosper, Jacqueline Lichtenberg