PREFACE

Back when I was a university professor, I taught students from all kinds of backgrounds. They were curious, intelligent, and hardworking. But after my students graduated, some of them would come back to me with disturbing stories about their experiences in the working world. These stories would often involve hurtful things said to them—things that made them feel disrespected, or excluded, or overlooked.

It hurt my heart to hear those stories. It made me want to rush over to those offices and organizations and explain to people how their language was causing harm and how they could do better.

For years, I’d been educating people about the power and nuances of language as part of my linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics classes. But why was this incredibly useful and practical information basically locked behind academic doors?

It seemed unfair to me that to learn concepts that could really help you with your everyday communication, you had to attend an elite institution and also know to take classes like mine—classes that many people thought were only relevant if they were going to major in either linguistics or anthropology. I knew how useful what I taught was to people in a wide range of professions because former students would email me years after taking even just a single intro course to tell me about a concept that they still found helpful.

They’d write things like “Professor Wertheim, hierarchy marking helped me figure out why this guy on my team is so annoying—he’s acting like he’s above me when he’s not!” Or “I work in marketing now, and I used Bakhtinian ‘flavor’ to talk my boss out of an ad campaign that would have been seriously problematic. Thank you!”

They even wrote to tell me that concepts I had taught had helped them with problems with their romantic partners, their families, and their friends. And while these emails made me genuinely happy, they also reinforced just how unfair it was that more people didn’t have access to this useful information.

I left the university system determined to address these two problems:

1. People saying unpleasant and harmful things because they don’t realize what is problematic about their language

2. People not having access to the information that can help them be as respectful and as welcoming in their communication as they want to be

And that is why I have written this book, which boils down twenty-five years of research and instruction into six simple principles—common-sense principles that anyone can use to improve their communication, both at work and in their personal lives. They are:

1. Reflect reality.

2. Show respect.

3. Draw people in.

4. Incorporate other perspectives.

5. Prevent erasure.

6. Recognize pain points.

I know from my former students how important it is to make everyone feel included—but I also know how challenging inclusive language can feel for people who have internalized older, and now outdated, norms.

This book is designed to make it easy for you to communicate in a way that’s inclusive. To sidestep problematic language, avoid painful mistakes, and treat people with the respect and consideration that builds and strengthens relationships.

A NOTE TO THE READER

This book isn’t organized by identity category, but instead by principles of human behavior. Many people come to guides on inclusive language looking for information on how to talk or write about a specific group of people. But this book is different; it starts with Principles of Inclusive Language and then uses examples involving different kinds of people to illustrate those principles. If you’re looking for information all in one place for one specific group, that’s not what you’re going to find.

Instead, this book goes deeper. I’m going beyond the how to use inclusive language and grounding everything in the why. By the end of the book, you’ll have all the information you need to move from problematic language to inclusive language for any group of people that you’re interested in. The journey just may look a little different than what you expected.