A profound look at the way language creates reality – and how it can be used and abused by people in power. What’s most interesting about this book, however, is that it doesn’t just cover the way leaders in traditionally-designated cults like Jonestown or the Moonies used language to influence their followers. It also analyzes the way language is used to control thought in cult-ISH groups like fitness/gym culture, multi-level marketing schemes, and charismatic religions.
Year after year, we ask: What makes people join cults like Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate? What makes them stay? What makes them behave in wild, baffling, sometimes gruesome ways? Here’s where the answer starts: Using systematic techniques of conversion, conditioning, and coercion, with language as their ultimate power tool
-CULTISH, P. 77
Montell’s narration is engaging, funny, and backed by a wealth of personal interviews, scholarly research, and linguistic history. Her examples track across so many different contexts–from the recruitment tactics of Scientology to the science behind speaking in tongues to the reason “boss babes” need their Lululemon. There is also so much than can be applied to regular daily conversation.
Come for the wild stories and entertaining wordplay!
