← New Books Network
Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:04]
Commercial Narrator
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com Only murders in the Buildings he said Fine.
- [00:32]
The hit Hulu Original is back.
- [00:34]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
The night Lester died, he was talking with this mobster.
- [00:37]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Was he killed in a hit?
- [00:38]
Commercial Narrator
We need to go face to face with the mob. Get ready for a season.
- [00:41]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Buongiorno, signore. This is how I die.
- [00:44]
Commercial Narrator
You can't refuse.
- [00:45]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
You're gonna save the day like you.
- [00:47]
Commercial Narrator
Always do by being smart, sharp and.
- [00:50]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Almost always by mistake.
- [00:52]
Commercial Narrator
The Hulu Original series Only Murders in The Building premieres September 9, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle Subscrib terms apply.
- [00:58]
New Episodes Tuesdays this episode is brought to you by FXX and Hulu. An all new season of Futurama is back, blending heartfelt moments with razor sharp humor while accidentally saving the day. The Planet Express crew is back, defying gravity and common sense. From the creator of The Simpsons comes 10 new episodes where the romance is hotter, the threats are bigger, and the action hits harder. Don't miss the all new season of Futurama. Watch it Mondays on FXX or streaming on Hulu. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:34]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Karen Stolzno about her book titled the Journey of a Word, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024, which really does exactly what the title suggests. And it is a roller coaster of a journey because obviously bitch is a word that we use in many different contexts today. And pretty much we can go back in time to a whole bunch of different moments and find that the word is still there and is still being used in lots of different ways, some of which are going to be familiar to us still, some of which really are not so familiar now. So we've got all sorts of twists and turns here to discuss. Karen, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:22]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Hi Miranda, thank you so much for having me on.
- [02:24]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write the book? What sorts of questions are you asking in this Investigation, Sure.
- [02:34]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
So I'm an Australian American Doctor of Linguistics. I'm also a teacher. I'm a researcher, an author, too. So I wear many hats. And I think there was no particular moment where I decided that I would write this book. I think, being a woman, I've had lots of experiences with this word, and many men have, too. I'm sure we'll delve into that shortly. But I. I think it's such an interesting word. Now, a lot of linguists will write PhDs or books, and they might write an Entire book or PhD on a single word from a. A language that they're researching. So this kind of thing isn't unheard of. But when it comes to Cambridge University Press being an academic trade publisher, they were a little hesitant at first. They thought, well, how could we. How could she write a book about just one word? But 75,000 words later, I've proven them that, proven that this is such a complex word with so many different uses, so many different meanings. I wrote about hundreds of different idioms and usages. And it's a really intriguing word because it could be so contradictory, too. It's a very harsh slur, one of the worst slurs that we have against women, but at the same time, it's been reclaimed in some usage as a kind of badge of strength and defiance and empowering term. So I was just fascinated by this word and wanted to understand how it could hold such opposing meanings and what this says about us as society and over time. So there was just so much to unpack with this word. And so I looked at lots of different questions. Where did this word come from? How long has it been around? How have we used it across time, across cultures, across languages? And also, what does the word bitch tell us about gender and power and language itself?
- [04:32]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, there's a whole lot to get into. Might be a very short word, but plenty to investigate. So thank you for telling us about the origin story of the project.
- [04:42]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
We.
- [04:42]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
What about the origins of the word? How far back are we going? And did it start off always as an insult used for women?
- [04:50]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Yeah, that's a really good question. So the word is much older than we might think. Because it's so popular today, we might be led to believe, oh, this is a modern word, and certainly it's used in lots of modern ways today. But the word itself is over a thousand years old. So it goes back to Old English, and it has survived through Old English, through Middle English, Early Modern English, through to Modern English today. And it hasn't always looked or sounded the same way. So we didn't always say bitch. Going back to Old English, there were several different spellings and it was originally spelt, or one of the original spellings was B, I, C, C, E. So it doesn't really look like its current form. And that was pronounced then in some areas as biceps. And so it didn't have the same. Well, it does have the same meaning that it. That it had originally today. So it was. Its literal meaning was a term for female dog. So it has maintained that usage over time. So that's really fascinating thing. And we've had a lot of. I mean, it has evolved in meaning, so it's changed over time and it's been used in lots of different ways and. But almost immediately it became used metaphorically as an insult for women, but also for men too. So if we look at a term like dog, that has been around for a very long time too, and obviously not in the same format in other languages, but it has been around as an insult in ancient society. So going back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome, dog was used as an insult for women and for men used a little bit differently in the way that it's used depending on gender. But we'll get into that more soon too. But yeah, it's a very old word. Other insults for women have just fallen by the wayside. But we still have this term. It's still in use today, but has slightly different meanings. For a woman, it can be a reference to lots of different things. For men, it predominantly will imply weakness or feminization, something like that. But for. For women, it can mean lots of different things. It can be an annoying woman. And I guess we'll be going back into the different meanings of the term too. But it has lots of different meanings and usage over time.
- [07:16]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And that's consistent across time. Right. It's not just today that there's lots of different meanings for it. So that's helpful to understand.
- [07:23]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Yes. Yeah, it really has just changed a lot over time and remained in use too.
- [07:28]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Okay. That's already interesting historically to see things that continue and change at the same time. What about in terms of the extent to which it's been sort of allowed to continue? Right. It's one of those words that we might think today is sort of not one to be said in polite company. Obviously, we. You've published a whole book with it in the title. So that has changed a bit from where it might have been in other times. But to what extent has the word been censored? In different times, in different places, and with what sorts of reasons behind it?
- [07:57]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Yeah, that's a good question. And I have to say that I was surprised that Cambridge University Press wanted to publish a word, publish a book that was titled, and that. That was surprising to me, but very pleased, obviously. But it's. It has just had a very interesting past and present as well. And the word has been censored at different times, different countries, different places. And, and really, I think going back to the earliest days, the. The word has had different meanings, as we've already established. But going back hundreds of years ago, one usage that we don't have as much today is that bitch was equated with words like whore and also slut. So slut didn't always mean. Have the contemporary meaning of referring to a promiscuous woman, but in the past it might refer to a maidservant or just a. A woman who was lowly in society or someone who was dressed slovenly or badly. But nowadays it has that. That reference to being promiscuous. But bitch, going back hundreds of years ago, really had that sexual connotation too. So I think for that reason it was. It's. It's offensive today, but going back in time, it was highly offensive because of that sexualization of the word. And so it was. I mean, we've had the printing press for the English language has been around since the 15th century, since 1475, but the word has been censored or bleeped out in lots of different ways in books and in newspapers. And I found some really interesting examples going back to the 1700s and the 1800s, where the word bitch was bleeped out. They might have used asterisks or little hyphens or something like that, lines. And. And so they're not showing the word. And yet they were showing words like hell and damn and devil. And those terms were blasphemous then. And that could be quite a crime. You might be fined for using a blasphemous term, or even worse, you might have been punished physically in some way. So it's very strange to me that bitch was censored, but these other words were still shown. So we can still see that today that the word is often censored. It's been censored in television and radio, online, so some people still choose to censor the word. Censored it in newspapers, too. I thought it was interesting that there was a book going back to the early 2000s called Chess Bitch, and there was an article and an op ed and a review about the book and in the New York Times, and they actually censored the word. So even though the book title was Chess Bitch, they refused to use that word and wouldn't let the author even use the title of her book in her op ed. So we certainly have instances like that where the word is just censored to this day. But over time it's certainly been censored and then in other instances has been used very boldly as well. So I think it's still often avoided in polite speech and justified as protecting decency. But it's, it's a, it's a really tricky thing when it comes to censorship. You can't really. There have been attempts where people have tried to say, okay, well in New York we're not going to use this word anymore. But that kind of thing often backfires. It's really hard to police. Well, it's impossible to police language if you tell people they can't use a particular word that is absolutely not going to hold. People will do what they want to do. They'll use the word if they want to use it. So, uh, it's, it's the words around. And I guess it just depends on the context as to whether it's appropriate or not.
- [11:42]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
One thing that's interesting about this is, as you've explained, the word has been around for a really long time and used in different ways. But is it accurate to say that it sort of seems like it's more commonly used now than it has been at other points? And if so, sort of what makes it more common now?
- [11:58]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Yeah, I think that's a tricky question. I think it is in some ways it's, it's more common today. It's more acceptable that I think there's more acceptance of using bad language in public or online on the Internet. But I think that the word has always been around. It's been around for a thousand, more than a thousand years. And it's tricky because for hundreds of years we don't really have many records of the use. Now when it was used to refer to a female dog in a literal sense. We have extant examples of the word being used in books, particularly with reference to medicine. Maybe talking about bitches urine or bitches milk, something like that. Dogs were often used in folklore, folkloric medicine, and so we have those kinds of references or it might have been used in other records, but we have a big gap in our knowledge. So we don't know how much it was used in Terms of speech. So was it an everyday word? It's very possible, but we just don't have the evidence to show either way. However, with the introduction of the printing press and the way that the word has been used in newspapers and books since that time, we can see that the word has been around and certainly it's been around in that literal sense. We can find examples in newspapers and classifieds going back to the 1700s where people are talking about a bitch in the literal sense of a female dog. Uh, but it's, it is very common today obviously, and I think that that seems to coincide with the rise of feminism. So there is some evidence to show that it's become more popular and that could be a reaction to feminism and the various waves of feminism. So with the first wave going back to the 1800s, we do see that there's a jump in usage and then going through to the, the second wave of feminism and the, with this being looked at as more of an empowering term and a self identifying label. In the, the 60s and the 70s when feminists started looking at language, we can see that it's being used more. So it could be an illusion that it's being used more. And again, we just don't have the evidence to show either way just how, how often the word was used. But certainly there, there's plenty of documentation across time to show that the word is used as an insult toward women and men and that it's also used in its literal sense.
- [14:28]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
To what extent has it an additional use as being reclaimed so not just as an insult?
- [14:34]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Well, we have examples from feminist writing and music and pop culture. So the words, again, this is a tricky question, has been reclaimed, but only really in some spaces. So since the, the 1960s in particular with the, the, the Bitch manifesto written by feminist Doreen, that it's being used to refer to a woman who's confident and she's strong and she's independent and she's tough. So since that time it's, it's been really used in, in that reclaimed way. And nowadays we have examples of the word being used in a positive way when we think about terms like bad bitch or boss bitch. So I wouldn't say that it's really been fully reclaimed. So certainly for many people it's still used as a slur. And I think we just have to look at its context. It's a very context dependent word. Who's saying the word, who's hearing the word and what their relationship is, Are they familiar with each other or not so. I think bitch is never completely safe or neutral, but it certainly has reclaimed uses. But I think that probably the most salient use of it really is that it's a. It's a slur. And so perhaps it can never fully be reclaimed, but it does have this kind of dichotomy where it could be positive or it could be negative. It can be an empowering term, a soft label, and it can also be used in a highly abusive and. And violent way, too. So it's just such a fascinating word, the many different uses of it, and that it can mean the complete opposite. But we get that with other terms too, like bad and wicked. Certainly we have those dual uses, and.
- [16:24]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Some of those dual uses come through sort of related terms. You mentioned boss, bitch there you talk about in the book as well, son of a bitch or bitch fight. What do we know about the sort of histories of those terms? And is there any way we can sort of understand, like, groups of words with bitch in it as being a category with any sort of similarities?
- [16:45]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Well, yeah, certainly the word is around in lots of different idioms, lots of different sayings, and just in its own. Just standalone, too, used in different ways. And I think that this is a product of language change. And so language is constantly evolving. And so in this instance, I think it's broadening, so it's meaning what it originally meant, which is a female dog, that that usage is still around, but it means so much more than that. So this is also an instance of semantic shift, too, that it's changing in use, the. In the. The way that it's being used in idioms and expressions. So it means a lot what it used to mean and a lot more. More. And we have lots of different interesting terms in linguistics to talk about this kind of activity with language. So we have words that will undergo pejoration. So that means that they might start off as being neutral or innocuous, and then they develop an offensive use. And on the other side of the coin, we have amelioration where words might start off as being bad and then develop more positive use over time. So bitch has really done all of these things and a lot more. So certainly these idioms, the ones that you've referred to like son of a bitch and bitch fight, that they really show how the words branched out. And son of a bitch is, again, it's one of those expressions where we might think this is contemporary. This is a term that has only been around for a couple of decades or something like that. But it's Actually quite an old expression. It goes back centuries. There are lots of different versions of it, too. More euphemistic versions, too. And originally it was a serious insult, particularly in the uk, and then it kind of became more euphemistic, and then it came over to the United States, where it was a favored insult for a very long time. And. But it can. It has different usages, so can be used as an insult. And it can also be more, I guess, admiring. So you could have an expression like that. Son of a bitch really pulled it off. So. So it's used in these. These different ways. But a term like bitch fight, it's very much like cat fight. So I think that that reveals how the word can reinforce gender stereotypes and can really frame women's arguments and disagreements as being petty or trivial or animalistic in some way, too. So I think what brings these together is across these phrases, we are seeing some kind of pattern at play. So that bitch is often diminishing or trivializing, but it can really get reinterpreted in lots of different ways.
- [19:27]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, there's so many iterations and connotations there. Are there any other recent versions of the word that you think are interesting that you want us to discuss?
- [19:37]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Well, I think going back to the 70s, 1970s and the 1980s, we have a lot of creative respellings like biotch or biznach. And I think they're interesting because they show they're good examples of how people play around with taboo. We've had different respellings of the word going back across time, so we've always had these different respellings. But I think that there are interesting kind of acronym versions of the term, too. When I think about more empowering term or ways of looking at bitch. So acronyms where people might say bitch stands for something like beautiful and intelligent and trustworthy and classy and honest or hot or something like that. So those are really interesting reinterpretations of the word that make it more playful and can also kind of soften the use of the term. But there are so many different expressions today. I'm thinking of phrases like resting bitch face, too. That's a favorite of mine. They really show how the word keeps entering everyday speech in new forms. It is just constantly changing and shifting. But again, I encountered hundreds of different examples, and I don't think I could have possibly included them all in the book, even though 75,000 words, there are just really too many for me to include all of them. So you could easily read the book and Say, oh, she missed this, or what about this? But certainly in the future, I think we'll have even more versions of the term.
- [21:12]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Do you have any ideas particularly of what that could be, what the future of bitch could be?
- [21:18]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
That is a really good question and it's a difficult question. It's a million dollar question, let's put it that way. So I think it's going to continue to evolve in multiple directions, and I think it's going to, in some contexts it's going to remain a weapon, remain an insult, a slur. And then in other ways, I think it's going to continue to be reclaimed as an empowering term. So I really had to think about this. And I think as long as sexism is around, as long as misogyny is around, and as long as gender inequality persists, we're going to continue to have this as a slur, as an insult, and our word, that. That carries baggage. So I just don't think that the word's going to disappear anytime soon. I think it could easily be around. This is a real prediction. But it could easily be around for another thousand years at the rate that it's going at. It's going to continue to generate new forms, it's going to continue to be reclaimed, but also continue to be offensive. I still think that's its most salient usage.
- [22:23]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, we shall certainly have to see. Was there anything you came across in putting all of this together, all of the intricacy and detail and options for the word, anything that really surprised you?
- [22:35]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
I think along the way there were lots of surprises. Again, you might think writing a book about a word, just how much can you really write about a single word? But there was so much to unpack, to not open with this word. But it was really interesting for me to see how early the word was used metaphorically. So again, the original use was for a female dog, but. And I thought it would just persist that way for, for quite some time, but almost immediately it was being used as an insult. So going back a thousand years, it was used as an insult for women and also for men too. So it's just been around for a long time as an insult. And I think that is because of the, the associations with the word dog and how dog has been used as an insult for men and women, meaning different things. And so I think that really accounts for that. But there were so many other things that were interesting to me to find out that bitch has been used to refer to a prostitute or a whore or a slut. And also its longer term use in music as well. So I thought this is something that maybe goes back to the 1980s. It's use in hip hop and rap music, but it actually goes back more than a hundred years to the dirty blues. So it was a term that was used in a lot of music and it was used as an insult, but it could also be used as a compliment. So I found it fascinating that bitch was and still is used in this way today. Not as much as it was maybe going back to the 1920s and the 1930s, but it was used to refer to a cool jazz musician. And we think about Miles Davis and Bitches Brew, so expressions like that. But it was someone who was really very talented when it came to using his or her instrument, whatever that was, the piano or the trumpet. So that would be a bitch. And then there are lots of interesting expressions that aren't really around anymore. One that I came across was an English expression going back maybe about 100 years, and that is to bitch the pot. So that was referring to someone who was hosting a party and making the tea. And the interesting thing is that it was often used in universities at a time when women were not allowed to go to these institutions. So it might have been. It still has negative connotations because I guess you're referring to someone who is performing an action that could be considered to be a servant role, that kind of thing. So it still has those gender references and could be looked at as being an insult that you're seeing a man as being more effeminate. But that's an early use. And so other uses I've come across too, like a bitch lamp, which is a kind of makeshift lamp where someone might stuff a rag into a tin or a can and then set that alight and use that as a makeshift light. So there are really so many interesting uses that I came across that I didn't expect and were very surprising to me. But I think another thing too, I close the book talking about the cross cultural and cross linguistic use of bitch too. Because there are so many different uses, so many different languages that use the word. They might have borrowed the word bitch because often borrowing English words is trendy in other languages. And it can have more impact too if you insult someone in a different language. But they also have their own equivalents too that have surprisingly similar histories as well, where the word might be used to refer to a female dog and also to be an insult for women and men as well. So it's just interesting how it's Been used in so many different languages and borrowed. So it really says to me that there's something universal about gender and language. But in the end, there were just lots of surprising elements to this book. And I think every day I was researching this, I was coming across different uses and uses I hadn't come across before. And I think it's really wonderful to be able to preserve these different meanings and uses, too.
- [26:57]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, it's absolutely fascinating to read about. I can only imagine how much fun it would be to kind of go through the various sources and kind of come across one and go, oh, wait, how about this?
- [27:07]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Yeah, you just don't want to go through my browser history.
- [27:10]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yes. Now, that I imagine, would be a bit different, but thank you for doing it so that we can all get the book from it.
- [27:16]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
There you go.
- [27:18]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
As obviously this is something you worked on for quite, quite a while, and the book is out in the world and therefore off your desk. I don't know if you have any current or upcoming projects you want to give us a sneak peek about.
- [27:30]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Sure, yeah. I'm always juggling projects, always working on multiple things. I think that's the life of an academic and the life of an author as well. So I'm working on two main books right now. One book which should be coming out in early 2025, and that's called Beyond Words, how we Learn, Use, and Lose Language. So it's about psycholinguistics, which is about language in the mind, sometimes language in the brain. And I'm looking at how we learn language, answer a lot of big questions about language. So what is language? How can we define language? And who has language? Do other animals have language? Where did language come from? How did it emerge? How did we develop language? But also language acquisition. So in children through to adults, how we. Second language acquisition, too, how we learn other languages, multiple languages. And then what happens when we lose language? If someone develops dementia or Alzheimer's or has some kind of language disorder or disability, how can that affect language? So that. That was an interesting book, and I'm in the process of editing and proofreading that book right now. But I'm also working on another book which is more in line with Bitch, and that's called Women versus Women. And it's about internalized sexism and misogyny. So I think it's really a companion to Bitch in many ways and ladders from a lot of things that I learned in researching and writing Bitch.
- [28:59]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, both of those sound like really interesting projects. Best of luck.
- [29:03]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Thank you so much.
- [29:04]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Anyone who of course, wants to know more about what we've been discussing can read the book titled the Journey of a Word, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Karen, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [29:17]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Thank you, Miranda. This was a lot of fun.
- [29:32]
Commercial Narrator
And Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual, but now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music.
- [29:40]
Dr. Karen Stolzno
Limu Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We save.
- [29:51]
Commercial Narrator
That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.