Kasia's Reviews > Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

I find it quite shocking that a book written by linguist can be so unpleasant to read - and I am not talking about the topic of this book but about the way it is written. Apart from bizarre phrases like "[they] trade their whiteness", "gigaparsec-length eyelashes" or "regrammable" I found it very chaotic and often loosing train of thought.

I picked up this book hoping for a good insight into the language of fanaticism because this is literally what the title of this book promises. First couple pages try to adhere to this promise and provide you with some basic knowledge about the most common manipulations used by questionable gurus (like love-bombing, loaded language, thought stopping cliches, creating "us vs them" mentality, developing an insiders lingo and so on) but then suddenly it's not about language it's about why Donald Trump was a horrible president. Or whats the story of the MLM. Or how CrossFit was horrible because it was discriminating against race. Everything is tied together by this vague idea of "cultish" language but frankly what was described as a signs of "cultish" was so broad that you could fit there basically anything. Including my marriage.

I also do not like how the bibliography is added (not to mention that it has reddit on the list) - there are no marks of reference in the text but rather there is a list including begining of the sentence and then the source on which it is based. I had a really hard time finding out where the sentences like "Most succesful brand founders agree that having a "cultlike company culture" is simply necessary" or "It is in our DNA to want to believe in something" are coming from. They do sound to me like a generic comments that author added to make narration more engaging but as a part of non-fiction book I found them pretty annoying. There is also this moment when author explains why "brainwashed" is a wrong term to use to describe cult followers but then she proceeds to use it anyway but in quotation mark as if to signal that she knows its wrong but decides to use it in a wrong way anyway.

The final straw that made me lower my rating from 3 to 2 stars was hiding in this sentence:

[...] but it's nowhere near as spooky as yoga studios full of rich white woman wearing the same overpriced athleisure, possibly embellished with bastardized Sanskrit pun

Cast a stone if you have never bought an overpriced piece of athleisure/garment.

It had a potential to be great.