Unspoken

How Gender-Biased Language Silences Women

By: Dr Alice Ashcroft

Men speak with authority. Women downplay their expertise.
Men use full stops. Women use exclamation marks.

But who made up these unwritten rules?

This is the first book to reveal what many of us know but don't often articulate: the way we speak is putting women on the backfoot - and it's time to do something about it.

Arming you with the facts, Dr Alice Ashcroft will show you the hidden bias deployed in our everyday conversations. From interruption and turn-taking to bookending and hedging - these language techniques may seem subtle, but they expose the reality that our conversations are working in favour of men. And it's everywhere - in conversations with friends, at work, and even online as it feeds AI. But once you learn to spot the pattern, you can start to disrupt it.

Unspoken is a fresh feminist approach to our communication that will help a new generation of women; it's for anyone who walked away from a conversation feeling sh*t about it but couldn't explain why.