"The Language of Sadomasochism" contains vocabulary and defines activities that many will find offensive. It has been published to aid linguists, folklorists, sociologists, psychologists, and other adult researchers develop a better understanding of this subculture.

"The Language of Sadomasochism" represents the first systematic, comprehensive account ever attempted of the specialized terminology used by sadomasochists. The work is divided into three distinct sections. Part one provides a thorough introduction to the subculture of sadomasochism, its history in the Western world, and its place in American culture, in literature, and in the work of non-linguist social scientists. Part two is a comprehensive glossary of more than 800 terms currently in use among sadomasochists. For each term the authors provide part-of-speech labels, etymologies, definitions, citations illustrating actual usage, related forms of the word, cross references to semantically and conceptually related terms, and special notes on usage. Part three contains a linguistic analysis of the terminology and illustrates how the language of sadomasochism is related both to the English language as a whole and to the sadomasochists who use the specialized language. The book concludes with a complete bibliography of all references cited, a list of difficult-to-find sadomasochism-related periodicals, and an index providing easy access to groups of semantically and conceptually related terms.