Well my view is that it's both. You're necessarily born in a culture that already has a value system encoded as words, so the word "woman" for example has a certain specific meaning that females must subscribe to and fashion themselves after, but at the same time feminists have managed to unveil that hidden meaning, and challenge it. So, in other words, a powerful individual or group, can give his own meaning to words. Essentially, words are like anything else in life: they are swords, war vehicles meant to carry our values forward. We are both influenced by them, and influence via them. Generally, I think language is to a large degree just another expression of our 'will to power' let's say. If I may exaggerate: when people talk, what you hear is their values doing battle.

I've added Babel 17 to my amazon wish list. Looks very interesting!