[Ads-l] woke, wokeness

[Ben Zimmer]

Try this Twitter link...

https://twitter.com/bgzimmer/status/852916586746957824

On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 4:32 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Aha.  Kelley it is, or was, at least per the Holliday blog piece.  Ben,
> can you provide the back door to your treatments for those of us blocked by
> WSJ’s paywall?
>
> LH
>
> > On Mar 3, 2018, at 4:27 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > "Woke" was the runner-up to "dumpster fire" in the 2016 ADS Word of the
> > Year voting. You can read more about it in the Feb. and May 2017
> > installments of "Among the New Words" in American Speech. The latter has
> a
> > full lexicographical treatment of "woke" and "wokeness" (pp. 221-3).
> >
> > https://bit.ly/ATNW92-1
> > https://bit.ly/ATNW92-2
> >
> > The introductory essays to these installments link to other work on
> "woke"
> > -- notably two blog posts by Nicole Holliday about the cultural
> > appropriation of "woke."
> >
> > Nicole Holliday, "How 'Woke' Fell Asleep," Oxford Dictionaries blog, Nov.
> > 16, 2016
> > https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2016/11/woke/
> >
> > Nicole Holliday, "When Is Lexical Innovation Cultural Appropriation?"
> > Oxford Dictionaries blog, Apr. 18, 2017
> > https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2017/04/cultural-appropriation-
> lexical-innovation/
> >
> > I also addressed "woke" in a WSJ column.
> >
> > Ben Zimmer, "'Woke,' From a Sleepy Verb to a Badge of Awareness," Wall
> > Street Journal, Apr. 14, 2017
> > https://www.wsj.com/articles/woke-from-a-sleepy-verb-to-a-
> badge-of-awareness-1492183857
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 3:20 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Theresa Fisher asked on 19 May 2016 (http://listserv.linguistlist.
> >> org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-May/142494.html <http://listserv.linguistlist.
> >> org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-May/142494.html>) about “woke” and Garson
> >> O’Toole responded the next day (same link) with an article by Charles
> >> Pulliam-Moore (https://splinternews.com/how-
> woke-went-from-black-activist-
> >> watchword-to-teen-int-1793853989 <https://splinternews.com/how-
> >> woke-went-from-black-activist-watchword-to-teen-int-1793853989>).
> >>
> >> Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woke <
> >> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woke>) has this as Anglo-American slang
> >> with citations in 2014 and 2016: Alert and aware of what is going on,
> >> especially in social justice contexts.
> >>
> >> The English Oxford Living Dictionaries (https://en.
> oxforddictionaries.com/
> >> definition/woke <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/woke>)
> give
> >> it as US informal: Alert to injustice in society, especially racism
> >>
> >> The informality appears to be lifting rapidly. Today, the The New York
> >> Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate-
> >> america-activism.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
> >> 02/28/opinion/corporate-america-activism.html>) discusses “woke
> capital”
> >> and “wokeness” without any definition of either.
> >>
> >> The Rise of Woke Capital
> >> by Ross Douthat
> >> ——
> >> Instead of the Treaty of Detroit we have, if you will, the Peace of Palo
> >> Alto, in which a certain kind of virtue-signaling on progressive social
> >> causes, a certain degree of performative wokeness, is offered to
> liberalism
> >> and the activist left pre-emptively, in the hopes that having corporate
> >> America take their side in the culture wars will blunt efforts to tax or
> >> regulate our new monopolies too heavily.
> >>
> >> In certain ways the Peace of Palo Alto won’t be fully tested until the
> >> next time the Democrats hold real power, when we’ll get to find out
> whether
> >> the left’s antimonopoly forays have any follow-through, whether more
> than a
> >> token portion of the Trump corporate tax cuts will get rolled back — or
> >> whether corporate wokeness will suffice as a concession to the new
> spirit
> >> of liberalism, enabling the easy post-1980s relationship between
> corporate
> >> America and the Democratic Party to endure.
> >>
> >> Their wokeness buys them cover when liberalism is in power, and any
> >> backlash only helps prop up a G.O.P. that has their back when it comes
> time
> >> to write our tax laws.
> >>
> >> The win-win scenario for woke capitalism can’t last forever.
> >> ——
> >>
> >> Rather than “wokeness”, I think I would have chosen “wakedness” or
> >> “wokedness”; however the internet is filled with hits proving me lost
> and
> >> demonstrating that “woke” as a concept is strong enough to push forward
> >> with its own paradigm. Here are two lexicographical links (no entry in
> the
> >> OLD):
> >>
> >> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wokeness <https://en.wiktionary.org/
> >> wiki/wokeness>
> >> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wokeness <
> >> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wokeness>
> >>
> >>
>

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