[Ads-l] woke, wokeness

[Barretts Mail]

Thank you for that.

One other aspect of this word that struck me is the seeming parallelism to “red pilling”. While the origins of the two phrases might be very different, this seems like a nice case of language filling in the need to describe aspects of society, i.e., extreme political polarization. BB

> On 3 Mar 2018, at 14:50, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> 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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