[Ads-l] woke, wokeness

[Wilson Gray]

Oy, vey iz mir!

On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 10:04 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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