[Ads-l] woke, wokeness

[Margaret Lee]

 I totally agree with Nicole Holliday.  The origins of words and phrases appropriated by mainstream speakers should be acknowledged. it is simply a matter of showing respect for the words and the people who created them. My ongoing research is the documentation of lexical items from African American Language that have crossed over into mainstream usage and the resulting contexts in popular culture.
--Margaret  Lee 

    On ‎Saturday‎, ‎March‎ ‎03‎, ‎2018‎ ‎04‎:‎27‎:‎59‎ ‎PM‎ ‎EST, 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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