[Ads-l] woke, wokeness

Tue Mar 6 20:20:27 UTC 2018

Besides the quite authentic Kelley 1962, HDAS files also contain:

1967-68 Hy Lit  _Hy Lit's Unbelievable Dictionary of Hip Words for Groovy
People_ [Phila.: Hyski Press, 1968] 1: ALL WOKE UP - Educated,
well-informed; you dig the scene.

Hy Lit, IIRC, was a white Philadelphia platter-spinner on AM.  Also, IIRC,
the _Unbelievable Dictionary_ was one of the first lexicographical sources
mined for HDAS.

JL

JL

On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 6:28 AM, Margaret Lee <
0000006730deb3bf-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

>  Acknowledgment can start with language researchers and scholars who
> understand and appreciate linguistic and cultural diversity.  As stated by
> Robert McNeil, "White American language and culture owe much to the blacks"
> ("Black on White" in The Story of English, 1986).
> --Margaret Lee
>
>     On ‎Sunday‎, ‎March‎ ‎04‎, ‎2018‎ ‎04‎:‎24‎:‎37‎ ‎PM‎ ‎EST, Baker,
> John <JBAKER at STRADLEY.COM> wrote:
>
>  How should this sort of acknowledgment take place?
>
> I have not observed “woke” being extended to a general meaning of “aware,”
> but it does seem to have been extended to awareness of social injustice in
> other contexts, particularly sexism.
>
>
> John Baker
>
>
>
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Margaret Lee
> Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2018 6:58 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: woke, wokeness
>
> 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<mailto: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/ATNW92-1>
> https://bit.ly/ATNW92-2<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/<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/<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<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<
> mailto:mail.barretts at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> > Theresa Fisher asked on 19 May 2016 (http://listserv.linguistlist<
> http://listserv.linguistlist>.
> > org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-May/142494.html <http://listserv.linguistlist<
> 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-<https://splinternews.com/how-
> woke-went-from-black-activist->
> > watchword-to-teen-int-1793853989 <https://splinternews.com/how-<
> 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> <
> > 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/<https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/>
> > definition/woke <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-<https
> ://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate->
> > america-activism.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/<
> 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://en.wiktionary.org/<ht
> tps://en.wiktionary.org/>
> > wiki/wokeness>
> > https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wokeness<h
> ttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wokeness> <
> > https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wokeness<h
> ttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wokeness>>
> >
> >
>
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