[Ads-l] woke, wokeness

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Mar 6 20:34:59 UTC 2018 

Yes, I realized I wouldn’t find “woke” in Volumes I or II.  Sigh.

LH

> On Mar 6, 2018, at 3:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> 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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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
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