[Ads-l] Early Examples of "Virtue Signaling" or "Virtue Signalling"

James Eric Lawson jel at NVENTURE.COM
Mon Jan 18 20:07:21 UTC 2021


The "Aug 11, 2004" date seems to be the date Al Cowens joined the 
Something Awful forum; the date of the post is underneath the 
participant icon: Jul 21, 2015 08:42


On 1/18/21 11:27 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> On his Word Spy site, Paul McFedries cited a 2004 example from a Something
> Awful forum post:
> 
> ---
> https://www.wordspy.com/index.php?word=virtue-signalling
> Virtue signaling at its most pedestrian.
> --Al Cowens, “guy walking behind a kkk parade playing a tuba,” Something
> Awful, August 11, 2004
> ---
> 
> The link to Something Awful is dead, but it's still available via Internet
> Archive:
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170306132557/http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3732220&userid=61048
> 
> Mark Peters mentioned this example in his 2015 Boston Globe column on
> "virtue signaling":
> 
> https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/12/24/virtue-signaling-and-other-inane-platitudes/YrJRcvxYMofMcCfgORUcFO/story.html
> 
> --bgz
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 2:17 PM James Eric Lawson <jel at nventure.com> wrote:
> 
>> Another Bulbulia article from a 2010 book: Religious Culture and
>> Cooperative Prediction under Risk: Perspectives from Social
>> Neuroscience, Joseph Bulbulia and Uffe Schjoedt; in Religion, Economy,
>> and Cooperation, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Walter de Gruyter, Jul 30, 2010.
>>
>> "This means that pious expressions provide a medium in which partners
>> may express and evaluate genuine moral commitments. Importantly then,
>> costly signalling holds that both the conservation of religion and its
>> apparent irrationality can be accounted for by a single model, one that
>> combines moral policing with virtue signalling."
>>
>>
>> https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=thAzhaIbiHMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=%22virtue+signalling%22&ots=PFyplsCZqF&sig=Q-bWB_uX1-IYwG9TY6MDXIhA7tE#v=onepage&q=%22virtue%20signalling%22&f=false
>>
>> On 1/18/21 7:29 AM, Baker, John wrote:
>>> Here is slightly earlier. From Joseph Bulbulia, Spreading Order:
>> Religion, Cooperative Niche Construction, and Risky Coordination Problems,
>> Biology & Philosophy (Jan. 2012) (Gale Academic OneFile):  “Other cultural
>> evolutionary models show that prestige and success biases may combine with
>> imitative learning and virtue-signalling to favour religious cultural
>> transmission (Henrich 2009).”
>>>
>>> Although there is a 2012 cover date, the actual publication date is
>> earlier. The article includes the following: “Received: 25 October
>> 2010/Accepted: 27 September 2011/Published online: 25 October 2011.”
>>>
>>> The Henrich 2009 source is listed in the bibliography as Henrich J
>> (2009) The evolution of costly displays, cooperation, and
>> religion:credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural
>> evolution. Evol Human Behav 30:244-260. So possibly that would have an
>> earlier use.
>>>
>>>
>>> John Baker
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 18, 2021, at 8:26 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>> External Email - Think Before You Click
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I am trying to find examples of the term "virtue signaling" or "virtual
>> signalling" earlier than 2012. Can anyone identify any such examples?
>>>
>>>
>>
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 

-- 
James Eric Lawson
Tacoma, Washington

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



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