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Revision as of 19:04, 7 September 2021 editHodgdon's secret garden (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users25,943 edits McWhorter about woke's semantic pos to neg: new section← Previous edit Revision as of 20:00, 7 September 2021 edit undoHodgdon's secret garden (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users25,943 edits McWhorter about woke's semantic pos to neg: +Tag: RevertedNext edit →
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"" and "" mean belittling, attacking, ridiculing. This is far more than just "disapproval" or "criticism". --] (]) 00:36, 7 September 2021 (UTC) "" and "" mean belittling, attacking, ridiculing. This is far more than just "disapproval" or "criticism". --] (]) 00:36, 7 September 2021 (UTC)


== The new ] ==
== McWhorter about woke's semantic pos to neg ==


I'll come back later to expand on info from mcwhorter's nytimes piece "how woke became an insult" Re woke's semantic shifts (in this case) complimentary -> insulting. (btw the following's from his _Words on the Move_ (2016): "Why do civilized euphemisms such as disabled so often get reclassified as quaint or even insulting?Why is it so hard to truly accept that there is a 'dialect' called Black English? Why does William Powell in The Thin Man say that he is going to round up all the sus­PECTS instead of the SUS­ pects? (I’m sure you’ve always wondered about that!) Why have emoticons caught on to such a degree?This book will answer all those questions. The answers require understanding a mere five ways that language changes. The question is not whether a word will undergo one or more of these processes, but which ones of them it will go through. ;McWhorter's nytimes piece about woke's semantic shift, pos to neg, along with its new meaning's close association withself-censorship
(First, the following's from his 2016 book): "Why do civilized euphemisms such as disabled so often get reclassified as quaint or even insulting?Why is it so hard to truly accept that there is a 'dialect' called Black English? Why does William Powell in The Thin Man say that he is going to round up all the sus­PECTS instead of the SUS­ pects? (I’m sure you’ve always wondered about that!) Why have emoticons caught on to such a degree?This book will answer all those questions. The answers require understanding a mere five ways that language changes. The question is not whether a word will undergo one or more of these processes, but which ones of them it will go through.
_______ _______
*<small>from nytimes review: "I loved 'Words on the Move,' but it’s possible I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I keep saying to people who aren’t particularly interested, “Let me list the five ways that new words are — and always have been — created out of old ones. First we must consider modal pragmatic markers.' " (_Me_: Q. Hmmm-so then what are these five ways, huh? A. " (1) expanding (2) contracting (3) receiving emotional colorings (4) becoming their implications And, this, via "meaning creep, by analogy with the term mission creep—bit by bit, new shades creep into what we consider the meaning of something to be, until one day the meaning has moved so far from the original one that it seems almost astounding.")</small> </p><p>--] (]) 19:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC) *<small>from nytimes review: "I loved 'Words on the Move,' but it’s possible I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I keep saying to people who aren’t particularly interested, “Let me list the five ways that new words are — and always have been — created out of old ones. First we must consider modal pragmatic markers.' " (_Me_: Q. Hmmm-so then what are these five ways, huh? A. " (1) expanding (2) contracting (3) receiving emotional colorings (4) becoming their implications And, this, via "meaning creep, by analogy with the term mission creep—bit by bit, new shades creep into what we consider the meaning of something to be, until one day the meaning has moved so far from the original one that it seems almost astounding.")</small>

McWhorter: {{tq|" generation of white kids sound a little Blacker in casual speech than their parents did. To be someone who teaches college now after having gone to college with those parents is to see and hear this quite clearly. 'Stay woke' on white people's T-shirts is a sign of coming together. Symbolic? Sure, but last time I checked, symbols matter.</p><p>"But if that's the story, then why is wokeness now something so many people are more likely to disavow than own?he real wind behind its wings in the early 2010s was that 'woke' served as a handy, nonpejorative replacement for 'politically correct.'</p><p>"I remember that term used straight, without dismissal and only a hint of irony, in 1984. A white college friend, very much of the left, used it with a quiet sprinkle of irony, but sincerely. ('Of course, you know this if you're' — smile and two-millisecond pause, signaling 'you know' — 'politically correct.') He meant that a certain complex of leftist beliefs — i.e., the ones called 'woke' in 2012 — were obviously the proper ones for any reasonable person to have, that they signaled a higher awareness.</p><p>"In a view like that, there is, inevitably, a certain self-satisfaction. And in some of those holding this kind of view, that self-satisfaction will express itself in dismissal and abuse of those ungifted with the third eye in question. The result will be resistance .. .. ...</p><p>"'Woke' has just undergone the same process .. .. ...<br>.. .. ..<br>"This was how we got from 'politically correct' to 'woke.' This was the path from 'crippled' to 'handicapped' to 'disabled' to 'differently abled.' ..</p><p>omething 'problematic'in modern usage so often implies not just that something is abstractly a problem but also that it ought to be classified as inconsonant with civilized sensibility and cordoned off from it in some way. Especially on the left, 'problematic' is being drawn onto the treadmill to step away from the stodgy, menacing, backward associations that the word 'censorship' has taken on, while engaging in what many would treat as the same project. ..}} <br>--] (]) 20:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

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  • Did you know... that Bloomberg Businessweek asked, "Is Misplaced Pages woke?"
A record of the entry may be seen at Misplaced Pages:Recent additions/2017/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Woke.
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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Allyborghi (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Watkina, Abamzai, Ujwalamurthy.


Term becoming internationalized

  1. elespanol.com - 19 series y películas de derechas para escapar del tsunami woke
  2. standaard.be - ‘Ik word wat moe van al dat woke-gedoe. Ook mannen kunnen voor vrouwenrechten opkomen.’ Conner Rousseau bekeert zich tot het antiwoke-kamp (in De Standaard).
  3. volkskrant.nl/[https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/veel-critici-van-cancelcultuur-doen-gemakzuchtig-en-luidkeels-hun-beklag~b5f0a5a2/ - ‘Radicale woke- en genderactivisten .. en wie zich niet aan het ondoorgrondelijke lexicon van de ‘wokies’ houdt, wordt simpelweg opgeheven.
  4. document.no

No coverage given non-Right critics seeing Woke activism as a new Puritanism( &c)

  1. gq-magazine.co.uk - Woke or not, the culture wars make hypocrites of us all: Whether it's woke puritanism or anti-woke cynicism, participation in the culture war is also a guarantee of hypocrisy and bad faith. That's because nobody can live up to the standards they set for others
  2. 31aug2021theAtlantic.com (Anne Applebaum): "THE NEW PURITANS: Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better. But for those whose behavior doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless.espite the disputed nature of these cases, it has become both easy and useful for some people to put them into larger narratives. Partisans, especially on the right, now toss around the phrase cancel culture when they want to defend themselves from criticism, however legitimate. But dig into the story of anyone who has been a genuine victim of modern mob justice and you will often find not an obvious argument between “woke” and “anti-woke” perspectives but rather incidents that are interpreted, described, or remembered by different people in different ways, even leaving aside whatever political or intellectual issue might be at stake. .. "
  3. thos. edsall's 14jul2021 weekly nytimes column: ".. Democrats, if they want to protect their fragile majority, must be doubly careful not to hand their adversaries ever more powerful weapons." Quoting andrew sullivan (although labeled somewhat libertarian, a biden voter/early obama booster): "Look how far the left’s war on liberalism has gone. Due process? If you’re a male on campus, gone. Privacy? Stripped away — by anonymous rape accusations, exposure of private emails, violence against people’s private homes, screaming at folks in restaurants, sordid exposés of sexual encounters, eagerly published by woke mags. .. "
    etc.
    --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 01:24, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
    As has been explained many times on this page already, opinion pieces are primary sources. Opinion writers' careers depend on their ability to deliver spicy takes, not sober, reasoned analysis, and this article already cites too many of them IMO. Articles should be based on reliable, secondary sources to avoid giving undue weight to such manufactured outrage. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
It's not unbiased editors' job to decide whether Woke or anti-Woke sensibilities/outrage are manufactured or legit and Sangdeboeuf's appearance to think it is might reasonably indicate hi/r not belonging on this page. See Misplaced Pages:Impartial: "Misplaced Pages describes disputes." The article at present engages in them via favoring only non-disparaging analyses, whereas good-faith perusals of wp's guidelines en toto would entail screwing obvious skews. You know, denial is more than a river in egypt and willfully ignoring wikipedia:Balance's imperative about "describing opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint" and its corollaries throughout the guidelines doesn't enable truthful claims of unawareness such exist.--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 17:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
I do think we should describe the non-right critique of 'woke' clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources. Have you come across any? You also appear to be manufacturing a straw man version of Sangdebouef's argument to suggest that they shouldn't participate in this discussion; Sangdebouef did not suggest that it's our "job to decide whether Woke or anti-Woke sensibilities/outrage are manufactured or legit". In fact, in suggesting that we look for secondary source coverage of the view, they are pushing us toward exactly the procedure to avoid making such a decision. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
The editor seems to be hovering over the article: eg I just tried to make a subhead refer to "disparagement" instead of "pejorative" & the claim was made that WP must rely solely on sources that so label it. Come on. Academic inquiry requires that varying viewpoints' airings, pro and con arguments' consideration. Each instance of this is called opinion. 2ndary sources making note of these opinions confer on them so-called notability. If certain editors here believe criticisms of woke socially unacceptable, sure, such prominence given on WP to the designation of all instances of the same as "perjorative" at least makes sense, in that light. But, not from the standpoint of our guidelines which emphasize absolutely stringent neutrality on issues! Indeed, prominence given on WP to this designation as applied all such criticism makes it seem WP -- instead of our following the form: So-and-so argues thus; so-and-so argues thus -- endorse solely "So and so argues thus" but without rejoinder, criticism thereof inferred as socially unacceptable. Per my editorial senses -- and my voice counts -- is that "pejorative" carries baggage of association with eg d*ck or whatever respective sexual organ for a person-perceived-of-as-overbearing of one/another gender...suffix -tard; British; n-word,; boy in reference to a man; blah blah blah: which are allsocially unacceptable. (Or, if ever borderline acceptable, never so in polite company.)--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 18:33, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
If you continue to feel that Sangdebouef's conduct here is inappropriate, the first step in conduct dispute resolution is to discuss it with them politely at their user talk page. As far as this article is concerned, I think the sources are better summarized by pejorative/derision than disapproval. Your edit made some other improvements that I intend to restore, so thanks. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:48, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
It can be seen the, well, the um-teen times section reiterates "Writing in The Guardian, the commentator Steve Rose writes that the political right has "weaponised" the term woke" seems a bit much. Rather than its reading, "the Right", blah blah blah, "the Right," blah blah blah, "the Right"), when unbiased & full-spectrum reportage includes a slew of other criticisms, at minimum, the section should include, by way of balance, such reportages as by journalist-&-historian Anne Applebaum (see my above quote of her), plus utilize such as her as a 2ndary-source providing requisite notability to such nuanced & non-Right opinions about woke of John McWhorter / of such victims of woke outrage as given media coverage by Applebaum (and others) such as Ian Buruma and others).--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 20:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Applebaum's piece is a polemic, not a reliable secondary source. Further, she is using the term "woke" and "wokeness" – in quotation marks, mind – as a synonym for moral panic. She is not commenting on use of the term by others, as a secondary source would. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
As I have stated already on this page, I don't think the Steve Rose column is a useful source, and I would be fine with removing it entirely. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:18, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages:Balance's imperative about "describing opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint" – I quite agree with this approach. However, none of the quoted pieces are "disinterested". They each have a point of view to advance. That's the whole purpose of opinion essays. The third essay hardly mentions "woke(ness)" at all; Sullivan's use of the term is basically a throwaway which the author, Edsall, does not bother to elaborate upon. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:15, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Epigraph: "The fatal attraction that totalitarian power has for contemporary intellectuals." (Newsinger, J. (1999). Destroying the myth: George Orwell* and soviet communism. Critique, 27(1), 55–80.) Which attraction, as well, illuminates Sangdeboeuf's look of approval on"even-handed" journalism while squinting atas mere "polemic." Which, at its heart, really amounts to wp:Censored/systemic bias, wherein the only lens allowed in coverage is one that superficially aligns with the false dichotomy ofObjectivity versusPartisanry. The Orwellian sieve whereby our article's skewed to the extent that wokeness is associated with self-censorship, without this criticism being levelled through a partisanly-political lens, is null.
______
  • Orwell: Outspoken novelist, essayist, journalist, critic Non-Right-wing -- I'll repeat this: non-. right. wing. -- political writer and super-committed Socialist allegorically/otherwise penning only-too-obvious observations garnered from his experiences with the in-practice & inherent "fascism" of the Communism among the Republicans in Spain and what he had learned from investigations into Soviet "temporary" measures of state-capitalism toward the self-governing, classless and government-less society of the future. (Whose trenchant observations, under Sangdeboeuf's non-ideal editing regime, would need be discarded in favor of "objective" reportings that, by lucky circumstance, (by way of this inherent & systemic bias in favor of ersatz "progressive" trajectory to history) inherently align with the If-your-not-with-the-struggle,-you're-against-it conceit.

    --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 16:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

"Pejorative" section title

The use of the term by opponents of perceived wokeness is best summed up as "pejorative". According to the sources cited:

Among conservatives, 'woke' has been adopted as term of derision for those who hold progressive social justice views.In the six years since Brown’s death, 'woke' has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology This framing of 'woke' is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right.n culture and politics today, the most prominent uses of 'woke' are as a pejorative — Republicans attacking Democrats, more centrist Democrats attacking more liberal ones and supporters of the British monarchy using the term to criticize people more sympathetic to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.Some people say being woke is a sign of awareness to social issues, others whip out the term as an insult It has become a common term of derision among some who oppose the movements it is associated with, or believe the issues are exaggerated.
  1. Smith, Allan; Kapur, Sahil (May 2, 2021). "Republicans are crusading against 'woke'". NBC News.
  2. Romano, Aja (9 October 2020). "A history of 'wokeness'". Vox.
  3. Bacon, Perry Jr. (17 March 2021). "Why Attacking 'Cancel Culture' And 'Woke' People Is Becoming The GOP's New Political Strategy". FiveThirtyEight.
  4. Butterworth, Benjamin (26 June 2021). "What does 'woke' actually mean, and why are some people so angry about it?". inews.co.uk.

"Denigration" and "derision" mean belittling, attacking, ridiculing. This is far more than just "disapproval" or "criticism". --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:36, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The new Hays Code

McWhorter's nytimes piece about woke's semantic shift, pos to neg, along with its new meaning's close association withself-censorship

(First, the following's from his 2016 book): "Why do civilized euphemisms such as disabled so often get reclassified as quaint or even insulting?Why is it so hard to truly accept that there is a 'dialect' called Black English? Why does William Powell in The Thin Man say that he is going to round up all the sus­PECTS instead of the SUS­ pects? (I’m sure you’ve always wondered about that!) Why have emoticons caught on to such a degree?This book will answer all those questions. The answers require understanding a mere five ways that language changes. The question is not whether a word will undergo one or more of these processes, but which ones of them it will go through. _______

  • from nytimes review: "I loved 'Words on the Move,' but it’s possible I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I keep saying to people who aren’t particularly interested, “Let me list the five ways that new words are — and always have been — created out of old ones. First we must consider modal pragmatic markers.' " (_Me_: Q. Hmmm-so then what are these five ways, huh? A. " (1) expanding (2) contracting (3) receiving emotional colorings (4) becoming their implications And, this, via "meaning creep, by analogy with the term mission creep—bit by bit, new shades creep into what we consider the meaning of something to be, until one day the meaning has moved so far from the original one that it seems almost astounding.")

McWhorter:

" generation of white kids sound a little Blacker in casual speech than their parents did. To be someone who teaches college now after having gone to college with those parents is to see and hear this quite clearly. 'Stay woke' on white people's T-shirts is a sign of coming together. Symbolic? Sure, but last time I checked, symbols matter.

"But if that's the story, then why is wokeness now something so many people are more likely to disavow than own?he real wind behind its wings in the early 2010s was that 'woke' served as a handy, nonpejorative replacement for 'politically correct.'

"I remember that term used straight, without dismissal and only a hint of irony, in 1984. A white college friend, very much of the left, used it with a quiet sprinkle of irony, but sincerely. ('Of course, you know this if you're' — smile and two-millisecond pause, signaling 'you know' — 'politically correct.') He meant that a certain complex of leftist beliefs — i.e., the ones called 'woke' in 2012 — were obviously the proper ones for any reasonable person to have, that they signaled a higher awareness.

"In a view like that, there is, inevitably, a certain self-satisfaction. And in some of those holding this kind of view, that self-satisfaction will express itself in dismissal and abuse of those ungifted with the third eye in question. The result will be resistance .. .. ...

"'Woke' has just undergone the same process .. .. ...
.. .. ..
"This was how we got from 'politically correct' to 'woke.' This was the path from 'crippled' to 'handicapped' to 'disabled' to 'differently abled.' ..

omething 'problematic'in modern usage so often implies not just that something is abstractly a problem but also that it ought to be classified as inconsonant with civilized sensibility and cordoned off from it in some way. Especially on the left, 'problematic' is being drawn onto the treadmill to step away from the stodgy, menacing, backward associations that the word 'censorship' has taken on, while engaging in what many would treat as the same project. ..
--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 20:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

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