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That slippery word "woke"

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funeralxempire
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14 Nov 2023, 2:50 pm

Spinflight wrote:
As for woke autists, never in my experience. Though some borderlines may be misdiagnosed I guess.


Of course you're better positioned to diagnose those people than the doctors who actually evaluated them. Clearly you're both more of an expert and more familiar with the patients in question. :lol:


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Dox47
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15 Nov 2023, 5:59 pm

How is there not a super long German word for the special pain that comes from seeing your position argued badly?


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funeralxempire
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15 Nov 2023, 6:05 pm

Dox47 wrote:
How is there not a super long German word for the special pain that comes from seeing your position argued badly?


I can empathize, I've also experienced that specific feeling on here many times.


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Dox47
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15 Nov 2023, 8:57 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
I can empathize, I've also experienced that specific feeling on here many times.


Right? Or the opposite, someone you know to be poorly informed being correct by happenstance or coincidence, a sort of reverse schadenfreude where you're annoyed that they're not wrong this time.


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18 Nov 2023, 9:37 pm

Apologies if this has already been brought up here (topic is now too long to quickly check), but I stumbled onto the concept of pejoration today and I thought it may be to do with "that slippery word "woke"" - definition:
The process by which the meaning of a word becomes negative or disparaging over a period of time, as silly, from Middle English seely, “blessed, innocent,” has come to mean “showing a lack of good sense, frivolous.”

Unfortunately I've found nothing that tries to explain why pejoration happens. In the case of "woke," I'm sure many folks on the left suspect it's a deliberate effort by righties, but maybe nobody particularly meant it to happen and it's just one of those things that can happen to words?



funeralxempire
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18 Nov 2023, 11:24 pm

Dox47 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
I can empathize, I've also experienced that specific feeling on here many times.


Right? Or the opposite, someone you know to be poorly informed being correct by happenstance or coincidence, a sort of reverse schadenfreude where you're annoyed that they're not wrong this time.


Personally I've always found that more amusing than annoying. It leaves me wondering how they managed to get informed within that narrow window without becoming more broadly informed.


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Mona Pereth
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18 Nov 2023, 11:36 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
Apologies if this has already been brought up here (topic is now too long to quickly check), but I stumbled onto the concept of pejoration today and I thought it may be to do with "that slippery word "woke"" - definition:
The process by which the meaning of a word becomes negative or disparaging over a period of time, as silly, from Middle English seely, “blessed, innocent,” has come to mean “showing a lack of good sense, frivolous.”

Unfortunately I've found nothing that tries to explain why pejoration happens. In the case of "woke," I'm sure many folks on the left suspect it's a deliberate effort by righties, but maybe nobody particularly meant it to happen and it's just one of those things that can happen to words?

The history of the word "woke" is recent and well-documented. (See sources linked earlier in this thread.) No need for more abstract speculation. I'll just say that "woke" was especially vulnerable to deliberate "pejoration" because it was never a very precise term to begin with.


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19 Nov 2023, 12:04 am

Mona Pereth wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
Apologies if this has already been brought up here (topic is now too long to quickly check), but I stumbled onto the concept of pejoration today and I thought it may be to do with "that slippery word "woke"" - definition:
The process by which the meaning of a word becomes negative or disparaging over a period of time, as silly, from Middle English seely, “blessed, innocent,” has come to mean “showing a lack of good sense, frivolous.”

Unfortunately I've found nothing that tries to explain why pejoration happens. In the case of "woke," I'm sure many folks on the left suspect it's a deliberate effort by righties, but maybe nobody particularly meant it to happen and it's just one of those things that can happen to words?

The history of the word "woke" is recent and well-documented. (See sources linked earlier in this thread.) No need for more abstract speculation. I'll just say that "woke" was especially vulnerable to deliberate "pejoration" because it was never a very precise term to begin with.

Do you have a permalink or a page number? Not saying you're wrong of course, I'd just like to refresh my porous old memory without having to trawl through 8 pages. I wouldn't put it past the unscrupulous wing of the Conservatives to give the definition a wee push, to say the least.



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19 Nov 2023, 4:40 am

- Woke - Wikipedia
- What does the word 'woke' really mean, and where does it come from? - NPR, July 19, 2023
- A history of “wokeness”: "Stay woke: How a Black activist watchword got co-opted in the culture war," Vox, Oct 9, 2020


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Dox47
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19 Nov 2023, 1:53 pm

Euphemism treadmill.


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19 Nov 2023, 3:06 pm

Dox47 wrote:
Euphemism treadmill.

Well, similar at least, if John McWhorter is correct:

"Linguist and social critic John McWhorter argues that the history of woke is similar to that of politically correct, another term once used self-descriptively by the left which was appropriated by the right as an insult, in a process similar to the euphemism treadmill"

That's from the Wikipedia link Mona Pereth kindly supplied above, under "2019–present: as a pejorative".

Not that I think the pejoration effect, if it innocently happened to "woke," is all that's going on. Even if the word got innocently twisted, I don't deny that many Republican politicians are now milking it for all the political capital it's got as a pejorative in the heads of their fans. There are enough quotes in those articles to demonstrate that.



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19 Nov 2023, 7:50 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
Even if the word got innocently twisted, I don't deny that many Republican politicians are now milking it for all the political capital it's got as a pejorative in the heads of their fans. There are enough quotes in those articles to demonstrate that.


Be that as it may, nobody has come up with a good alternate word for this collection of beliefs and attitudes, so woke it is.


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Dox47
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19 Nov 2023, 7:51 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Personally I've always found that more amusing than annoying. It leaves me wondering how they managed to get informed within that narrow window without becoming more broadly informed.


Yeah, and for me it's also a bit of a self awareness check, like I notice myself getting irritated that someone isn't wrong about something, and have to take a step back and laugh at myself for it.


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19 Nov 2023, 10:02 pm

Dox47 wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
Even if the word got innocently twisted, I don't deny that many Republican politicians are now milking it for all the political capital it's got as a pejorative in the heads of their fans. There are enough quotes in those articles to demonstrate that.


Be that as it may, nobody has come up with a good alternate word for this collection of beliefs and attitudes, so woke it is.

Depends what you mean by "good," and by "this collection of attitudes."



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20 Nov 2023, 11:50 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
Depends what you mean by "good," and by "this collection of attitudes."


Good, as in it's short, snappy, and most people know what you mean by it, and as I've laid out the collection of attitudes many times already, no need to repeat them again when there are perfectly good search functions available.


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21 Nov 2023, 12:57 am

^ Ah, short and snappy.....a favourite tool of propagandists. I guess I'll just have to live with not knowing what you mean by collection of attitudes. By "perfectly good search tools" I presume you're talking about the search box that finds all instances of an entered term, though you didn't say so or suggest a suitable term. A permalink from you would be good, but that would be a collaborative deed, and you seem more of an adversarial type to me. But we shall see.