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Large businessmen like Ricardo Salinas Pliego have asked their staff to refrain from using the “Woke Language” because it has become so popular in recent hours. As a result, Internet users have expressed interest in learning the definition and history of this term on social media.
Even though this word’s translation is straightforward: “Woke.” However, the concept is more nuanced than that, and being “woke” in American slang can reveal your political beliefs.
What does Woke language mean?
The phrase is credited to novelist William Melvin Kelley, who wrote the article “If You are Woke, You Dig It” for the New York Times in 1962.
The Black Lives Matter movement, which opposes police brutality against African Americans, was responsible for the term’s resurgence in 2013. This time, though, its application went beyond the African-American community and started to allude to a more general idea.
In 2017, the Oxford Dictionary added a new definition of ” woke “, describing it as: “Being alert to social and political issues, especially racism . “
This word is often used disapprovingly by those who believe that some people are too easily offended by these issues or address them excessively without generating real change. It also refers to a set of linguistic practices that seek to avoid the use of terms that may be considered offensive, stigmatizing or exclusionary to certain groups.
While the Merriam-Webster dictionary says it is used disapprovingly to refer to someone who is politically liberal (such as on issues of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme.
For “woke” people, it is a form of non-violent protest that empowers historically marginalized groups in society and corrects behavior, especially among the most privileged sectors, which until now were part of the status quo and persisted without punishment or change.
Woke language: Cause of growing political confrontation?
What began as a cultural conflict evolved into a political confrontation, and the term “woke” became associated with progressive or left-wing politics, defending causes such as racial and social equity, feminism, LGBT rights, the use of neutral pronouns, multiculturalism, vaccination, environmental activism, and abortion rights.
Policies that President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party is associated with, as well as the more liberal wing that includes politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In 2020, Trump focused one of the axes of his re-election campaign on combating these so-called ” woke lefties” who – he claimed – practice “far-left fascism.”
