The politics of language

Politicized semantic change occurs when ideological actors strategically alter the meaning of existing terms to undermine opponents and to strengthen allies. We develop the concept of politicized pejoration through a case study of the term “woke” in the United States. This word originated in the US Black community as an encouragement to stay aware of social and racial injustices; it was subsequently transformed by the political right to indicate what it perceived as the left’s hypersensitivity and oppressive tendencies. We illustrate the process of pejoration by tracking usage of “woke” in mainstream media outlets, on Twitter and in Google searches from 2010 through 2022, combining quantitative text-as-data analyses with qualitative readings of media stories. Conceptualizing politicized pejoration as a form of politicized semantic change extends scholarly and public understanding of the politics of language.

Social proximity, discursive opportunity structures, and the diffusion of the culture wars

Culture war dynamics have generated political and social polarization in a range of countries. We identify two key factors—social proximity and discursive opportunity structures—that influence the timing of the arrival and the meaning of the term “woke” in France, comparing its usage to that in Britain and Spain. We track “woke” and similar phrases by examining their frequency as well as their contextual meaning, drawing on extensive data from mainstream media outlets that reflect public discourse. Using an abductive approach that matches theoretical insights to empirical observations, we develop a framework that can be applied to understand the spread of culture war terms across liberal democracies.