Challenging The Woke Dictionary
The Struggle for Voice
Language is the most important site on which the Culture War is fought out. Cancel Culture is devoted to the project of policing language and regards its practice of censorship as essential for bringing about a woke enlightenment.
Words that have been used for centuries are today censored. Even the most innocuous word can become the target of linguistic policing. I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I discovered that we are not supposed to refer to that pesky insect that chews through the leaves of trees as a Gypsy Moth? Apparently it conveys the connotation of an ethnic slur!
I cannot think of anyone who is in the least bit traumatised by the term Gypsy Moth. Nevertheless the Entomological Society of America (ESA) has decided to ‘remove’ it from its list of approved names.
Evidently the ESA has decided not to be left out of the Culture War so it has launched a review into insect names that ‘may be inappropriate or offensive’. In a world where offence archaeology has become a growth industry it was only a matter of time before the naming of insects was brought into the frame.
In case you are interested, from now on the Gypsy Moth will be identified by that widely known and popular term, Lymatria dispar’!
Predictably the term gypsy ant has also been cancelled just in case it causes trauma to a member of the Roma community! So be prepared to use the term Aphaenogaster araneoides, in its place.
The policing of language is fast becoming a caricature of itself. Who would have imagined that the term ‘brown bag lunch’ would become one of its targets? Recently, The New York Times columnist, John McWhorter wrote of a person who was told off for using the term ‘brown bag lunch’ on the ground that the ‘phrase evokes the crude color scale that some elite (and elitist) African American organizations are said to have used, once upon a time, to determine eligibility for membership, with only people lighter in complexion than a brown bag admitted. Whether or not this claim has any historical validity it is certainly the case that when real people use this phrase, they are concerned about one thing, and one thing alone, which is their lunch.
It is tempting to laugh at what appears as silly virtue signalling about changing the name of an insect or abolishing the term brown bag lunch. However the war over words is serious business. It aims to frame our thoughts and to change our perception of reality. When new terms like heteronormativity or chest-feeding are shoved down our throats, it becomes evident that the way we view the most intimate aspects of our life is under challenge.
Advocates of Cancel Culture do not merely censor words they also seek to re-engineer language.
Semantic engineering aims to change public language in order to transform prevailing cultural attitudes and norms. It offers its practitioners control over language and serves as a source of cultural power. Semantic engineering is one of most powerful cultural weapons wielded to undermine how we view the world.
In the Anglo-American world, the re-engineering of the English language has become institutionalised by officialdom and public bodies, like the National Health Service and the Foreign Office.
Even the Church of England has come under the spell of the Dictionary of Woke. It claims to struggle with the meaning of the word woman;
And as far as the BBC is concerned? The British Broadcasting Corporation is in the business of inventing new genders to cultivate their ‘trans-brand’!
Language and the policing of verbal communication have become crucially important for guiding behaviour and shaping attitudes.
Through the re-engineering of language, the meaning that people attach to their experience is altered. History shows that language does not simply mirror people’s reality but also, to some extent, constructs it.
The spectacular advance of the revolution against traditional language usage has been underwritten by the complicity sections of the cultural and political elites. Through they lack the capacity to inspire people’s hearts and win political arguments they can still exercise a disproportionate influence over public life through regulating the use of language. Language and the policing of verbal communication have become crucially important for guiding behaviour and shaping attitudes.
The swiftness with which people have been forced to use pronouns to demonstrate their submission to transgender culture is truly remarkable.
So when the New Year Honours list was announced at the end of 2021, there was barely a mention of the fact that for the first time, it referred an individual’s preferred pronouns. The media has become so habituated to the practice of semantic engineering that the Palace’s official recognition of the vocabulary of transgender inspired identity politics went unremarked. It is worth noting that the New Year Honours List is a part of the official British honours system, with New Year's Day, 1 January, being marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official honours. The embrace of the practice of flaunting personal pronouns indicates that the British Establishment has casually internalised the language of woke.
Even the military has abandoned common sense and has gone down the road of virtue signalling pronouns:
Censorship has become de-facto institutionalised in universities !
There is little point in just grumbling about the rapid ascendancy of the language of Woke. We need to defend our language and the way we generations have used its words. We need to call out the semantic engineers and reject their attempt to control our language.
Wings & Roots is committed to challenge the imposition the language of woke and its attempt to re-engineer language.
It will place woke terms under a microscope, take them apart and explain their purpose.
With your help, our aim is to create and publish a Dictionary of Bullshit Words. In the months ahead it will discuss terms like ‘whiteness’, ‘micro-aggression’, ‘non-binary’ and ‘inappropriate’.
If you come across any newly minted woke words email it to me. I am also interested in words that you think is worth evaluating and discussing.