Scholarlink

<p>‘Woke’, a politically polarized term that has sparked controversies on social media, has semantically evolved over time. To trace this evolution, this study conducted a diachronic corpus-based analysis of contributions on X (formerly Twitter) using the hashtag #Woke, dated between 2014 and 2023. The collected data were treated as two sets of corpora for data analysis, covering the time periods 2014–2018 and 2019–2023. First, the keyword analysis indicated that the semantic bleaching of ‘woke’ became evident since the first time period. Second, the diachronic analysis using dispersion plots highlighted the shifts in topics semantically associated with ‘woke’ over 10 years. On the one hand, the issue of racism has ‘always’ been central to the trajectory of the term ‘woke’, and as such has constantly shaped its framing within anti-woke discourse on X. On the other hand, there was a discernable shift in the focus of the discourse from power-coercive politics to issues of gender equality, a topic serving as a vehicle for discussing broader peripheral issues. Beyond providing a nuanced understanding of the evolution of the semantic scope of ‘woke’, this study, by utilizing dispersion plots rather than traditional frequency-based keyword analysis, offers new methodological insights and implications for future diachronic research.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

From (a)Wake to Woke to Anti-Woke: A Diachronic Analysis of the Evolution of Discourse About ‘Woke’ Through the Hashtag #Woke on X

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年4月24日

查看全文
  • Ronnakrit Rangsarittikun

摘要

‘Woke’, a politically polarized term that has sparked controversies on social media, has semantically evolved over time. To trace this evolution, this study conducted a diachronic corpus-based analysis of contributions on X (formerly Twitter) using the hashtag #Woke, dated between 2014 and 2023. The collected data were treated as two sets of corpora for data analysis, covering the time periods 2014–2018 and 2019–2023. First, the keyword analysis indicated that the semantic bleaching of ‘woke’ became evident since the first time period. Second, the diachronic analysis using dispersion plots highlighted the shifts in topics semantically associated with ‘woke’ over 10 years. On the one hand, the issue of racism has ‘always’ been central to the trajectory of the term ‘woke’, and as such has constantly shaped its framing within anti-woke discourse on X. On the other hand, there was a discernable shift in the focus of the discourse from power-coercive politics to issues of gender equality, a topic serving as a vehicle for discussing broader peripheral issues. Beyond providing a nuanced understanding of the evolution of the semantic scope of ‘woke’, this study, by utilizing dispersion plots rather than traditional frequency-based keyword analysis, offers new methodological insights and implications for future diachronic research.