(Re)contextualizing the ‘anti-woke’ discourse

Abstract

This study examines how ‘anti-woke’ discourse is drawn upon by French and English-speaking X (formerly Twitter) users to abnormalize gender-inclusive language practices from a Critical Discourse Analytic (CDA) perspective (Fairclough 2010). Using strategies and tools drawn from the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak and Reisigl 2017) and CDA (interdiscursivity and recontextualization), I compare and discuss how ‘woke’ is (re)appropriated within online arenas across both linguo-cultural contexts to other and undermine those invested in challenging gender-based discrimination(s). Responses, therefore, contribute to a broader right-wing (populist) project that substantiates the uncivil and ‘unsayable’ by subverting the civil and ‘sayable’ amid the emergence of borderline discourses (Krzyżanowski and Ledin 2017). I conclude that ‘anti-woke’ discourse has become a symbolic catch-all discursive strategy to bolster far right attitudes at the expense of abnormalizing the struggles faced by marginalized genders. This analysis thus provides further insight into how discriminatory ideologies become more viable political alternatives through rhetorical and discursive phenomena (Wodak 2015).