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Citizen sociolinguistics in the corporate co-opting of social justice rhetoric

Not signed up to write a post this week, but after watching the Generation Like documentary I wanted to share this Tweet that ended up on my timeline recently.

(Source: https://twitter.com/jaboukie/status/1119702277751750656; screenshot from Oct. 4, 2019)

The concerns raised by Rushkoff in Generation Like (namely, what's behind the technology, rather than the technology or social media platform itself) came across as very monumental obstacles to overcome if we are to ever be "in control" of our social media. It even seems bleak when we consider the invisible, looming power of corporations and marketing that's deeply entrenched in social media actions.

However, there does seem to be a subset of citizen sociolinguists who seem to have caught onto the tricks of advertising companies and corporations! As you can see in the screenshot, the post was published back in April and is sitting at 13.6K retweets and 80.8K likes. That's a lot of people who are finding the irony in the co-opted language of social justice in advertising and branding! Additionally, many of the replies feature users adding very nuanced commentary as to why the language is problematic. It was also interesting for me to find out that Jaboukie, the poster of this Tweet, is currently a comedian and The Daily Show correspondent who actually gained prominence and popularity after some of his posts on social media went viral (according to cited claims on Wikipedia).

On one hand, it seems disheartening that brands and corporations are quickly adapting and co-opting social justice movements. Is this an instance in which we should pursue a "citizen sociolinguistic arrest"? On the other hand, people are aware of this and are having citizen sociolinguistic conversations about it. What are ways we might be able to encourage these conversations to keep going? How can citizen sociolinguistic actions be useful in resisting the corporatization of social justice?

Comments

  1. BetsyOctober 8, 2019 at 12:13 PM

    This is fascinating--Cheryl, can you explain this to us in class. How does Jabookie do it?

    ReplyDelete

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