You’re Canceled!

As new trends go, the linguistic and cultural phenomenon of "canceling" has spread faster than the recent wildfires across California. Though social distancing and dumpster fire might also be terms that are emblematic of our lives these days, they haven’t stirred up quite the controversy that the term cancel culture seems to evoke. But what is the origin of what has become a pervasive phenomenon?

The term cancel culture stems from the idea of "canceling" or ostracizing someone whose comments or actions are deemed socially offensive or controversial. For instance, there has been a movement to swiftly and unequivocally cancel high profile celebrities, CEOs, and politicians caught saying or doing things that smack of racist, sexist, or biased attitudes. Called the police alleging a Black birdwatcher in the park is an attacker? Canceled. Using a gender-based slur against a female congressional colleague? Canceled. In other words, the consequences for linguistic indiscretion, be it intentional or merely ignorant, are quick and exacting.

Cancellation is the new blacklist

The use of the verb "cancel" to mean "cut off" or "blacklist" has been around for several decades. In an article for Vox, writer Aja Romano traced its origin to Wesley Snipes’ gangster role in the 1991 movie New Jack City in which he canceled, i.e., dumped, a girlfriend who showed weakness. It then started to appear periodically in the 2000s, first in similarly misogynistic contexts ("You’re canceled, B$tch!"). It later morphed on Black Twitter as a way to forge a united call for social justice from online community members in response to offensive remarks or behavior. But the term cancel culture as a viral boycotting phenomenon seems to have taken flight fairly recently, with the rise of the term on the internet really exploding, according to Google metrics, around 2018.

The origin of the term in predominately Black vernacular discourse communities is not surprising. Many of the terms that become popular and hip in English started life in Black speech, which is part of the cool factor appropriated along with them. The word dude, for example, was popularized by zoot-suiters in the 1930s. The bigger issue is whether such appropriation brings with it a seismic shift in not only the users but the meaning of the term.

You're canceled!

Source: Annick Vanblaere/Pixabay

According to media studies professor Margaret Clark, cancel culture, nowadays a finger-pointing ritual from both the political left and the right, misses the mark. As employed on Black Twitter forums, canceling was a way to harness the equalizing power of digital mediums for marginalized groups to call out and bring to justice antagonistic or prejudicial behavior. Now, according to Clark, it has been re-invoked by social elites to delegitimize the social activism that first brought it to our notice, likened instead to dangerous mob rule. This kind of linguistic borrowing and semantic revision, though, is something that has happened often in the history of English.

A viral verb waiting to happen

And this brings us to the question of how the verb "cancel," from French canceller, even took on this new meaning of boycott or reject when the verb has been around far longer than Wesley Snipes or Twitter? It traveled the well-worn process of semantic shift that has brought us so many of the trendy new terms we have used over the years like "be woke" used in the sense of "social awareness" or "defund" as a call for a radical overhaul of the way we police. Semantic shift refers to a change in meaning over time as a natural consequence of using that word in the real world, to the point where the new meaning is often only slightly related to the original one. In other words, what we say has to keep up with how we live and think, and, voila, language change comes along for the ride.

The history of English is rife with examples of words that originally meant one thing before the world changed and made a different meaning more relevant, though often one that built upon the first. A great example is the modern word lewd which, around the 9th Century merely meant non-clerical or non-ecclesiastical, found with this sense in the Wycliffe Bible and The Canterbury Tales. Over the next few centuries, it expanded to mean unlearned or untaught (in ecclesiastical ways), and, by the 14th century, started to appear with a meaning of low-class or ignorant. Finally, around the 15th century, we find the word lewd taking a more nefarious turn and being associated with unchaste and, slightly later, sexually predatory tendencies.

Power in a word

What gives "cancel" used in this new way such power is not the word itself; we have an ample supply of words that mean to boycott or reject, but how it encodes a communal sense of morality and accountability, thereby reinforcing a particular set of socio-cultural values. The term itself then becomes a powerful tool to bring attention to the behavior of an individual or collective that violates that code and signals others to rally behind our cause or conviction.

While the sentiment of disgust or backlash against people that said or did offensive things has always been around, calling it out using such a recognizable discursive strategy has made it much more visible. Add in the instant access to millions over Twitter or Instagram and you have yourself a linguistic storm in the making.

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However, as of late, "canceling" seems to have been a victim of its own success, as the term cancel culture now appears to be invoked as much to inhibit public debate as to spark it; just consider the recent politicized use of the term in regard to Dr. Seuss. Only time will tell if this term will make it past its own backlash, but its rise remains a testament to the power of our new digital world, and the enduring ability of our language to shift right alongside it.