Blog: Reappropriation and when is it appropriate?
You know those words you can barely say out loud without people shooting you dirty looks? Ever wonder how they got that way? At some point, they were thrown around with openly hostile intent, and over time, their meaning either shifted or the words themselves became socially off-limits. This process is called reappropriation , reclamation, or resignification, where a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. This can happen through Value Reversal (changing the meaning from pejorative to positive), Neutralization (changing the meaning from pejorative to neutral), or Stigma Exploitation (retaining the derogatory nature as a reminder of the unfair treatment). Well-known examples of this include the N-word (in African-American communities) and the F-word (in LGBTQIA+ spaces). But this isn’t a new phenomenon. One of the earliest famous examples is actually Impressionism: when Monet and others first developed the style, “Impressionist” wa...
