Resistance through Revision: Reclamation and Ideological Roles for Incels

This paper provides a theory of how language is used in projects of resistance, whether this be towards actual or merely perceived oppression. The theory is based on the idea of social roles, which have previously been used to explain the offence caused by slur terms (Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt 2018). We examine two types of resistance projects. The first is a reclamation project. This consists in re-purposing existing slur words and associating them with new roles. The second project is neologism. This creates new words and uses them to create new roles. To explain both projects of resistance, we use the idea of role revision. In reclamation projects, when members of the target group use a slur term among themselves, this creates conditions to revise the subordinate role assigned by the slur into a positive role with the potential for re-empowerment. The neologism projects employ a similar mechanism of role revision with different effects. An example of neologistic resistance against perceived oppression is that occurring within incel communities (involuntary celibates). Incel communities have a sense of social stigmatization and incel individuals perceive themselves as being in subordinate roles relative to women and other men. In response, they construct an ideology which aims to provide moral comfort and a promise of future reward. Critical to this ideology are new (ideological) roles, associated with new words, which promise to improve the social status of incels. We argue that this type of neologism project has similarities to insular reclamation in that both projects aim to transform subordinated roles into positive ones.