virtue signalling
virtue signalling – sostantivo
A lot of what happens on Facebook, as with Twitter, is “virtue signalling” – showing off to your friends about how right on you are.
Ms Southern has since criticised the Prime Minister, labelling Ms Ardern’s comments “virtue signalling nonsense”.
The whole point of virtue signalling is that it’s disingenuous and cheap. A better term would be “showing off”.
In un post di qualche tempo fa avevamo preso in esame social justice warrior (SJW), termine per descrivere chi, a detta degli utilizzatori dell’epiteto, si erge a paladino della giustizia sociale solo per promuovere la propria immagine. La stessa connotazione spregiativa ha virtue signalling, locuzione usata dalla destra per identificare coloro che, specialmente da sinistra, si schierano pubblicamente a favore di una causa solo a parole.
Proprio quello che è successo quando l’attivista di estrema destra Lauren Southern – che doveva tenere un ciclo di conferenze in Nuova Zelanda insieme a un altro opinionista di destra, Stefan Molyneux, – ha tacciato Jacinda Ardern, premier neozelandese e leader del centrosinistra, di “virtue-signalling nonsense”. La Ardern aveva affermato che la Nuova Zelanda non osteggiava la libertà di parola bensì l’ideologia di estrema destra propugnata dalla Southern e da Molyneux. Secondo l’attivista, dunque, la premier più che contestare tale ideologia voleva mostrare pubblicamente di esserle contraria.
I termini signal e signalling sono nati in ambiente accademico, nel campo dell’economia e della biologia evolutiva, per indicare l’informazione che viene trasmessa all’interno di un processo di comunicazione codificato. Pertanto il loro uso per riferirsi a chi condivide un link sui social nell’intento di dimostrare la propria sensibilità sociale o politica è visto da molti come assolutamente fuori luogo.
Origini del termine
La locuzione virtue signalling risale al primo decennio del secolo ma si è diffusa più rapidamente dopo essere apparsa qualche anno fa su una rivista inglese di destra.
Traduzione di Loredana Riu
virtue signalling – noun
A lot of what happens on Facebook, as with Twitter, is “virtue signalling” – showing off to your friends about how right on you are.
Ms Southern has since criticised the Prime Minister, labelling Ms Ardern’s comments “virtue signalling nonsense”.
The whole point of virtue signalling is that it’s disingenuous and cheap. A better term would be “showing off”.
In an earlier post, we looked at the term social justice warrior (SJW) which is often used to disparage those who allegedly adopt the cause of social justice in order to enhance their own status or image. Similarly negative connotations attach to the term virtue signalling, which is used by some, especially on the right, to criticise those on the left who publicly support worthy or right-on causes, especially if all they do is talk about them.
This was the case when the far-right speaker Lauren Southern accused New Zealand’s left-of-centre Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of “virtue-signalling nonsense” for saying that her country was hostile, not to free speech, but to the extreme right-wing views put forward by Ms Southern and her co-speaker Stefan Molyneux. She was saying that Ms Ardern did not so much as object to her views as want to show people publicly that she was opposed to them, a common accusation levelled by those who charge others with virtue signalling.
As others have pointed out, the terms signal and signalling have specific meanings in fields such as economics and biology, relating to the communication of information by means other than words. They argue that it is lazy and inaccurate to use them to refer to people sharing links on social media that show how caring or politically aware they are.
Origin
The expression virtue signalling has been around since the first decade of this century, although it gained wider circulation when it was used in an article in rightwing British magazine to deplore the type of behaviour it describes.
