Reappropriation

Claude Monet's Impression, soleil levant was ridiculed as "Impression-ist" in 1872, but the term then became the name of the art movement, "impressionism", and painters began to self-identify as "impressionist".

In linguistics, reappropriation, reclamation, or resignification[1] is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. It is a specific form of a semantic change (i.e., change in a word's meaning). Linguistic reclamation can have wider implications in the fields of discourse and has been described in terms of personal or sociopolitical empowerment.

  1. ^ Brontsema, Robin (2004-06-01). "A Queer Revolution: Reconceptualizing the Debate Over Linguistic Reclamation". Colorado Research in Linguistics. 17 (1). doi:10.25810/dky3-zq57. ISSN 1937-7029. Archived from the original on 2021-07-18. Linguistic reclamation, also known as linguistic resignification or reappropriation, refers to the appropriation of a pejorative epithet by its target(s).