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Who's a Nerd, Anyway?
What is a nerd? Mary Bucholtz, a linguist at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, has been working on the question for the last 12 years. She has
gone to high schools and colleges, mainly in California, and asked students from
different crowds to think about the idea of nerdiness and who among their peers
should be considered a nerd; students have also "reported" themselves.
Nerdiness, she has conducted, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior.
People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it,
"hyperwhite".
While the word "nerd" has been used since the 1950s, its origin remains
elusive. Nerds, however, are easy to find everywhere. Being a nerd has become a
widely accepted and even proud identity, and nerds have carved out a comfortable
niche in popular culture; "nerdcore" rappers, who wear pocket protectors and
write paeans to computer routing devices,are in vogue, and TV networks continue
to run shows with titles like “Beauty and the Geek". As a linguist, Bucholtz
understands nerdiness first and foremost as a way of using language. In a 2001
paper, “The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness'',
and other works, including a book in progress, Bucholtz notes that the
"hegemonic" "cool white" kids use a limited amount of African-American
vernacular English; they may say “blood" in lieu of "friend," or drop the “g” in
“playing”.
But the nerds she has interviewed, mostly white kids, punctiliously adhere
to Standard English. They often favor Greco-Latinate words over Germanic ones
("it's my observation" instead of "I think”),a preference that lends an air of
scientific detachment. They're aware they speak distinctively and they use
language as a badge of membership in their cliques. One nerd girl Bucholtz
observed performed a typically nerdy feat when asked to discuss "blood" as a
slang term; she replied: “B-I-O-O-D. The word is blood," evoking the format of a
spelling bee. She went on, "That's the stuff which is inside of your veins,"
humorously using a literal definition Nerds are not simply victims of the
prevailing social codes about what's appropriate and what's cool; they actively
shape their own identities and put those codes in question.
Though Bucholtz uses the term “hyperwhite" to describe nerd language in
particular, she claims that the "symbolic resources of an extreme whiteness" can
be used elsewhere. After all, trends in music, dance, fashion, sports and
language in a variety of youth subcultures are often traceable to an
African-American source, but unlike the styles of cool European American
students, in nerdiness, African-American culture and language do not play even a
covert role. Certainly, "hyperwhite" seems a good word for the sartorial choices
of paradigmatic nerds. While a stereotypical black youth, from the zoot-suit era
through the bling years, wears flashy clothes, chosen for their aesthetic value,
nerdy clothing is purely practical: pocket protectors, belt sheaths for gadgets,
short shorts for excessive heat, etc. Indeed, "hyperwhite" works as a
description for nearly everything we intuitively associate with nerds, which is
why Hollywood has long traded in jokes that try to capitalize on the emotional
dissonance of nerds acting black (Eugene Levy saying, "You got me straight
trippin, boo”) and black people being nerds(the characters Urkel and Carlton in
the sitcoms "Family Matters" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”).
By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds
deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being
white. Bucholtz sees something to admire here. In declining to appropriate
African-American youth culture, thereby "refusing to exercise the racial
privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded," she writes, nerds may
even be viewed as "traitors to whiteness." You might say they know that a
culture based on theft is a culture not worth having. On the other hand, the
code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may
shut out "black students who chose not to openly display their abilities.” This
is especially disturbing at a time when African-American students can be
stigmatized by other African-American students if they're too obviously diligent
about school .Even more problematic, "Nerds' dismissal of black cultural
practices often led them to discount the possibility of friendship with black
students," even if the nerds were involved in political activities like
protesting against the dismantling of affirmative action in California schools.
If nerdiness, as Bucholtz suggests, can be a rebellion against the cool white
kids and their use of black culture, it’s a rebellion with a limited
membership.
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