interview paper

White Kids Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity

Mary Bucholtz

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of figures List of tables Preface Transcription conventions Phonetic symbols

1 White styles: language, race, and youth identities

page viii \ ix

Xl

xm XIV

2 Listening to whiteness: researching language and race in a California high school 21

3 Cliques, crowds, and crews: social labels in racial space 42

4 Say word?: race and style in white teenage slang 67

5 I'm like yeah but she's all no: innovative quotative markers and preppy whiteness 90

6 Pretty fly for a white guy: European American hip hop fans and African American English 116

7 We're through being cool: white nerds, superstandard English, and the rejection oftrendiness 139

8 "Not that I'm racist": strategies of colorblindness in talk about race and friendship 164

9 White on black: narratives of racial fear and resentment 187

10 "I guess I'm white": ethnoraciallabels and the problem ofwhiteness 210

11 Audible whiteness

Notes References Index

236

250 255 271

vii

138 Pretty fly for a white guy

room, they held the primary cultural authority to engage in this sort of hip h cultural production .. Bi!ly's comment is thus both an acknowledgment of an:~ challenge to the rac1alideology of African American youth culture.

Conclusion

At Bay City High School, white teenagers who affiliated with hip hop drew on resources of black youth language and culture to construct their styl' t' 'd ·· h ~m I entities. T. ese speakers ':ere by no means ~uent in AAVE, yet they creatively ada?ted lexical, phonological, and grammatical elements associated with the vanety to ~roduce individual hip hop styles. Students at the school viewed the~e ~ractices throug.h the lens of two competing ideologies of hip hop: the racial Ideology of Afncan American youth language and culture as racialized cultural property, and the stylistic ideology, which held that such resources were not racially specific and were legitimately available to hip hop aficio- nados of all ethnoracial bac;kgrounds. . White hip .hop fans' use of AAVE features not only challenged the racial I~eol~g~ ofh~p h~p but also ignored AAVE 's status as a complex and systematic lmgmstlc vanety m a number of ways. First, their use was unsystematic and did ~ot co~form to the variety's grammatical principles. Second, it was partial, mvolvmg only a handful offeatures of the entire linguistic system. Third it was superficial, for with a few exceptions, the most accessible features te~ded to be the .most widely used. Fourth, it was stereotypical, with the most widely recog~1zed elements of AAVE being generally preferred. And finally, it was sometimes exaggerated, with supercorrect use of a small set of indexically rich features.

This view of Afric~n ~erican .language enabled European American hip hop fans to create an Identity relatiOn of adequation - albeit contested with yout? of col~r .and. especially with African Americans, as well as an identity relatiOn. of distmct10n from other white students. Meanwhile, they sought to authe~t~cate th.eir practices as indexical of hip hop even as their peers worked to pos1t1on their style as false and inauthentic. In this way European American boys who engaged in hip hop came to represent a highly visible and often problematized form of whiteness in contrast to the more normative and hence unmarked white style of preppy youth.

. The ~ext chapter turns attention to another marked white youth style at Bay CI~ High School: nerdiness. Whereas hip hop fans pursued coolness through th~Ir use of stylistic resources from black youth culture, nerdy teenagers reJected coolness altogether, thus becoming ideologically hyperwhite according to the school's racial and stylistic order.

7 We're through being cool: white nerds, superstandard English, and the rejection of trendiness

Introduction

On my first day in Ms. Stein's fourth-period class, I could feel the eyes of several students on me. I was particularly aware of a nearby student who was partly facing me, smiling slightly. I smiled in response and then spent the next several minutes covertly staring. I was already becoming accustomed to encountering teenagers whom I was unable to classify ethnoracially, but I was not used to being unable to classify them by gender. I found few clues to settle

. the question definitively. Long hair might suggest a girl, but many boys at Bay City High wore their hair long. No jewelry, no makeup; strong features and heavy brows; a thin frame clad in nondescript jeans and a loose T-shirt the student was attractive in a way that quietly evaded gender requirements. It was only when Ms. Stein introduced me to the class and the teenager turned fully toward me, caught my eye, and smiled broadly that the ambiguity was resolved. With a clear view of her face, I could see that the friendly student was a girl.

As I got to know Fred and her group of friends, it amazed me that I had ever had trouble recognizing her gender; certainly, her version of femininity excited no comment or confusion among her peers. It soon became clear that Fred was one of a number of Bay City High School students who were not interested in participating in the high-pressure, rigidly gendered social worlds of cool European American youth. Fred and other teenagers skirted these issues by adopting a nerdy identity that rejected trendy youth styles and instead prized intelligence (especially but not exclusively of a scientific or academic nature), eccentric nonconformity, and a zany brand of humor. Nerdiness resolved several problems for these students: it freed them from keeping up with youth trends, it attenuated the gender differentiation mandated by cool styles, it removed the pressure to engage in practices like drinking, drug use, and heterosexual activity, and it enabled them to pursue their intellectual interests.

Nerds played an important role in the stylistic and racial system ofBay City High, for in spuming coolness they in effect also separated themselves from the local African American youth culture where European American youth trends often originated. Nerdiness therefore had a racialized as well as a

139

140 We're through being cool

stylistic meaning: ideologically positioned as remote from blackness, nerds were often seen as hyperwhite.

Refusing coolness

While nerdiness is often viewed as tied to social exclusion (Kinney 1993 ), it has been embraced and even celebrated by some recent commentators (Anderegg 2007; Nugent 2008). Indeed, like other youth styles, nerdiness is an actively claimed identity produced through semiotic practices (Bucholtz 1999b; cf. Bakht 2010; Heller 1999); at Bay City High School, being a nerd was not primarily about being unpopular but about being deliberately uncool. Nerdy teenagers often expressed disinterest in, or even contempt for, trendy social practices. They were thus far more oppositional to both preppy and hip hop youth than either group was to the other. Likewise, the contrasting jock aqd burnout youth categories described by Penelope Eckert (1989, 2000) shared an orientation to coolness despite their antagonism toward each other, but as Eckert notes, nerds stood outside this binary: "If a Jock is the opposite of a Burnout, a nerd is the opposite of both" (1989: 48). At Bay City High, teenagers who affiliated with nerdiness were aware of its stigma, but they did not consider themselves social failures.

Fred's all-female friendship group challenged the social exclusivity and narrow concerns of cool youth through an unofficial club, Random Reigns Supreme, which had no designated activities other than to showcase individual members' offbeat interests, such as a fascination with cows and an almost scientific curiosity about the lifestyle of Mr. Salty, the Nabisco pretzels mascot. ("If you were a pretzel, would you wear a sailor cap?" was one of the club's nonsequitur slogans.) In legitimating the girls' friendship and their untrendy tastes, Random Reigns Supreme made visible a playful alternative to coolness; its members even managed to get a photograph in the school yearbook along- side officially recognized clubs. The club thus subverted the function of many high school organizations and activities as training grounds for corporate life (Eckert 1989).

When I first interviewed Fred, I would not have classified her as a nerd based on her style. I was therefore surprised when she used the term to describe herself and her friendship group:

(1) 1 Mary: [ISo- I]

2 Fred: [I We're a!J]ways the nerds. 3 We like It. 4 Mary: You@'re the nerds?

5 Fred: We're <creaky voice> {glad} to be the ner:ds, 6 a@nd the squa:res and, -

Refusing coolness

7 Mary: Is that what= 8 Fred: - =[2we don't- z] 9 Mary: =[zyou say z] you a:re?

10 Fred: <[i?]> 11 Well, 12 we don't exactly s:- 13 We don't always s~y it,= 14 =I: say it.

15 n@ 16 Mary: @@[3@ 3]

17 Fred: [3But-3] 18 Mary:@ You're [4prou:d.4]

19 Fred: [4you 4] !mow,

20 Mary: [s@@ sl 21 Fred: [5we do:n't- sl 22 We just don't, 23 (0.5) 24 dri:nk,

we d[6o:n't, 25 26 <rapid> { d6]o=

27 Mary:

28 Fred:

[ 6 Mm. 6]

29 we don't-

=any drugs,}]

30 wejust, . 31 <smiling voice quality> {get tnaturally h1gh},

32 Mary: <smiling voice quality> {A[7ha:.7]}

33 Fred: [7@: 7]

34 Mary: [8So that makes you nerds?s] 35 Fred: [8 We jt~st do: ins~ne 8] funny things.= 36 =ti don't know, 37 maybe. 38 (0:-6)

39 Mary: So:,= 40 Fred: =And we're smart. 41 We get <[e?]>- 42 good grades. 43 (1.3) 44 Mostly.

141

Although Fred initially implies that she and her friends wi~lingly accept the label nerd for themselves (lines 2, 5), in response to my questwns she acknowl- edges that she has chosen the term for her group and that it is no_t equally embraced by all her friends (lines 11-14). Hence F:ed's st~tement 1s less_an objective description of her friends' identity than an 1deolog1cal representatiOn

142 We're through being cool

(which I help to co-construct; Bucholtz 2007b ). Yet Fred's pithy distillation of her group's practices and values is a kind of"nerd manifesto" that aptly captures the ideological differences between nerds and other teenagers; in its general outline, it accurately identifies differences in practice as well.

Like the members of the Random Reigns Supreme club, other nerdy teen- agers had little interest in or tolerance for the preoccupations of their cool peers. One such student, Erich, a fifteen-year-old European American sophomore with glasses and a shaggy mane of dark blond curls, spent his lunch periods reading in the school corridor. Hunched over his book, he was often mistaken for a .girl at the school whom he superficially resembled. As with Fred, any occaswnal gender confusion was the result of Erich's indifference to gender norms, not a conscious subversion of them. It therefore differed from the deliberately gender-bending styles adopted by a few teenagers at Bay City High, mostly girls, who affiliated with punk and goth styles, as well as one or two openly lesbian students. 1

Despite these fleeting .gender mix-ups, Erich was unconcerned about whether he met cool standards of masculinity. He remarked without embar- rassment, and even with some pride, that he was a poor athlete, an arena in which, as at other schools, many boys at Bay City High School garnered popularity and sometimes celebrity status: "I'm really horrible at sports. I'm a total klutz. I fall down. I hate sports." He was similarly uninterested in current youth trends; his dismissive attitude toward coolness is evident in a comment he made to me about people who are "fake" during our discussion of slang terms and other lexical items.

(2) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

Erich: They, they're just not real.=

=They're kind of, all, uh, they know what's going o:n, but that doesn't have anything to do with reality, in any [ 1 way.

Mary: [1Hm. J] Erich: SJ]o,

.h they're just kind of, hot ai:r. .h Which is-

15 Like, 16 "O:h. 17 This is what's in sty:le."

18 Mary: [2Mm:. 2J 19 Erich: [lAnd they2] have no tidea,

Refusing coolness 143

20 what's:, 21 anyth- 22 about anything, 23 but, 24 stuff like that.

Erich contrasts cool teenagers, who "know what's going o:n" (line 6) and "what's in sty:le" (line 17), with those who are connected to reality, such as himself. "I consider myself to be a real person," he went on to say. "I deal with reality rather than all this, uh, junk." Being concerned with trendiness, for Erich, was incompatible with being real.

While Erich took a strongly oppositional stance to coolness, other nerdy students were less absolute in their social identities. The following example, previously analyzed in Chapter 5 for its use of quotative markers, illustrates this ambivalence in an interview with Claire and Christine, who identified as nerdy but were moving into cool social crowds. Here the two girls describe the social risks associated with academic achievement:

(3) 1 Claire: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

It's not, very, popular to be smart. Like everyone goes, <breathy> {"Ohman,} that test was so hard, what'd you get on it?"=

=<deeper pitch> {"Oh I got a C: on it."}

.h <breathy> {"Well I got a ~ ~inus, I was so excited, I thought I was going to tf:~l it.} .h What'd you get?"=

- =<lower volume> {"O:h,

16 I- 17 I- 18 I- 19 I got an A:."}

20 Christine: And everyone [ 1kind of J] falls silent. 21 Claire: [I "O:h." Il 22 Christine: "O:h." 23 You know like, 24 "Nnn."=

25 Mary:

26 Claire: 27 28

=Mm. And th~n you feel compelled to say,

.h <higher pitch> {"But it was s~ ha:rd,

144 We're through being cool

29 ma:n!"} 30 [2 I mean, 2 ] 31 Christine: [2 "I studied 2] s:o b ha:rd!"3 ] 32 Claire: <higher pitch> {[3 "I stud3 ]ied so hard!"

33 Mary: [4 Mm. 4 ]

34 Claire: [4 "O:h! 4 ] 35 I al.:.- 36 I- 37 I stayed up [5 till like ~:ne!"} 5] 38 Christine: <lower pitch> {[5 "My tutor helped 5] me:."} 39 [6@@@6] 40 Claire: 41 42 43 44 45

[6 I know. 6] I know,=

=and then you say, the magic word, "I have a tu:tor." @=

46 Mary: =Mm:.

47 Christine: And everyone goes, 48 "O::::h," 49 <lower volume> {and they're all jealous,} 50 <creaky voice> {and they're like,- 51 "O:h, 52 53

wo:w, I wish I had a tutor."}

Being "not, very, popular" (lines 1-3) is a central issue for these girls' identities. They enact an imagined interaction in which they must obscure their intelli- gence in front of their cool classmates, accounting for their excellent grades by explaining, "I have a tu:tor" (line 44). In fact, neither Christine nor Claire had a tutor, and they needed no help to excel in school. This scenario thus displays the tension between these girls' academic abilities and their desire not to seem different from their cooler and less intellectually gifted peers, as dramatized in Claire's embarrassed, stuttered confession that she got an A on her test (lines 15-19) and Christine's grunted performance of others' disdainful reaction to such a confession (line 24). Claire's reported attempt to mitigate her shameful high achievement by offering a series of accounts (lines 26-3 7) also demon- strates this tension. Lexically, moreover, her nerdy use of formal vocabulary in characterizing herself as "compelled" to explain her high grades (line 26) contrasts with her cooler use of the colloquial affiliative marker man in self- quotation (line 29).

In this context, the claim to have a tutor is not a flaunting of wealth, since most of Claire and Christine's social group had upper-middle-class parents who could afford to provide their children with such advantages. Instead, it is

Refusing coolness 145

esented as a deliberate ploy to downplay academic ability (and it may also ~~ a way of mocking their more privileged acquaintances, fo: ~oth girls ca~e fr m families that were comfortable but not affluent). Chnstme and Clmre re~ognized the necessity of such deceptions when they hung out with the cool

W d but they also insisted on the value of nerdiness. Although they may have cro , ..

hidden this aspect of their identities with cool teenagers, they were unwillmg

to abandon it altogether. Despite such tensions, then, nerdy students generally understood_ their

social position at the high school as a choice rather t~an a curse .. They VI~":'ed their close-knit friendship groups as evidence of their own social selectivity,

ot oftheir social rejection by cool students. Nerds maintained high standards ~or acceptable friends, and they evaluated those who did not measure up just as harshly as cool students did, although their criteria were rather different. Fred for example, remarked with a chuckle, "I don't go for stupid people. I just ~an't get along with them, you know?" Erich expressed~ similar i~toler­ ance: "I just can't stand people who have all the outward signs of bemg an extremely stupid person." Yet Erich was also aware that his own often goofy behavior raised eyebrows among cool students; he noted, regarding himself and his friends, "My observation is that other people think we're kind of foolish and crazy for the way we do things." Erich's comments demonstrate the difference between cool students' values and his own: he represents his group's nonconforming ~racti_ces not as s:Upidity but as a k~nd,of enlight~ne,d "craziness" that marks mtelhgence. Attitudes such as Ench s and Clmre s may be read as arrogance, and in fact nerds are often portrayed in American culture as not merely socially inept but also misanthropic. Yet it was cool teenagers who most publicly engaged in social exclusion and negative eval-

uation of others (Chapter 5). If nerds' separation from other groups might be mistaken for aloofuess, it

could also be misread as social isolation. But nerdy youth were simply comfort- able enough with their social status that, unlike their cool peers, they did not closely monitor other social groups. This difference was evident i_n stude~ts' maps of the school. Most teenagers included at least some other social_ly sah~nt groups, but nerds were less inclined to note the presence of groups with which

they did not interact. Erich, for example, spent a good deal of time constructing his map (Figure 7.1 ),

drawing straight lines with a ruler that he regularly carried with him and jokin~ that his map was not precise because he was not using graph paper or a stencil for the lettering. (Another nerdy student, Bob, shows similar precision, albeit facetiously, in her own map in Figure 5.2a of Chapter 5, in which she provide~ a mock scale -1 inch= 30ft- and gives ironic credit to the maker of her ballpomt pen: courtesy of Bic © Clic!.) Yet in all Erich's attention to detail, he did not indicate any social groups on his map; he marked only the spot on the floor of

146 We're through being cool

I

Arts Building

North Street

Bungalows

Science Building

"'Lu!VCI-)

Classroom Building

Figure 7 .I: Erich's map of Bay City High School

t N

Administration Building ,

t~e c~rridor where he spent his lunch period reading. Claire's map (Figure 7.2) likewise documents in detail her lunchtime location during ninth, tenth, and eleve.nth. grades but d~es not indicate where other groups hang out. Her map also md1cat~s that durmg her freshman year her nerdy social group tended to co~greg~te m or near classroom buildings. In general, nerds spent their lunch penods mdoors more than cool students, often assembling in classrooms to

Moving in and out ofnerdiness

i. Bagel Shop + N

0 DCJ

Science Building

Classroom Building

Administration

~'1' --~~--~----

Old Classro::l Building \

I t- \ ~li·Jung

Figure 7.2: Claire's map of Bay City High School

147

review their homework together. The omission of social detail from these maps does not necessarily mean that nerds were oblivious to the doings of cool teen- agers, but certainly they were less invested in the social worlds of trendy youth. Given my standard instructions for the map-drawing activity, "Show me where you hang out and anything else you think is important," nerdy students may have been seizing an opportunity to display their indifference to the geopolitics of high school life.

Moving in and out of nerdiness

Complete separation between nerdy and cool teenagers was often impossible, since in many cases students had known each other for most of their lives, lived in the same neighborhoods, and took many of the same classes; the strong academic reputation of Bay City High School meant that many trendy students were as committed to their studies as were their nerdy counterparts. Moreover, like other social identities, nerdiness shifted over time and across contexts. Some teenagers reported their transition from junior high to high school as a movement not away from nerdiness (Kinney 1993) but toward

148 We're through being cool

~is st~ie. This patt.ern is seen in the social trajectories of Bob, Loden, and . ate, a ofw~om d1sta~c~d themselves from friends who began to participate ~n cool practices, and It IS even more evident in Fred's case. As discussed m. Chap.ter 5, Fred deliberately chose to leave her former, popular, group of friends m favor of her current, nerdier, group.

Conversely, at the time of the study Claire and Christine were contemplat· b . I . mg ec~~mg cYioo er, a goal that Clmre planned to achieve in part by smoking man Juana. et Claire had had past experiences both with nerds and with a cool group that made her doubt whether she entirely fit in with either. Likewise · . example (4) Christine states that she does not wholly belong in any gro~~~ The example opens as she describes how she differs from her nerdy frienXs (due to space limitations, brief comments from Claire and me and some small excerpts of Christine's talk are omitted):

(~) sometimes I just feel like, (1.8) that I'm too:, like, (1.3) that I'm too: ... that I'm too hke, s:oded or something, you know? ... ~ike I'm too:, .h c:ynical:, .hand I'm too:, you kn~~'hke, unhappy, ... You h~ve to sta~ hke P~ rated@ or they'lljust be like, "Oh my go.d. . .. Lrke I feel way too hke, I don t know rf ra:ded is the word, but I feel way too u,:h, (1.7): .. Ifeel older than them, in a lot of ways and, (0.8) I feel like, I:'m too::, (1.6) I m too, hke, spo:rts onented, mo:re, and mo:re, uh, you know, there's li:fe other than schoo:l, ... Whereas, I don't fit in with the people, who, are really really intense on their sports, because I'm- you know, sports isn't e:verything to me:. Urn, so I'm a little too nerdy for the (0.6) jo:cks, I guess you could put it that way, urn, ... I'm too jocky forth~ ne:rds, . : . I'm too like, ru:re for the truly, you know, the guys who, hang out in the Park a:ll the time, ... I'm not quite crunchy enough for them, ...

Christine loc~tes the problem not in other groups but in herself, as shown by her lengthy list of persona~ characteristics that exclude her from each group, marked by parallel syntactic structure (I'm too+ adjective). Yet she does not seem to consider herself a social failure; her frustration is instead directed at the rigidity o.f available stylistic categories ( cf. Chapter 3). Social categories ~ave ~een smd to .be "protected against induction" (Sacks (1995: 336) in that 1f a discrepancy IS found between a category and one of its members the category is not redefined; instead, the member is excluded or labeled de;iant. Thus, b~fore the example begins, Christine stated that she fails to "qualify" for nerdmess or any other style. It is clear from her remarks however that s.he is not wholly committed to membership in the nerd catego~. Her de;crip- ~wn of her. nerdy friends is rather patronizing, emphasizing their childlike mnocence m contrast to her own more "cynical" outlook. Christine implies, then, that her ambiguous style is a choice in its own right.

As teenagers moving in opposite directions between the ideological poles of coolness and nerdiness, Fred on the one hand and Claire and Christine on the other demonstrate the complexity and fluidity of such identities. Yet all three girls, despite their differences, shared with one another and with other nerdy

Gender, sexuality, and nerd style 149

teenagers a dislike for the cliquishness associated with cool social groups . Moreover, the heightened gender and sexual display required of trendy teen- agers was of little interest to nerdy students, especially girls, in part because it was difficult to reconcile with their identities as intelligent nonconformists.

Gender, sexuality, and nerd style

Nerds' rejection of the hegemonic order was apparent in many aspects of their semiotic proctices, which were often deliberately - uncool. Nerdy youth typically wore comfortable, casual clothing without sports logos or designer labels, and both girls and boys often wore old-fashioned and (at the time) unfashionable Converse Chuck Taylor canvas sneakers in bright colors rather than trendy oversized leather sports shoes or platform sandals. However, nerds often sought to stand out in some elements of their clothing decisions: a boy named Robert, for example, regularly wore a court jester's cap.

Nerd girls in particular tended to challenge fashion nonns. Unlike cool girls, they did not wear revealing clothing, and although they sometimes wore items emblazoned with Sesame Street characters or other emblems of child- hood, these did not exhibit the combined infantilization and sexualization of cool white girls' clothing (Chapter 5). In fact, female nerds often seemed not simply to ignore but consciously to subvert conventions of feminine self-adornment. Whereas preppy girls preferred pastels and girls with other cool styles often favored black or dark clothing and makeup (cf. Eckert 1996; Mendoza-Denton 2008), many nerd girls delighted in unfashionably bright, even mismatched colors. Their jewelry tended toward plastic Crackerjack rings, and their use of makeup was generally limited to painting their fingernails in alternating colors of red, blue, yellow, and green. In their playful personal style, nerds were also distinct from self-described "normal" teenagers, who often assiduously avoided calling attention to themselves by wearing unremarkable clothing. When "normal" students did venture to wear more dramatic styles, these were usually of the trendy or sexy variety.

By opting out oftrendiness, nerdy students largely opted out of the school's heterosexual market (Eckert 1996) and its attendant pressure to engage in sexual activity. The disengagement of nerds from sex and romance was not total, but the ideology of nerds' nonsexuality meant that nerds in romantic relationships could face disapproval from their friends (Bucholtz and Hall 2004: 501-503). Nerds' disregard of sexual and gender norms was especially evident at the spring prom, a formal dance that is an annual tradition in US high schools and is a veritable celebration of heterosexual romance (Best 2000). Most Bay City High School students attended the prom in heterosexual couples or double dates; many nerd girls, however, attended with their female friendship groups. And in contrast to popular girls' glamorous, sexy, and

150 We're through being cool

expensive gowns, nerd girls' prom dresses struck a rather different note. Bob for _example, wo:e a childlike sunflower-appliqu6d gingham sundress, and Claire, who studied dance, chose to wear an old-fashioned ballet dress with full tutu from a used clothing store. The pressure of the prom is different for boys, given that the ideology of romance is marketed overwhelmingly to girls (e.g., Christian-Smith 1990). But at least one nerd boy (the flamboyant Robe~, once again) subverted the usual formal dress requirement by renting a musical-comedy-style tuxedo, including top hat, tails, and cane.

Besides challenging Bay City High's normative gender and sexual arrange- ments, nerds also subverted the school's valorization of academic achieve- ment and extracurricular participation. Nerds fulfilled these expectations but in ways unanticipated by teachers and administrators. Their intellectual ability was a source of institutional pride when statewide standardized test scores were reported, but it was also an embarrassment to teachers whose errors they regularly caught and publicly corrected. And their extracurricular activities were often not viewed by their peers as accruing greater glory to the school: chess club, not cheer leading; badminton, not basketball.

Gender played a role here as well. Nerd boys in gym class confronted the masculine norm to perform well in sports. Conversely, although boys were also sanctioned for displaying their knowledge too readily, the problematic nature of being smart was especially acute for girls, and unlike sports, this dilemma was not limited to a single class but to all their academic courses throughout their high school careers. It was often difficult for cool girls to balance the interactional requirements of hegemonic heterosexual femininity with their desire to compete and achieve academically, a double bind that continues into college (Holland and Eisenhart 1990). By withdrawing from conventional femininity and its obligations, female nerds were able to display their intellectual ability without apology (see also Heller 1999: 202-209).

The linguistic construction of nerd identity

Nerds' tendency to resist conventional gender displays carried over into language. In academic contexts, nonnerdy high-achieving white girls often hedged their statements when displaying knowledge, but nerd girls generally made knowledge-based assertions baldly and without mitigation. A number of female nerds had lower-pitched voices than those of their cool counter- parts, which were often almost babyish, and nerdy girls with high-pitched voices, like Loden, did not seem to be trying to sound cute or feminine. This rejection of the linguistic trappings of hegemonic femininity was evident even in students' pseudonym choices for this study. Cool girls selected names like Lumiere (with requisite French pronunciation), Zoe, or Tiffany, in con- trast to nerd girls' choices such as Fred and Bob the full pseudonym of the

The linguistic constmction of nerd identity 151

girl who chose the latter name is Bob, Conqueror of the Universe. What is striking about these names is that they are not simply masculine but masc- uline in an unexpected way: they evoke affable Everymen rather than macho he-men. Hence, Fred's and Bob's pseudonyms seem to indicate not an affiliation with masculinity but a tongue-in-cheek disaffiliation with con- ventional femininity.

Nerdy students drew on linguistic resources at multiple levels, from pho- netics to discourse, to display an identity that was simultaneously associated with intelligence, humor, and a resolute refusal to be cool. As seen in earlier chapters, the practices of distinction in which nerds engaged often involved avoiding trendy linguistic forms like current slang and innovative quotative markers. Nerdy practices of adequation, meanwhile, included the use of super- standard English, an interactional emphasis on intelligence and knowledge, and an orientation to words and word play.

Superstandard English as a stylistic resource

Nerds' linguistic style set them apart from their trendy peers through the use of elements of superstandard English, a highly and sometimes exaggeratedly formal version of Standard English (see also Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2006). The superstandard style was distinguished phonetically by careful articulation and especially resistance to processes characteristic of colloquial speech, like consonant cluster simplification and the reduction of unstressed vowels. These careful pronunciations were coupled with lexical formality as well as extremely standard grammar. The style called attention to its own standardness by going beyond traditional norms of prescriptive linguistic correctness, to the point of occasionally extending prescriptive rules to con- texts to which they did not apply. Such linguistic overgeneralization, or hyper- correction (as opposed to the phenomenon of supercorrection discussed in Chapter 6), was prescriptively incorrect, but because it involved rules that were strongly associated with standard language use, it too contributed to the super- standard style.

Superstandard English, unlike Standard English, was a marked linguistic variety among Bay City High School students, evoking the registers of scholar- ship and science. Even a slight use of such forms could therefore suffice to yield a semiotic distinction between nerds and other teenagers. In the following examples, nerdy students draw on elements ofsuperstandard English in talking to me about books they have read or are reading for pleasure. In (5a), Erich describes Neal Stephenson's 1992 bestselling cyberpunk science fiction novel Snow Crash, and in (5b), Claire and Christine jointly offer details about Smilla s Sense of Snow, a mystery novel by Peter Hoeg published in 1993. (The connection to snow in the titles ofboth books is entirely coincidental.)

152

(Sa)

(5b)

We're through being cool

I Erich: 2 3 4

U:h, Hong Kong is a franchise too.= =Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Ko:n~ <[hi'i!J ki'i!Jg]>, <smff>

5 Mary: Is it meant to be a f:unny book, 6 or is it [ 1sort of a:, 1]

7 Erich: [1 Yeah. 8

9 Mary:

10 Erich: 11 12

13 Mary:

14 Erich: 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 Mary: 30

31 Erich: 32 33 34

I Claire: 2 3

4 Mary: 5

6 Claire: 7 8 9

I:t'st] meant to be somewha! <[sA:mwAt]> humor.= =Yeah.=

=Bu:t, it's very good. It's v~ry fun.=

=<lower volume> {It sounds good.}=

Sumatran compu:ter virus. @@ -

<smiling quality> {Yeah.} It's, -

a <[ej?]> comtpu- it's:, that's, (some), who:le, long in:olved plot about these things called n_11:mshub <['nO:mJvb]>. Which 1s kmd of hke a comp.t:tter program that will program your braen. - <sniff> And uh, (0.6)

Oka::y, b@ z] [zlt's:,2 ] it's very complicated. @@-

You have to really read the book to unders:tand i! <[It]>.

I can'! <[khrent]>, quite deal with it yet but, it's (keeping) [1more and more.t]

[t What tis tl it?= =I've <lower volume> -{never heard of it.}

It's, it's this wei:rd book,=

=It takes plac:e i:n, (0.7)

10 Christine: Ice[2land 2 ] <['ajs'lrend]> or something.

11 Claire: (lDen-2]=

The linguistic construction of nerd identity !53

12 Denmark.

13 Christine: !Denmark?

14 Claire: Yeah.

15 Christine: Oh. 16 Oh, 17 she's from Iceland <['ajs'lrend]>.

18 Claire: Yeah. 19 She- 20 she's [3from 3]=

21 Christine: [30kay. 3]= 22 Claire: =Greenland <['g1Inl£nd]>, 23 ac!ually <['rektfglij]>.

24 Christine: Greenland <['gli:nl5nd]>.

At several points in these examples, both Erich and Claire use a careful enunci- ation style in which stops are fully released rather than being unreleased or glottalized as in more colloquial speech (example Sa: somewhat, line 8; it, line 34; example Sb: can i, line 1). In addition, Erich's speech shows some influence of spelling pronunciation in line 3 (Mr. Lees Greater Hong Ko:ng), where he pronounces the -ng of Kong as [l)g] rather than [IJ] (in Hong, the following [k] makes it difficult to determine the pronunciation of the final segment). Likewise, Erich, Claire, and Christine all resist the reduction and deletion of segments: in a comtpu- (example Sa, line 18), where the a, though pronounced in a rather clipped way, is given its full phonetic value [ ej?]; in Claire's pronunciation of the consonant cluster of ac!ually with a fully articulated [t] (example Sb, line 23); and in both of Christine's productions of Iceland (example Sb, lines 10 and 17), where each part of the compound is given nearly equal syllabic weight. (Christine does, however, produce a more reduced pronunciation of the second syllable of Greenland in line 24, following Claire's use of a lax mid vowel in this word

in line 22.) These teenagers' resistance to colloquial speech forms did not merely mark

them as untrendy, as did resistance to current slang or to innovative quotative markers. Additionally, it played the more important role of positioning them as intelligent. The association of this precisely enunciated speech style with intelligence may be due in part to its relationship to literacy: nerdy teenagers frequently used something akin to "reading style" (Labov 1972d) even in their spontaneous conversations. 2 Indeed, as shown in Erich's pronunciation of Hong Kong, nerdy students occasionally employed pronunciations based on spelling rather than speech (e.g., [folk] for folk), as well as noncustomary pronunciations of words they encountered in their extensive reading but had not heard uttered aloud: for example, Loden pronounced her pseudonym as ['ladl).] rather than the more usual ['loud!).]; the name came from a text she had read for a class assignment.

!54 We're through being cool

There was an intimate connection between nerdiness and reading: nerds were the only students I knew who admitted to reading for fun, and they often carried mass-market paperbacks or library books along with their schoolbooks frequently science fiction or fantasy novels but also classical authors such a~ Victor Hugo and Homer. Several nerds also regularly spent their lunch hour and other free time during school reading. By contrast, for cool youth, reading was so remote from their lives that when, at the end of class one Friday afternoon Ms. Stein urged her students, in her usual litany of advice for the weekend, "Read for pleasure!" several cool teenagers laughed. Trendy students often browsed sports or fashion magazines at school, but they did not generally read books umelated to their coursework. Importantly, nerds' passion for reading was not an escape either from reality or from social interaction. Instead, it was a pleasurable individual activity that could also be extended into the social realm with sym- pathetic (and often nerdy) others, as shown in the above examples.

The link between reading and careful speech, moreover, forms the basis· of a secondary link between careful speech and intellectual ability, via the ideolo- gical association of advanced literacy and extensive education with high intel- ligence. In short, for nerds the practice of avoiding casual pronunciation in favor of a literate-based speech style reflected a language ideology that tied formal speech register to intelligence. And intelligence in tum was associated, at least by nerds, with independent thought: a refusal to go along with the crowd whether in fashion or in phonetics. Erich invokes this association in example (6), in which he explains why he thinks the term sophisticated applies to himself and his best friend, Micah. He asserts, "We're not sophisticated in a bad sense, ... we're much more advanced, ... in terms of ... our ways of perceiving things." After I ask what he means, he offers the following example:

(6) I Erich: U:h. 2 1- 3 w- 4 i- 5 we don't think- 6 I don't think of anything in a n:or:mal wa:y, 7 [].h I] 8 Mary: [IMm.I] 9 Erich: like,

10 uh, II a:nd, 12 I don'! <[d5nt]>, 13 I use much more, 14 (0.8) 15 I don't know how to describe it, 16 I don't use all the abbreviations for wo:rds?

The linguistic construction of nerd identity

17 Mary: fHm. 18 Erich: Like, 19 most people abbreviate the- 2o c~t off half the words? 21 Mary: btHm. 2l 22 Erich: bFor no p2]articular reason? 23 And I don't do: that. 24 [3@@@@@@

25 Mary: [3Like, 26 do you have an example of that? 27 Or,3] 28 Erich: U:h, 29 (0.7) 30 uh, 31 t- 32 they,

~! ~~:~ cut off the G: on the en[4d of "t4]rippin:g" <['tnpil):g]>, 35 Mary: [4M:m. 4] 36 [sRight.s] 37 Erich: [sand, s] 38 (e:nd,) 39 N a[6pos6]trophe.= 40 Mary: [6Right.6] 41 Erich: =<higher pitch> {It makes, 42 m- 43 makes} no sense tom~.

155

Erich connects sophistication, in its positi':'e (i.e_., nontrendy) sense, both to an "advanced" and unconventional perspective (lme 6) and t~ ~are~l pronun-

. · (1. 16) From the more elevated position that soph1st1cat10n affords, c1at10n me · "(1. 43) H Erich the cool colloquial speech style simply "makes no sense me. . ere. displays a rather clinical knowledge of slang even as he d1stances h~ms.elf from it, as seen in his fastidious pronunciation of the sl~ng w.ord. trzppmg (originally, 'in an altered mental state'; hence, 'behaving. m, a d1sone.nted or nonsensical way, experiencing strong emotions, overreac.tmg ). He art1cula~es the word, typically pronounced as trippin ', not only w1t~ t~e standard -mg suffix but with a hypercorrect final [g] (line 34), a pr~nunc1at1~n that seem.s to function as the linguistic equivalent of holding a p~rt1cula~ly dlstaste~l.scle.n­ tific specimen between thumb and forefinger for mspectwn be~ore 1t 1.s dls- carded.3 This blending of casual and formal language allows. Enc~ to d~splay knowledge of current slang without embracing an accompanymg onentatwn ~o coolness. Aware of my interest in language, Erich takes a researcherly analytic stance toward his own and others' linguistic styles.

154 We're through being cool

There was an intimate connection between nerdiness and reading: nerds were the only students I knew who admitted to reading for fun, and they often carried mass-market paperbacks or library books along with their schoolbooks frequently science fiction or fantasy novels but also classical authors such a~ Victor Hugo and Homer. Several nerds also regularly spent their lunch hour and other free time during school reading. By contrast, for cool youth, reading was so remote from their lives that when, at the end of class one Friday afternoon Ms. Stein urged her students, in her usual litany of advice for the weekend, "Read for pleasure!" several cool teenagers laughed. Trendy students often browsed sports or fashion magazines at school, but they did not generally read books unrelated to their coursework. Importantly, nerds' passion for reading was not an escape either from reality or from social interaction. Instead, it was a pleasurable individual activity that could also be extended into the social realm with sym- pathetic (and often nerdy) others, as shown in the above examples.

The link between reading and careful speech, moreover, forms the basis' of a secondary link between careful speech and intellectual ability, via the ideolo- gical association of advanced literacy and extensive education with high intel- ligence. In short, for nerds the practice of avoiding casual pronunciation in favor of a literate-based speech style reflected a language ideology that tied formal speech register to intelligence. And intelligence in tum was associated, at least by nerds, with independent thought: a refusal to go along with the crowd whether in fashion or in phonetics. Erich invokes this association in example (6), in which he explains why he thinks the term sophisticated applies to himself and his best friend, Micah. He asserts, "We're not sophisticated in a bad sense, ... we're much more advanced, ... in terms of ... our ways of perceiving things." After I ask what he means, he offers the following example:

(6) 1 Erich: U:h. 2 1- 3 w- 4 i- 5 we don't think- 6 l don't think of anything in a n:or:mal wa:y, 7 [J.h I] 8 Mary: [1Mm.I] 9 Erich: like,

10 uh, II a:nd, 12 I don'! <[dont]>, 13 I use much more, 14 (0.8) 15 I don't know how to describe it, 16 I don't use all the abbreviations for wo:rds?

The linguistic constmction of nerd identity

17 Mary: I"Hm. 18 Erich: Like, 19 most people abbreviate the- 20 cut offha1fthe words? 21 Mary: [zjHm. z] 22 Erich: [2For no p2]articu1ar reason? 23 And I don't do: that. 24 [3@@@@@@ 25 Mary: [3Like, 26 do you have an example of that? 27 Or,3] 28 Erich: U:h, 29 (0.7) 30 uh, 31 t- 32 they, 33 the- 34 they cut off the G: on the en[4d of"t4]rippin:g" <['tlipll):g]>, 35 Mary: [4M:m. 4] 36 [sRight.s] 37 Erich: [5and, s] 38 (e:nd,) 39 N a[6pos6]trophe.= 40 Mary: [6Right.6] 41 Erich: =<higher pitch> {It makes,

ill-42 43 makes} no sense to m~.

155

Erich connects sophistication, in its positive (i.e., nontrendy) sense, both to an "advanced" and unconventional perspective (line 6) and to careful pronun- ciation (line 16). From the more elevated position that sop?istication affor~s, the cool colloquial speech style simply "makes no sense" (!me 43). Here Ench displays a rather clinical knowledge of slang even as he distances h~ms.elf from it, as seen in his fastidious pronunciation of the slang word trzppmg (originally, 'in an altered mental state'; he~ce, 'behaving. in, a disorie~ted or nonsensical way, experiencing strong emotwns, overreactmg ). He art1culates the word, typically pronounced as trippin ', not only with the standard -ing suffix but with a hypercorrect final [g] (line 34), a pronunciation that seems to function as the linguistic equivalent of holding a particularly distasteful scien- tific specimen between thumb and forefinger for inspection be~ore it i.s dis- carded.3 This blending of casual and formal language allows Ench to d1splay knowledge of current slang without embracing an accompanying orientation ~o coolness. Aware of my interest in language, Erich takes a researcherly analytic stance toward his own and others' linguistic styles.

156 We're through being cool

Related to the ph~netic formality of nerdy speech was its lexical formality. Nerds often chose highly formal polysyllabic words of Greco-Latinate origin over more colloquial Germanic monosyllabic terms, a longstanding stylisti distinction in the history of English. These teenagers also frequently use~ a?stract nominalize~ cons~ctions, another characteristic of formal and espe- Cially scholarly registers (Biber 1988). Such lexical items may position the speaker as smart or learned. Thus the analytic stance that Erich takes in (6) is also manifest in several of his remarks quoted earlier in the chapter, in which he discusses his view of nonnerds in terms that suggest they are the subject of his own empirical study. He achieves this stance largely through lexical choice: I just can't stand people who have all the outward signs of being an extremely stupid person; My observation is that other people think we're kind of foolish and crazy for the way we do things. Likewise, in example (7) Claire uses a similarly analytic speech style to respond to a question from me about what term she uses for male high school students: ·

(7) 1 Claire: Well I- 2 I- 3 I tend tor- 4 to refer: to, 5 (0.7) 6 the who:1e, 7 (0.7) 8 Christine: Ev[erybody as a guy:.] 9 Claire: [~m,

10 r chrom]osome, 11 as a guy:.

Claire's lexical choices are formal: tend, refer (lines 3, 4). And in invoking the register of biology (the who:le, (0.7) urn, Y chromosome; lines 6-7, 9-10) she participates in the same nerdy practice of scientific discourse already exemplified by Erich. The deliberateness of Claire's choice (and perhaps her effort to reach for the appropriate term) is suggested by the fact that it stands in its own intonation unit, which brackets and highlights the phrase (line 1 0). Like Erich, Claire seems to understand our interaction as a shared intellectual enterprise, and she repeatedly displays her ability to engage in the scientific discourse of research. Undoubtedly, my role as a researcher triggered this analytic style in some students, an issue that Christine and Claire explicitly noted when they pointed out that they talked differently to me than they did to their friends. But nerds also employed the superstandard style in everyday interaction with peers, a practice that cool teenagers engaged in only in jest.

Nerds also engaged in more overt intellectual displays by making direct claims to knowledge or intelligence. Students might explicitly assert their intellectual abilities or accomplishments, such as in Claire's comment to me, "I take really

The linguistic constmction of nerd identity 157

hard classes" or Fred's remark, "It's just- it's a known fact, when I- when I do math I'm being reminded, I'm not being taught. It's- that's how I feel." Or such displays could be enacted through the authoritative presentation of knowledge, such as Erich's lengthy impromptu lecture to me about the relative merits of the computer programming languages Pascal and C. Even seemingly idle con- versational topics such as the origin of sesame seeds or where popular students shop for clothing could generate playful knowledge contests, some of them quite extensive (Bucholtz l999b, 2007a). Such claims to knowledge and intelli- gence were supported by other nerdy interactional practices, particularly distinc- tive uses of metalinguistics and language-based humor.

Metalinguistics and linguistic humor

Nerdy students manifested an extraordinarily playful attitude toward language: they had a high degree of metalinguistic awareness, and they took pleasure in manipulating linguistic forms for humorous effect. Thus, although Fred and her friends were either unable or unwilling to supply definitions of many of the slang words popular among trendy teenagers at Bay City High (Chapter 4), she volunteered their definition of a word they had invented:

(8) 1 Fred: _Qh, 2 and we make up wo:rds, 3 !@ike, 4 @@ 5 Okay, 6 every day Kate and Bob have to go retrieve their violins? 7 From thei:r, 8 arts building lockers, 9 up on the seco-nd floor of the ~rts building?

10 Mary: [1Uh huh.J] 11 Fred: [1So we s1]aid, 12 "We need a new ve:rb, 13 that means to retrieve one's vio[2lin." 2 ] 14 Mary: [2@@zl 15 Yeah, 16 really. 17 @@= 18 Fred: =So, 19 w~ go schn~r:fing every da@y [3a@fter school.3] 20 Mary: [3@@@@ 3] 21 Fred: .h: 22 And there's another verb, 23 because this other girl's coming with us, 24 who got her u:m,

158 We're through being cool

25 (0.8) 26 <ice jingling in glass> {(<bike> jhelmet every day after school.= 27 =So to retrieve one's h~lmet is to na:rgle. <ice jingling in glass> 28 Mary: You na:r:[4gle. 4]

29 Fred: [4S- 4] 30 Yeah. 31 So we schn_<l:r:f and we n_<l:r:gle together.}

The longevity of the term schnarfing among Fred and her friends was remark- able, and it was so much a part of their regular discourse that it appeared on several of the maps that the girls drew for me. The term therefore operated, like slang, as "anti-language" (Halliday 197 6) signaling ingroup membership; however, in a reversal of slang's usual value as a marker of trendiness, this word gives priority to nerdy practices and activities. Such coinages were not entirely analogous to slang, since they were restricted to the group and did.not circulate more widely. The term's phonological structure too is unlike most contemporary slang. The If/ + consonant onset is associated with Yiddish loanwords into English that currently have a humorously negative rather than hip connotation, such as schmuck and schlock ( cf. Bluestein 1989); for this reason schnarfing sounds funny but not cool. And Fred's parody of a formal dictionary definition (to retrieve ones violin; line 27) is quite different from the colloquial and often slang-filled explanations of slang terms that cool teenagers offered.

When nerdy teenagers did adopt or coin slang terms, they were quite conscious of doing so. Such reflexivity is illustrated in (9), in which Claire and Christine are discussing granola, a local term for a hippie-influenced youth style:

(9) 1 Mary:

2 Claire:

Are thSJ_se the grano:la people you were [ 1talki]ing about?=

[ 1Yeah. 1]

3 Christine: =Yea::h.=

4 Mary: =Okay. 5 (0.8)

6 Claire: 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

I n~ver use that word except that,

Christine used it, the other day, andnow, -

@ it's]ust, so apt <[ ~pt ]>. (0.5)-

14 Christine: Yeah, 15 and, 16 they're very kumbaya:, 17 too@. 18 [2I l@SJ_ve those little2]=

The linguistic constmction of nerd identity

19 Mary: [2@:

20 Claire: [2I knSJ_w.@ 21 Christine:

22 Claire:

2]= 2]=

=wo@@rds like <whispered> {[Jthat.@@ 3]} <breathy> {[3I kno:w.@ 3]}

23 Christine: [4They're SSJ_4] descr!pti@ve,

24 Claire: [4@@ 4] 25 Christine: [sAnd they're5] very evo@cative.

26 Claire: [s#:@# sl

27 Christine: [6@@@ 1@@6] 28 Claire: [6Yeah.@ 6] 29 @ 30 Christine: t@ 31 I mean they [ 7s_<l:y 7] ex_<l:ctly what I'm trying to S_<l:y.@@

32 Claire: h Yeah.7]

159

While cool teenagers tended to comment only on the semantic and social meanings of slang terms and category labels, here Claire and Christine discuss- in depth and at a fairly elevated lexical level - the aesthetic pleasure they take in using a particularly "apt" (line 12) or "evocative" (line 25) term, such as the local slang term granola or the adjective kumbaya, meaning 'laid-back' or

1 . ,4

'peace- ovmg. Attention to linguistic form was also the basis of a great deal of nerdy humor

such as punning and other joking activity. Punning was an unremitting part of nerdy teenagers' interactional practices, and nerds frequently seized oppor- tunities to work word play into conversation, as in example (10):

1 Claire: So, 2 where was my trai-

(10)

3 My train of thought got derailed.

Here, Claire makes a pun as soon as she sees her chance, going so far as to interrupt and recast her utterance in order to incorporate it. Indeed, nerdy students were often attuned to very subtle details of linguistic form, a level of attention that allowed them to find humor even in syntactic structures. In example (11 ), Fred and her friends are discussing their club, Random Reigns

Supreme:

(11) 1 Mary: So it's you four plus:, 2 Carrie and Ada?

3 Bob:

4 Loden: 5 Mary:

6 Fred:

7 Mary:

And some[ 1times 1] Melinda.

[ 1Yeah. 1]

<lower volume> {[2Sometimes Melinda.

j.n@

160 We're through being cool

8 Loden: 9

10 Fred:

II Kate:

12 Loden:

13 Bob:

14 Fred: 15 16

17 Kate:

18 Loden: 19 Bob:

20 Mary:

21 All:

[2Well, she's not in the club.2]

b@t@@@@ 2] Wh~@@@t?

Wh~@t?

@@

@: That was like A E I 0 U@ and <breathless> {sometime[3s [S.@@ 4]}

[4@@@ 4]

[4@@@@4] @@@@

<6.2 seconds oflaughter>

b@@@3]

Fred's hilarity may be ba:ffiing to nonnerds (and is even initially confusing to her own friends), yet it signals a high degree of linguistic sophistication. She recognizes in the structure of my and Bob's jointly constructed list of group members (lines 1-3) the familiar list of English vowels taught to beginning readers. Moreover, by drawing a parallel between the two, Fred indicates the extent to which her identity rests on an appreciation for the world of learning and education.

A final example of identity construction through metalinguistic humor is shown in (12). Here, in a discussion of the word popular during the lexical activity portion of a group interview, Bob persistently redirects the interaction through purposeful misunderstanding:

(12) 1 Bob: Isn't that a kind of tree? 2 (0.9) 3 Fred: N[[O, 4 that's a popla:r.J] 5 Loden: [ 1No, 6 that's po:pJ]la@@r. 7 Kate: [2Po:p2]la:r. 8 Bob: b0kay. 2] 9 Whatever.

10 @@@@ 11 <potato chip bag rustling> 12 <36 lines omitted> 48 Bob: I think th~y're popular. 49 Fred: Okay. 50 Kate: Who:? 51 Bob: ('Cause-) 52 [3Eliza Hudson 3] and like Brittany:.

The whiteness of nerds 161

53 Fred: 54 Bob: 55 Loden:

56 Kate: 57 58 Mary:

59 Bob:

60 Fred: 61 62 Bob: 63 64 Fred: 65 66 67 68 Bob: 69 70

[3(I kind of think that-)3] <lower volume> (All them.)=

yea: h.

What are th~y like?

[4They're okay.4]

[4(0kay,)

=Oh yeah.=

=O:h,

are 4] they tSt~ps people?

S- tW:hat? Do they, [ 5Are they,

[ 50:@h,

can they, be (other) Steps people? s]

I thought you were talking about like my st~p relatives.s] <laughter>

In line 1 Bob deliberately mishears popular as poplar. It is clear that her error is feigned: it is not plausible that I would be asking students for information about botany, and in any case the word is written on a slip of paper. Although she eventually goes on to engage seriously with the topic (line 48), when Fred asks if Eliza Hudson and Brittany's group are "Steps people" - that is, high-profile preppy students who sit on the steps of the arts building during lunchtime - Bob again pretends to misunderstand, this time through a repair initiator token produced with highly exaggerated prosody to display ba:ffiement (tWhat?; line 63), and she again offers an implausible but amusing alternative interpretation. Besides its clearly humorous function, this word play also problematizes the very terms of the ongoing discourse. Bob's reluctance to admit words like popular or Steps people into interaction with her friends recalls her similar subversion of slang terms like blood in Chapter 4. Such metalin- guistic play is more than a simple source of amusement: it is also a form of political work that negotiates the boundaries of identity. However, nerdin~ss positioned those who embraced it not only in relation to coolness and populanty but also in relation to whiteness.

The whiteness of nerds

For white nerds, rejecting coolness meant first and foremost separating them- selves from cool European American students. However, at Bay City High School, coolness had a racial warrant, based on the cultural authority of African American teenagers, who often influenced white youth styles. Thus nerdiness

162 We're through being cool

was ideologically viewed as an extreme version of whiteness, one in which African American culture and language did not play even a covert role. 5

Nerdy teenagers' deliberate avoidance of slang, for example, displayed their remoteness from both black and white youth trends, since African American slang was a primary source of European American slang. Likewise, the use of superstandard English worked to separate nerdy teenagers from their trendy white counterparts who generally spoke a more colloquial variety of Standard English, but it also enforced a division between white nerds and most black students at Bay City High, who used African American Vernacular English. among their peers. Colloquial Standard English was less semiotically distinct from AAVE because it included casual phonological and grammatical forms. By contrast, superstandard English reinforced the racialized linguistic divide by highlighting and even exaggerating the elements of Standard English that distinguish it from nonstandard varieties, including AAVE. After all, Standard English has meaning only in contrast to those varieties not recognized as standard (Bex and Watts 1999); this is true of superstandard English to an even greater extent. Additionally, unlike nonstandard varieties, Standard English is largely conservative, resisting linguistic innovation (Labov 1994). And as the language of institutional power, it supports dominant rather than subordinated forms of cultural production: Standard English is the language of academia, just as AA VE is the language of hip hop culture. In using super- standard English, then, nerds at Bay City High came to embody for their cool peers not simply whiteness but hyperwhiteness, a marked and exaggerated form of whiteness that was uncool precisely because it was so completely unblack. This ideology of nerdiness as whiteness could be seen, for example, in cool teenagers' imitations of nerdy speech with a nasal, exaggerated rhotic quality that has long been associated with European American speech (Rahman 2007).

Moreover, nerdiness was a class-based as well as a race-based style. Nerds' tendency to link intelligence to education and to value analytic, scientific, and academic skills projected a working future firmly within the professional middle class. Indeed, some nerdy practices depended on class privilege, such as access to computers and to classes that taught students how to program them. And because at Bay City High social class was also tied to race, class divisions also reinscribed racial divisions. Although in theory any student could use the school's computers, teenagers of different races were directed into different scholastic tracks. Classes on programming languages and computer-based graphics mostly enrolled European Americans and East Asian Americans, while African Americans, Latinos, and Southeast Asian Americans predominated in courses that provided vocational training in data entry and other clerical tasks.

But although nerdiness was ideologically associated with the middle class, individual nerdy students were not necessarily in the higher socioeconomic strata of the school. Erich was working-class, and Christine and Claire, though

Conclusion 163

from middle-class families, were painfully aware of the contrast between their own limited financial resources and the ample spending money available to some of their classmates. Nerd identity, then, was linked not to class status but to class identification (Eckert 1989, 2000).

However, nerds' adoption of a style often viewed as hyperwhite did not necessitate that they embrace hegemonic whiteness. During my fieldwork, a great deal of political debate in Bay City and around the state centered on the dismantling of affirmative action in California's higher education system through the ballot initiative Proposition 209. Erich was part of a group of Bay City High School students who organized large-scale protests against the measure; meanwhile, many European American students whose styles drew heavily upon African American youth language and culture did not participate in these political demonstrations. The wholehearted, or even halfhearted, appro- priation of black cultural forms did not guarantee that trend-conscious white teenagers would also adopt a political perspective that was sensitive to African American concerns.

Conclusion

For some teenagers at Bay City High, taking on a nerd identity was an agentive choice that allowed them to escape the pressures of the school's social order and position themselves as intelligent through linguistic practices such as superstandard English, intellectual display, and metalinguistic humor. But in avoiding current slang and embracing superstandard English, European American nerds separated themselves not only from their cool white counter- parts but also from most African American students. Consequently, nerdiness was ideologically positioned by other youth as a racially marked, hyperwhite style.

While cool European Americans oriented to African American students either as models or as foils for their own styles and identities, nerds were equally disinterested in both cool blackness and cool whiteness. But as I discuss in the next chapter, despite the diverse styles of European American students at Bay City High School, such teenagers shared a set of discursive practices for talking about race and thus displaying white identities. Chapter 8 examines how European American youth of all stylistic orientations constructed them- selves as unaware of racial difference and hence nonracist in talk about cross- racial friendship.