Typing like a Nerd: A Study of Online Communication Practices
This paper was adapted from a chapter of my Senior Thesis, titled “Concerning Awesomeness: A Study of the Structure, Ideology, and Linguistic Practice of the Online Nation of Nerdfighteria”
Introduction The advent of the internet has forever changed the ways that communities can be formed. 15 years ago, it may have been used to simply extend the reach of previously existing bonds, through email or message boards. But now, the internet is a social hub capable of sustaining communities entirely outside the “real life” context. As Aaron Barlow says:
People of my generation often didn't have access to a third place - a space where we could go to hang out outside of work and home. As a result, many have sought to make the online world their third place. The growth of social software has recently facilitated this trend, allowing us to easily build online communities from the bottom up (Barlow 2008: 37) The ‘third space’ of the internet has, among other things, provided a previously non-existent platform for marginalized groups to gather. Many who feel alone in real life have an opportunity to discuss issues relevant to them in online platforms. One such socially marginalized identity is the nerd. Although many “nerdy” interests have moved closer to the mainstream, young nerds in school still can feel outcast from their peers. And so, like other groups, nerds have their own pockets of the internet in which to gather and celebrate what they consider to be virtues: intelligence, science, academic pursuits, and the like. One such community is named Nerdfighteria, and it will be the focus of this study. In the past, many linguists studying social spaces have referenced Penelope Eckert & Sally McConell-Ginet’s “community of practice”, defining a community as “an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor.”(Eckert & McConell- Ginet 1992). Communities of this kind develop specific practices – ways of doing, talking, and thinking – which identify members from non-members. Linguist Mary Bucholtz has extensively studied communities of nerds in Southern Californian high schools using this framing, and has successfully identified many “nerdy” speech practices, which I shall elaborate on later. This study seeks to build off Bucholtz’s work in seeing how practices of nerd communities have evolved by moving online. Past research will be inevitably complicated by its new location in cyberspace, where “speech” means something very different than it does in physical space. The lack of physicality on the internet eliminates the possibility of physical appearance as qualification for group membership. Speech practices consequently become an even more important tool for groups (in this case, nerds) to define their community boundaries. Additionally, linguists have found that a new kind of speaking is emerging in the words on our computer screens, and with it, new rules for grammaticality. Nerdy speech practices accordingly form and transform in novel ways online. This paper will seek the specifics of this transformation. I will discuss the history of the nerd identity and its associated linguistic practices. I will then talk about the emergent phenomenon of computer-mediated communication. Then, we’ll start digging – what, exactly, happens when nerds occupy the third space of the internet? The Nerd(fighter) Nerdiness, as an American social identity, first formed in 1960s society as someone “smart but awkward” (Kendall 1993). By the 1970s, nerds began appearing as stock characters in movies and TV shows, represented as intelligent but socially inept adolescents. On TV, they do well in school, especially math and science. They also have little sense of fashion or hygiene and are generally non-athletic (Kendall 1999). By the mid-1980s, nerds were additionally associated with intimate knowledge of technology. David Kinney (1993) summed up the nerd identity nicely as anything that transgressed or failed to meet the expectations of popular culture. In recent decades, the nerd identity has begun to transform. As technology became more integrated in American life, its mastery became both fiscally and socially profitable. In the 2000s “nerdy” pastimes such as comic books, video games, and computers shifted into the mainstream social consciousness, in a trend known as “geek chic”. This growing sympathy for nerds is what paved the way for the explosive success of the Vlogbrothers. The Vlogbrothers YouTube channel began in 2007 on YouTube as an experiment in communication between brothers (and self-identified “huge nerds”) Hank and John Green. For a year, they ceased all textual communication with each other and instead made daily video blogs, or vlogs, to keep in touch. Although they were originally meant as a family experiment, the videos quickly grew into an internet sensation. Six years later, the Green brothers head eight successful YouTube shows, several game servers, a national conference, and a fan base of well over 6,000,000 young adults. These fans are called “Nerdfighters” and have come together over the years to create a tight-knit community surrounding the Vlogbrother’s projects called “Nerdfighteria”. Through their interactions, they celebrate intelligence, awkwardness, kind- heartedness, and ‘geek chic’ media, touting their community as a triumphant step for nerds everywhere (Eisenhauer 2013). This study is rooted in Nerdfighteria’s online extension of nerd culture. Bucholtz found that in physical space, (keeping with their identity as oppositional to popular people), nerds tend to avoid current slang and common colloquial formations. They also avoid colloquial phonological processes (e.g. “in” instead of “ing”). These are called negative identity practices – practices meant to set onesself apart from an avoided group. Nerds also engage in positive identity practices, which are practices to further social capital within a desired community. Positive practices of nerds include adherence to standard and superstandard english, use of hypercorrect phonological forms, and use of academic vocabulary (Bucholtz 1998). Bucholtz emphasizes in several studies of nerds that their linguistic style is highly racialized. The majority of colloquial syntax and vocabulary used by trendy high-schoolers, she argues, is taken from non-white youth culture. By rejecting these practices, nerds in a sense perform some kind of “super-whiteness”. Additionally, there apparently exists an ideological link between standard or superstandard English and intelligence - this is not unique to nerd culture, but it certainly is exploited. This is important because standard English is essentially white, middle-class English; all other race-, class-, or region-based dialects are marked as unacceptable in some way. Superstandard English and ‘formal’ words are additional products of high-level education, which is restricted to many lower-class and/or non-white people. Computer Mediated Communication One of the distinct features of community interaction online is that one cannot simply ‘be’ there – identities must be actively written into being. However, the advent of computer- mediated communication (CMC) is shifting many of our understandings and expectations of written language, particularly in regards to its relation with speech. Before the advent of CMC, linguists generally agreed on a dichotomous relationship between speech and writing. They challenged the popular belief that writing is just a representation of speech, because in fact there are many differences that set them apart. The most salient of these is that the capacity spoken language is innate and written language must be taught1. There are discrepancies in formality, context, and durability (Baron 2000). Scholars also point out that speech involves para-linguistic features such as prosody, facial expression, and physical gestures, whereas written word relies on only text for communication of ideas. For many of these reasons, linguists argue that it is most productive to view speech and writing as two separate phenomena. Prescriptivism (the practice of labeling certain constructions as more ‘correct’ than others2) affects written English more saliently than spoken English. This effect grew as the drive to standardize English took off in England in the 17th century as a nationalist project. The 18th century saw a boom in the production of grammar and spelling books – the historical prerequisites to Strunk & White – that treated proper command of written language as a mark of class and intellect. Both the rules and the values of this period of history remain with us today (Baron 2000). Prescriptivism affects spoken language as well, but in perhaps more flexible ways. For example, in MUSE (Mainstream United States English), one may speak in fragments or single words, which is forbidden in formal written English. Speech standards are also evolve in a more fluid, less explicitly policed manner than formal written language. The entrance of computer-mediated interaction complicates these previously laid out dichotomies between writing and speech. Like writing, CMC is relayed through text. It is often asynchronous and communicated at a distance (i.e. in blogs and email). However, the ease of production that computers provide allows for more spontaneous, non-edited, and informal styles, making it resemble speech (Barlow 2008). Writing online is also often diological and highly contextualized (Segerstad 2002). Moreover, internet users consider their writing much less durable than writing done off-line (Barlow 2008). Because of these complications, many linguists agree that CMC must be treated as a third category all together, which calls on traits of both genres (Barlow 2008, Baron 2000). We will soon see that the presriptivism of both written and spoken English will be involved in the negotiation of “proper” CMC. CMC offers new dimensions to nerdy norms which Nerdfighters must navigate. Many Nerdfighters thrive academically which suggests they may have a stronger aversion to breaking the prescriptive rules about written English put forth by the American educational system (Eisenhauer 2013). Additionally, CMC contains emergent structures which, dispite having linguistic complexity, are viewed by many in the offline world to be some kind of corruption of the English language (McWhorter, 2013). Nerdfighters, then, have an interesting idenity conflict
1 I want to acknowledge that not all humans are born with aptitude for natural language, and that therefore language is only mostly innate. Non-neurotypical people who lack the ability to speak are important minority that linguists too often ignore. 2 I want to make it clear for all readers: there is no such thing as ‘correct’ language. Natural language is already a complete system of communication with complex acceptability rules and does not need our correction. Prescriptivsm is, by definition, a social construct. on their hands as they simultaneously perform nerdiness and in-group membership of online culture. Through this study, I hope to show the specific ways in which Bucholtz’s nerdy identity practices have blended with emergent linguistic trends of CMC. Methodology This study has three major components. The first of these is a large-scale comment analysis of YouTube comments. I chose YouTube because, although Nerdfighteria spans many social networking sites, the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel is its origin and the continued source of its central media. YouTube comments sections are also infamous online for having some of the most “offensive” interactions, both in terms of content and in terms of breaking prescriptivist rules of written langauge. This should make the practices of nerdy writing/speaking/CMC particularly salient as compared to other sites. For this study, I chose a YouTube channel representative of mainstream ‘YouTube culture’3 called Shanedawsontv2. Shane Dawson is a white male YouTube celebrity who is comparable to the Vlogbrothers in fame but who performs a more hegemonic masculinity. I took the top 20 videos from his vlogging channel and extracted the first 50 comments from each video. Similarly, I went to the Vlogbrothers’ playlist titled “20 essential Vlogbrothers videos” and extracted the first 50 comments from each video therein. Foreign language comments were discounted. I ended with a total of 1000 comments for analysis from each channel. Categories for coding were decided by a preliminary read-through of the first 100 comments of each data list. I coded for 11 different features which engaged analysis on several different levels of language. These can be grouped into three categories: the orthographic level, the syntactical level, and the content level. Orthographic features pertain to spelling and punctuation – the physical appearance of words on a page. The syntactical level is the interaction of written and spoken grammars. Finally, the content level includes word choice, jargon, and register that participants use. Features which concerned the syntax of a sentence were coded using the sentence as a unit of analysis. The sentence (or phrase, if there were no complete sentences) was also the unit of analysis in categories that had to do with strict adherence to standard rules of written language, such as correct punctuation or capitalization, because in school, it would be the sentence which is marked as wrong (run-on, or fragmental) if such features were missing. Words were used as a scale of analysis for categories such as slang, long words, and misspellings. Table 1 shows all coding categories, including their analysis level, the unit being used (sentence/word), and descriptions of criteria for each category.
3 I have been following various YouTube channels for almost six years, and as such, feel qualified as a participant in YouTube culture to identify a channel which counts as typical. Figure 1: YouTube Comment Coding Categories
Analysis Coding Category Unit Notes Examples Level Standard S Counted if a sentence has no Capitalization capitalization errors according to Orthographic formal written standard Standard Punctuation S Counted if sentence has no punctuation errors according to formal written standard Orthographical W Counted if word contains spelling ‘Error’ errors according to formal written standard. Error could be due either to lack of editing or CMC emergent orthography Initialism W Counted if word is a CMC- lol (laughing out loud), wth/wtf Acronym emergent acronym (what the hell/fuck), imho (in my honest opinion) Spoken Syntax S Counted if sentence contains a “hahaha that’s hilarious” Syntactical syntactical structure acceptable in “just need some time” spoken standard but not in formal written standard Online Emergent S Counted if sentence contains an “the fuck?” (dropped WH) Syntax emergent syntactical structure “*cleans desktop*” (asterisk acceptable only in CMC action contruction) “I can’t even” (derived from memes) Non-Standard Syntax S Counted if sentence contains “What is I don’t know” syntactical structure unacceptable “u need emmy” in any form of standard English Total Sentence Count S Each sentence (or fragment, if comment is not a full sentence) is counted Content Long Words W Word is counted if it is at least four syllables long. Proper nouns not counted. Profanity/Taboo word W Word is counted if it is a) profane Profane: fuck, shit, hell or b) on a taboo subject Taboo: gay, retard Mainstream Slang W Word is counted if it specifically Dope, tight, word denotes in-group status in mainstream youth culture
The resulting quantities of each feature after coding will be compared and discussed in the analysis sections of this paper. The second component of this linguistic study was a mass questionnaire on language perception in YouTube comments. 10 comments were pulled from various Vlogbrothers and Shanedawsontv2 videos (5 from each channel). The comments were deliberately chosen to include a range of the linguistic features in chart 1. List 2 shows these comments, along with their confidential channel of origin:
Figure 2: List of YouTube Comments 1. ur kinda weird and how old r u (Origin: Vlogbrothers) 2. Aha! I know I'm 4 years late to this party, mono is Greek, uni is Latin. Trivia does in fact mean "three roads," a euphemism for vulgar and/or boring stuff you can learn on a street corner. Vampire numbers are anagrams, having 2 divisors that, one not divisible by 10, use the same digits as the first number. Arguing about the Nicene Creed, and the difference between Orthodox and Catholic on Jesus' relationship to the Holy Spirit in Greek is one iota's difference in spelling (Origin: Vlogbrothers) 3. French the Llama your puff levels are high! (Origin: Vlogbrothers) 4. IK, i don't usually give trolls any attention but I thought he was being serious at first instead of just trollin (Origin: Shanedawsontv2) 5. Awww, this is soo cute :) he loves her so much and u can tell :) I wish all guys were like that (Origin: Shanedawsontv2) 6. Btw that wasn't sarcasm (Origin: Vlogbrothers) 7. I LOVE THAT MOVIE (Origin: Shanedawsontv2) 8. This is the gayest most fucked up video I've ever seen, this guy is so fucking gay (Origin: Shanedawsontv2) 9. lol u r too crazzzy I laugh when I see ur videos.. (origin: Shanedawsontv1) 10. I haven't subscribed to a YouTube channel (are they still called that?) since high school, and I don't check those others any longer. But I just subscribed to yours! Plus email notifications! I like what you do. (Origin: Vlogbrothers) Nerdfighters given this questionnaire were asked to rank each comment on a scale of 1-5 based on the likelihood that a fellow Nerdfighter authored it, with 5 being definitely and 1 being definitely not. 360 Nerdfighters completed this survey. I will analyze the results by comparing the mean rating of each comment. The last component of research was a series of short interviews with Nerdfighters, contacted through an open request published on the social media site Tumblr. I asked these Nerdfighters about their writing habits online – specifically, whether they were ‘careful’ when they wrote. I also asked for them to state the reasons why or why not. I have 10 written responses and 10 recorded verbal responses, which will be analyzed as a sample of Nerdfighter ideologies surrounding language. I have split up the discussion of my results based on the three coding categories of orthography, syntax, and content which I discussed earlier. I have parsed my results in this way because the Nerdfighters interact with each of these levels very differently, drawing on different genres in each level to create a speech style that can successfully differentiate them from their surrounding online communities Each following section will include a discussion of the comment data from the relevant level, as well as examples from the ideology questionnaire. I may use a comment more than once in different sections, because certain comments illustrate several different levels of analysis. Analysis: Orthographic Level The orthographic level of CMC, concerning itself with the appearance of text on a page, is best considered in the context of written language. Barlow (2008) argues that many formal written conventions are being phased out because writing online is often much more spontaneous and unplanned than non-CMC writing. A user getting his point across quickly and in an authentic manner is more important than writing slowly or editing for the sake of convention (Barlow 2008). Alternate acceptable spellings are common in the more fast-paced forms of CMC (such as ‘u’ instead of ‘you,’ ‘k’ instead of ‘okay’) (Segerstad 2002). Shortenings, acronyms and initialisms originally served similar time-saving purposes – however, now many of these serve more complex linguistic purposes, following rules similar to those of tag questions or verbal stops (McWhorter, 2013). Additionally, words may be pushed together with certain acronyms to communicate certain moods (the word “lolwut,” theoretically standing for “laughing out loud what,” is now a shortcut to indicate mild confusion in a given situation) Many of the rules for alternate spellings and intitialisms appear to be just that – rules – so much so that someone wrote a book on how to sound ‘neterate’ by spelling your words wrong in the right way (Plieskatt 2001). The other reason to break standard written convention is to attempt to more accurately represent speech. This is not a new trend in writing conventions. When the printing press was invented, printers would change the size of the font to indicate the importance of a given sentence. Parentheses were also originally incorporated into language to indicate a verbal aside. (Baron 2000) Modern researchers have noted that CMC faces the challenge of being as expressive as face-to-face interaction while lacking auditory and visual cues of the spoken context, and consequently has built in additional audio-interpretive cues, LIKE CAPITAL LETTERS TO REPRESENT YELLING OR EXCITEMENT. Emoticons are also used in a grammatically consistent way – often replacing standard punctuation marks - as visual interpretive cues (Provine, Spencer & Mandell 2007). These, and similar conventions, appeared in ShaneDawsontv2 comments. Exclamation points and question marks were used in varying amounts to communicate levels of excitement. Lack of any punctuation was also common, but was mixed with punctuation enough to suggest that it might be a deliberate indicator of a certain bored tone rather than sloppy writing. Writers also used emoticons in ways predicted by previous scholarly work. This evidence points to the notion that changes in orthography are reasonable given the historical precedent and the new, more contextualized written communication being attempted. But Nerdfighters seem to resist many of these changes in favor of older written standards. Below is a graph of the comparison between the two channels on how well formal standards are adhered to:
Figure 3 Orthographic Level Comment Analysis
Orthographic Level Results
652 Non-Standard Orthography 236
126 Acronyms 47
436 Sentences with Standard Punctuation 1224
572 Sentences with Standard Capitalization 1252
Shanedawsontv2 Comments 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Vlogbrothers Comments Token Count
Shanedawsontv2 comments had more than twice the number of non-standard spellings than Vlogbrothers comments. To reiterate, there are many reasons to be nonstandard, ranging from lack of editing to deliberate register communication. Nerdfighters have at least partially rejected all these practices. This was also true of punctuation and capitalization. Approximately 70% of Vlogbrothers comments were capitalized and punctuated in a standard way. This is compared with approximately 40% in both categories from Shane Dawson’s comments. Nerdfighter comments that were nonstandard tended to break the rules for the sake of better mirroring spoken prosody (e.g. capitalizing words for emphasis, by trading ‘proper’ punctuation with smiley faces, or by leaving the final period off their comment). The difference between acceptable and unacceptable trends can be seen in table 4, comparing the perceptions of several YouTube comments on a scale of likelihood that they were authored by a Nerdfighter (one being least likely): Figure 4: Orthographic Level Comment Ratings
# Token Mean Rating
1 ur kinda weird and how old r u 1.50
4 IK, i don't usually give trolls any attention but I thought he 3.04 was being serious at first instead of just trollin
6 Btw that wasn't sarcasm 2.90
9 lol u r too crazzzy I laugh when I see ur videos.. 2.57
The mean rating for Nerdfighter likelihood drops in sentences 1 and 9 – I believe that this is because the lack of capitalization and more error-like nonstandard spelling, which seem to be marked as unacceptably non-standard in the eyes of Nerdfighters. On the other hand, examples 4 and 6 are neutrally accepted, despite containing online emergent initialisms and ‘improper’ puncuation. These sentences evidence the acceptance of certain new punctuation tools as an unmarked form of communication on YouTube. However, the stigma affecting 1 and 9 suggest that Nerdfighters do value their comments looking like formal written English. Analysis: Syntactical Level The structure of a sentence in CMC has access to both the spoken and written genres of language from which to create standards. YouTube comments are ephemeral, often spontaneous and highly contextualized, and also appear to be in a dialogue with either other commenters or with the video itself, and thus have more in common with speech than writing. YouTube users across the board seem to recognize these similarities. Figure 5: Syntactical Level Comment Analysis
Syntactical Level Results
Formal Written Structure 521 915
Spoken Only Structure 444 392
Emergent Online Structure 128 82
Nonstandard Structure 136 57
0 200 400 600 800 1000 Shanedawsontv2 Comments Token Count Vlogbrothers Comments
It’s illustrated here that users from both Nerdfighteria and from Shane Dawson’s channel believe that following spoken standards instead of the stricter formal written standards is acceptable on YouTube. Spoken-only structures that appeared often were dropped subjects or disembodied predicates, (e.g. “so funny” instead of “that’s so funny.”) Researchers have found that, like orthographical changes, syntactical standards have also been relaxed so as to better represent speech patterns – for example, by inserting laughter-sounds (“hahaha”) in phrase breaks (Provine 2000). These was true Nerdfighter and Shanedawsontv2 comments. Emergent online structures mainly included more complex visual cues, such as asterisk structures to indicate actions (“*types paper example*”) or grammar derived from memes (“dat graph4,” “y u no format correctly5”). Online-specific structures appeared in Vlogbrothers comments in numbers comparable to Shane Dawson’s. It is true that both these first two
4 “dat__” is a construction derived from a meme called “dat ass” featuring a rapper looking at a woman’s butt. This utterance is now considered a full acceptable sentence, but is only acceptable as a joke if the word substituted in rhymes with ass. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dat-ass 5 “y u no ___” is a formula sentence structure derived from a viral image depicting a frustrated stick figure using texting language to express his anger: “I text u…. y u no txt back?”. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/y-u-no-guy categories do have more tokens from Shane Dawson’s audience; however, the margins between them and Nerdfighteria are much smaller than they are in any other part of this study. The last category counted structures considered unacceptable in standard spoken or written English. This included everything from representations of different dialects (primarily AAVE) to indecipherable phrases. Interestingly, Shane Dawson’s channel had an amount of these tokens almost identical to its use of internet-emergent structures; the Vlogbrothers’, on the other hand, reduce significantly. This demonstrates that although formal written standards are relaxed on the structural level, members still do not wish to represent non-standard speech, except to gain online cultural capital. For for both groups, the use of non-standard structures fell drastically in comparison to the use of spoken structures.
Analysis: Content Level Content refers to register, use of different jargon/slang, general vocabulary choice, and overall tone of the comment. Below is the comparative chart for reference in all three areas. Figure 6: Content Level Comment Analysis
Content Level Results 1310 Total Sentence Count 1755 313 4+ Syllable Words 1041 207 Profanity/Taboo 42 67 Mainstream Slang 30 26 Nerd References 51 0 Nerdfighter References 78
Shanedawsontv2 Comments 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 Vlogbrothers Comments Token Count
Nerdfighters, in keeping with the classic nerd identity, value academic prowess. Vlogbrothers commenters showed this firstly by simply writing more – much more. The reason for the drastic difference in the number of sentences was twofold: first, Nerdfighters tended to produce more writing, and second, Nerdfighters punctuate in a more standard way, producing more sentences and less run-on, stream-of-consciousness phrases that were seen in Shane Dawson’s comments. Nerdfighters also used longer, rarer, more academic words in their comments. I concede that measuring how ‘good’ a word is by its length is a rather blunt quantificational tactic; however, it is still telling that Nerdfighters used more than three times as many long words as Shane Dawson’s commenters. Length and register also affected people’s perception of Nerdfighter qualities. Compare the four following comment judgments: Figure 7: Intelligent Content Comment Ratings
# Token Mean Rating
8 This is the gayest most fucked up video I've ever seen, this 1.09 guy is so fucking gay
6 Btw that wasn't sarcasm 2.90
10 I haven't subscribed to a YouTube channel (are they still 3.81 called that?) since high school, and I don't check those others any longer. But I just subscribed to yours! Plus email notifications! I like what you do.
2 Aha! I know I'm 4 years late to this party, mono is Greek, 3.99 uni is Latin. Trivia does in fact mean "three roads," a euphemism for vulgar and/or boring stuff you can learn on a street corner. Vampire numbers are anagrams, having 2 divisors that, one not divisible by 10, use the same digits as the first number. Arguing about the Nicene Creed, and the difference between Orthodox and Catholic on Jesus' relationship to the Holy Spirit in Greek is one iota's difference in spelling
Out of the sample sentences, these four most closely follow orthographic and syntactical structures seen in Nerdfighteria. Given that these factors are (more or less) equal, we can observe that the average rating of a comment has a positive correlation with the formality of the register and the length of the comment. Academic or long words especially seem to be a positive practice of Nerdfighteria. Conversely, the use of dirty or taboo words is apparently discouraged, as we can see from comment #8’s rating of just 1.09 (the lowest rating of any comment in the survey). These findings mirror Bucholtz’s observations about the content of nerdy speak in real life. Nerdfighters especially employ these linguistic practices when their intelligence is put on trial by other commenters. Not only do Nerdfighters use formal register and academic language, but also begin to adhere more and more to formal written rules and genres. In 2012, Hank Green made a video discussing the problematic assets of the term “friendzone,”6 which spurred a heavy debate between two users. Below is a partial documentation of this argument:
9minty: Feminism: helping women by making sure they always perceive themselves as the victims of absolutely everything happening around them....always. Guess what, you're the sexists. (Flagged as spam)
MirineaRose: Feminism: the belief that both genders should be treated equally in all cases. Feminism: NOT the belief that all women are victims. Women are not always victims, and I readily acknowledge that fact, but women ARE the victims more often. Women are the gender that is MOST OFTEN treated as the lesser
6 A term used when a man likes a woman but the woman does not reciprocate and only treats him as a friend. A current hot button issue among online feminists due to the assumption of sexual entitlement on the male’s part. being, most often dehumanized, or not taken seriously. It is for this reason that the feminist movement concentrates on that side of things. It does NOT seek to make all women think they are victims. (Flagged as spam)
9minty: FBI crime statistics: Number of female murder victims in the US in 2011: 2,813 Number of male murder victims in the US in 2011: 9,829 2010 CDC survey on sexual violence: Number of female rape victims in the US in 2010: 1,245,870 Number of male rape victims in the US in 2010: 1,003,464 Your assertions are vacuous and false and feminism is dogmatic bigotry that demonizes men and inculcates victim culture complexes in women....such as yourself. (Hidden due to negative votes)
MirineaRose: In yet another survey of college males: 43% of college-aged men admitted to using coercive behavior to have sex, including ignoring a woman’s protest, using physical aggression, and forcing intercourse. 15% acknowledged they had committed acquaintance rape; 11% acknowledged using physical restraints to force a woman to have sex.
[Statistics debate omitted]
9minty: I did look at the sources, they're shit studies done by shit researchers with shit controls, shit investigator constrains, shit blinding and shit sample sizes. Basically the same trash feminists always try to pass off as "science". Let me guess, you're an English major? Semiotics? Gender studies? Something useless and fit for dimwits who never took a physics class in their life, surely. (Flagged as spam)
MirineaRose: You assumptions are incorrect. My main interest in life is in science, most specifically astrophysics, and I am currently enrolled in a physics class, so I would appreciate it if you kept your unreasonable and clearly incorrect assumptions about my studies to yourself. Attempts to insult what you assume are my choices is quite frankly a foolish way to argue. You make no contribution to the matter at hand. And may I remind you that these "shit" studies are trusted and published by a University.
9minty: you're quite the glutton for punishment aren't you? "physics for future presidents" or somesuch 100 level tosh, no doubt. Appeal to authority much? Yes, trusted and published by the University's cover-your-ass anti-sexual harassment program doubtless advised by the resident gender studies department in exactly which "research" publications to flog for maximum panic-inducing hysteria as unbiased as a Weekly World News publication and just as trustworthy. (Too many negative votes) This conversation features a fascinating evolution in style from both members, but from MirineaRose in particular. In response to 9minty’s original inflammatory comment, she responds in a style we might expect of Nerdfighteria: with relatively standard structure and orthographic representation, but with use of internet-emergent rules (in this case, capitalization for emphasis). As she progresses and her views come under more and more attack, she drops this habit. Her final comment shows perfect grammatical structure, punctuation and capitalization. More interestingly, the ‘speaking’ tone is gone from this comment entirely – it sounds like an essay, not CMC, and certainly not like a young person’s speech (using “foolish” as an insult is not exactly in style right now). Her use of academic words skyrockets, along with 9minty’s in the final comment. 9minty also drops their profanity as the conversation continues. These register shifts are notably paired with a direct discussion challenging each other’s intelligence and academic rigor, further cementing the connection between style and content. This conversation and many similar ones in Vlogbrothers comments suggest that formal, ‘smart’ writing is a demonstration of one’s validity as a Nerdfighter, and can even be used to belittle another.
Meta-Linguistic Analysis: Ideology, Intelligence, and Access The drive to formal written standards appears not just in practice, but in metalinguistic discussion as well. When I asked members of Nerdfighteria if they were ‘careful’ when they wrote online, all but two (out of 25 written and spoken interviews) responded vehemently that they were7. Many mentioned in their immediate answer that they try “to spell things correctly,” “to construct proper sentences,” “to stick to being correct,” etc. (Alex 2014, Meridean 2013, Sam 2013). Some writers, such as a Nerdfighter named Emma, expressed frustration in the lack of standards online, mentioning that “I always think it's weird that people would send a message with an error instead of proofreading the message first.” (Emma 2013) Another named Roy echoed several other Nerdfighters when he said it was difficult to overlook others’ errors, so he did not want to inflict similar errors on his readers. This suggests a linguistic ideology that does not recognize CMC, or any style of writing besides formal written English, as systematic or as having any value. When talking about standard language, Nerdfighters espouse several ideologies common in wider systems of prescriptivism. One such opinion, as expressed by scholars Woolard and Schieffelin, is that “doctrines of linguistic correctness and incorrectness are… related to doctrines of the inherent representational power, beauty, and expressiveness of language as a valued mode of action. Moral indignation over nonstandard forms derives form ideological associations of the standard with the qualities valued within the culture, such as clarity or truthfulness” (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994). Nerdfighters often held opinions about the “point of language”, clearly assuming that Standard English was the best way to achieve that point. A girl named Quinn said, “I love grammar and spelling (yes I'm weird), and I think that English is a beautiful language so I'm going to use it to the utmost of my ability” (Quinn 2013). Another Nerdfighter said, “Grammar and spelling are useful to facilitate communication, which is most often the goal of internet writing” (Sadie, 2013) Although the goals stated in each (beauty and utility) are different, the two interviewees share a common ideological thread in their belief that standard English is the way to achieve these goals. The Vlogbrothers themselves also share in this ideology, a fact which is well illustrated in John Green’s video, “Grammar School with Snooki.” The majority of the video features John correcting non-standard grammar in Tweets put out by “Jersey Shore” celebrity Snooki; at the end of the video, though, he briefly mentions why he feels grammar is important.
But Snooki doesn't value language, and she doesn't care about the quality of discourse in our society. And I worry when we celebrate those people, instead of people who use language
7 I found it amusing in light of my findings that when I asked one Nerdfighter whether she was careful, she replied: “Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, YES!!!!!” which is a sentence clearly only acceptable in CMC or spoken English. (Quinn 2013) precisely and thoughtfully, that we end up with really crappy discourse, whether it's on the Jersey Shore or in Congress. (J Green, July 2010) A related prescriptivist concept is that command of standard language is tied somehow to the natural intelligence of a speaker. This tie is particularly salient in Nerdfighterian linguistic performances, as we saw in 9minty and MineaRose’s argument. Here are some of the reasons Nerdfighters gave when asked why they are ‘careful’ writers:
I also know how it looks when there is someone whose typing is really bad. It makes them look less intelligent and at best can be very distracting. (Robin 2013)
It's not that I'm scared of people attacking me if I misspell something, but that I feel like my intelligence is somehow lesser if I don't spell something right. (Judy 2013)
I don't ever want someone to have to correct me. I would feel so dumb! (Emma 2013) Here, we can see an explicit tie between command of Standard English and intelligence. This was also indirectly shown by the many mentions that Nerdfighters made to their schooling when discussing why they cared about grammar or spelling. Several people made mention to some kind of prestigious school, or heavy involvement in a regular school: “Part of it is because proper spelling was drilled into me while I was still attending an academically rigorous private school” (Meridean 2013). The fact that both intelligence and love of school are so central to the nerd identity perhaps explains the apparently intense motivation Nerdfighters feel to perform standard and even superstandard written English online. Because it is thought to have such magnificent qualities – intelligence, efficiency, beauty - prescriptivist thinkers often assume that MUSE is the essential form of English, and those who don’t command it have “failed” in some way to grasp the language in its purest form. Many Nerdfighters followed this line of thought (some interviewees who were frustrated that someone wouldn’t edit their posts, as if that were the only reason for writers to not write in formal standard). However, MUSE is none of those things – it is simply the dialect of middle-class white America, and the one that is privileged in schools and in national media8. Speakers who did not grow up in a MUSE-speaking household are at a natural disadvantage in school systems that don’t speak their dialect. Bad schooling and cultural oppositions to educational success in youth culture are more reasons why a working-class American youth (of color, especially) might not have full command of MUSE or formal written English (Fordham & Ogbu 1986). And yet, Prescriptivist ideology over looks these factors and simply labels those with marked dialects as lazy or stupid. Conclusion Both positive and negative identity practices can be identified within the online context of Nerdfighteria. Some discovered practices, such as verbosity, avoidance of slang, and use of academic register, are direct extensions of Bucholtz’s findings. Other practices are emergent by dint of their new CMC context – these may include the acceptability of nonstandard punctuation/capitalization and the use of spoken syntax in written form. Despite these newly acceptable forms, however, the language ideologies of Nerdfighteria are perhaps even more
8 Not to say that only middle-class white Americans speak MUSE – only to say that MUSE is historically and ideologically tied to whiteness virulent than in offline nerd culture. I posit that this stems from strict expectations of written discourse being applied to the theoretically more informal CMC, which also happens to be the principal method of community participation. This combination has created an apparent increase in the prescriptivist notions of Nerdfighters as they fight to “hold their ground” against the shifting language practices of online communities. And so, through certain practices, Nerdfigteria has claimed ownership of the internet culture; however, Nerdfighter language ideologies position Nerdfighters against mainstream internet culture in the same way it does against youth culture in real life. The study of online community can be maddening because of its fast-changing nature. Since this data was collected, Nerdfighteria has already expended by tens of thousands of people, possibly creating wider diversity in speech than previously seen. Additionally, Nerdfighteria has colonized many social media sites, each with its own interactional styles, which could make an equal amount of “Nerdfighter dialects”. And so this study is limited in scope both through time and digital space. It is merely a snap shot of one website at one time, and of the nerds who found community there. Suggestions for further action would be more in-depth analysis of the ever emergent speech styles online, and the correlating prescriptivist viewpoints on these styles. Nerds of color also have their own complicated relationship with the whiteness of the nerd identity (Fordham & Ogbu 1986) which should be explored for a more complete picture. Truly, any contribution to the study of online culture should be welcome. I’m happy to have contributed even the smallest piece of this new media puzzle.
Works Cited Anderson, Helen. "Siblings in Cyberspace: Carey's Ritual Model of Communication in the Digital Age." Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology and Society 4.1 (2011): 92-100. Stanford Online. Stanford University, 2011. Web.
Barlow, Aaron. Blogging America: The New Public Sphere. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008. Print.
Baron, Naomi S. Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It's Heading. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Berg, Lore. "The Geek Hierarchy." Web log post. The Brunching Shuttlecocks. N.p., 2002. Web.
Bley, Rebecca. "RL on LJ: Fandom and the Presentation of Self in Online Life." Buffy and Angel Conquer the Internet: Essays on Online Fandom. Ed. Mary Kirby-Diaz. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2009. N. pag. Print.
Bucholtz, Mary. "The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11.1 (2001): 84-100. Print.
Bucholtz, Mary. "“Why Be Normal?”: Language and Identity Practices in a Community of Nerd Girls." Language in Society 28.02 (1999): n. pag. Print.
Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Print.
Copeland, Michael V. "Texting Isn't Writing,It's Fingered Speech." Wired Magazine. N.p., 1 Mar. 13. Web.
Dawson, Shane. "Shanedawsontv2 Channel." YouTube. Google, 3 Apr. 2009. Web.
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. "Think Practically and Look Locally:Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice." Annual Review of Anthropology 21.1 (1992): 461-88. JSTOR. Ithaka. Web.
Eisenhauer, Karen R. "Concerning Awesomeness: An Analysis of the Structure, Ideology, and Linguistic Practice of the Online Nation of Nerdfighteria." Thesis. Pitzer College, 2013. Print.
Fordham, Signithia, and John U. Ogbu. "Black Students' School Success: Coping with the
Burden of Acting White." The Urban Review 18.3 (1986): 176-206. JSTOR. Web.
Green, John, and Hank Green. "Vlogbrothers Channel." YouTube. Google, 1 Jan. 2007. Web.
Gumperz, John. "The Speech Community." Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Ed. Alessandro Duranti. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. N. pag.Google Book. Google. Web.
Irvine, J.T., & Gal, S. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2000. 35-84. Print.
Kendall, L. "Nerd Nation: Images of Nerds in US Popular Culture."International Journal of Cultural Studies 2.2 (1999): 260-83. Sage Journals. Web.
Kendall, L. ""OH NO! I'M A NERD!": Hegemonic Masculinity on an Online Forum." Gender & Society 14.2 (2000): 256-74. Sage Journals. Web.
Kinney, David A. "From Nerds to Normals: The Recovery of Identity among Adolescents from Middle School to High School." Sociology of Education 66.1 (1993): 21-40. JSTOR. Ithaka. Web.
McWhorter, John. "Txting Is Killing Language. JK!!!" TED 2013. Feb. 2013. Speech.
"Nerdfighters Ning" Nerdfighters. Hank Green, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.
Nugent, Benjamin. American Nerd: The Story of My People. New York: Scribner, 2008. Print.
Nugent, Benjamin. "Who's a Nerd, Anyway?" New York Times Magazine 29 July 2007: n. pag. Web.
Orgad, Shani. "From Online to Offline and Back: Moving from Online to Offline Relationship with Research Informants." Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Ed. Christine Hine. Oxford: Berg, 2005. N. pag. Print.
Plieskatt, Jordan. Cybronics: Our Online Language. Lincoln, NE: IUniverse, 2001. Google Books. Google. Web.
Provine, R. R., R. J. Spencer, and D. L. Mandell. "Emotional Expression Online: Emoticons Punctuate Website Text Messages." Journal of Language and Social Psychology 26.3 (2007): 299-307. Sage Journals. Web.
Tocci, Jason. "The Well-Dressed Geek." Media in Transition. 2007. Lecture.
"Vlogbrothers." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Mar. 2012. Web.
"Vlogbrothers Youtube Channel Stats." VidStatsX. VidStatsX, n.d. Web. Woolard, Kathryn A., and Bambi B. Schieffelin. "Language Ideology." Annual Review of Anthropology 23.1 (1994): 55-82. Print.