mary bucholtz

Revenge of the Feminerd: Nerd "Hyperwhiteness"

Social Commentary post by Jarrah Hodge on June 17, 2011 - 10:21am; tagged anti-racism, General nerditry, hyperwhiteness, linguistics, mary bucholtz, revenge of the feminerd.
Weird Al dressed as a typical nered-white with glasses, a tucked in white shirt. He is balancing two symbols of two computer programs on each of his fingers

Reading Benjamin Nugent’s book American Nerd in preparation for writing this column I came across a reference to research by UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Mary Bucholtz, which argues that nerd culture manifests "hyperwhiteness" in its language. Nugent didn’t elaborate on this much in his book but he’d also written a review of her research for the New York Times, and I thought the whole idea of how nerd culture is racialized was really interesting…and pretty problematic.

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