Why be normal

Why be normal? Bucholtz, M. (1999). “Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language in Society, 28:2.

Bordieu (1991) cited, explaining importance of not drawing hard boundaries at practice: “Not only are linguistic features never clearly separated from the speaker’s whole set of social properties (bodily hexis, physiognomy, cosmetics, clothing), but phonological (or lexical, or any other) features are never clearly separated from other levels of language; and the judgement which classifies a speech form as “popular” or a person as “vulgar” is based, like all practical predica- tion, on sets of indices which never impinge on consciousness in that form.” (Bucholtz, 1999, p. 205) But he is more of a sociologist, insists on unconsciousness of habitus. 

unlike the boys, who can display their toughness through physical confronta- tions, female Burnouts must index their identities semiotically, because fighting is viewed as inappropriate for girls. (Bucholtz, 1999, p. 213) Viewed from a practice model, iconicity may allow language to participate in or substitute for other practices that are unavailable for some reason. Or it may strengthen the impact of linguistic practice. For example, iconic usage which feigns physiological state enhances the perceived authenticity of the message being conveyed. 

For girls, nerd identity also offers an alternative to the pressures of hegemonic femininity – an ideological construct that is at best incompatible with, and at worst hostile to, female intellectual ability. Nerd girls’ conscious opposition to this ideology is evident in every aspect of their lives, from language to hexis to other aspects of self-presentation.  (Bucholtz, 1999, p. 213) So my particular question is how computational literacy practices allow girls to negotiate hegemonic femininity. 

Carrie’s question in line 1 creates the conditions for intellectual display…The participants collude in sustaining the frame of an intellectual debate, even as laughter keys the talk as play.  This final series of questions is unified through a shared template (like   adj   crust); their syntactic similarity emphasizes that they are designed as a series, and it thus produces an effect of unremitting interrogation. Punning, as a discourse practice that orients to linguistic form, is characteristic of nerds’ discourse style (see Table 1).