Hyperwhites

[metal56]

Know of any hyperwhites close by you?

Article: Superstandard English and Racial
Markedness

Extract:

Anthropological research has shown that identities that are “not white
enough” may be racially marked. Yet marking may also be the result of being “too white.” California high school students who embrace one such white identity, nerds, employ a superstandard language variety to reject the youth culture norm of coolness. These practices also ideologically position nerds as hyperwhite by distancing them from the African American underpinnings of European American youth culture.

http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty ... LA2001.pdf

[Lorikeet]

I found the article disturbing. I read much of it and glanced over some of it. I'm not sure of the intense racial negative feelings that this article suggests. I'm sorry I can't express myself very well, and I don't want to spend the hours necessary to polish some kind of a treatise on it. Suffice it to say in my opinion kids in high school have always had tough times "belonging" and there have always been "in" and "out" groups. I can't see "hyperwhite" as an explanation for nerdiness.

[lolwhites]

My primary school was next to a council estate, and many of the other kids thought I was "posh" because of my standard(-ish) accent. I didn't go out of my way to be "hypercorrect" though, I was just speaking my dialect.

[metal56]

I can't see "hyperwhite" as an explanation for nerdiness.

Even so, there does seem to be a strain of what could be called "superstandardising" going through many language fora - I think David Crystal said something similar recently, but I don't have his exact words at the moment.

[metal56]

I didn't go out of my way to be "hypercorrect" though, I was just speaking my dialect.

But do you know white people who do go out of their way to be marked as non-black, a non-dialect speaker, etc? I do, and I meet them all over language fora.

[lolwhites]

But do you know white people who do go out of their way to be marked as non-black, a non-dialect speaker, etc? I do, and I meet them all over language fora.

How do you know they're going out of their way? Do they say so themselves? And how is this any different from any other group using language to distinguish itself? Young people do this all the time.

[metal56]

How do you know they're going out of their way? Do they say so themselves?

They state such, implicitly or explicitly, in every almost every post. I'd say that going out of one's way to state something.

And how is this any different from any other group using language to distinguish itself?

Why need it be different? I didn't say it was different. It's just that the hyperwhites, the seller of a "superstandard" are not much discussed or put in the limelight on language fora.

[Stephen Jones]

You need to read the whole of the original.

What the writer is saying is that in California whites have adopted certain elements of black culture because they feel it makes them cool. The nerds on the other hand wish to forge an identity that is deliberately non-cool and thus they banish from their dialect any borrowings from black speech that might contaminate them with the sin of coolness.

[lolwhites]

The "nerds" are speaking a dialect just like any other, and using language to establish an identity, as kids are wont to do. Granted, I'm not aware that their (use of) language has been analysed before but it's still nothing radical. Let's see how what their speech is like when they grow up.

[metal56]

What the writer is saying is that in California whites have adopted certain elements of black culture because they feel it makes them cool. The nerds on the other hand wish to forge an identity that is deliberately non-cool and thus they banish from their dialect any borrowings from black speech that might contaminate them with the sin of coolness.

I think we know that. Stevie. The most interesting thing about the whole article is the idea of racial marking through language use. In popular culture, even many whites have been racial marked as being "too white", but not so often has that marking been taken seriously or discussed in wider academic circles.

in viewing whiteness as a normative, hegemonic, and unmarked racial position, scholars may be unwittingly reifying a singular and static version of whiteness.It is not the concept of racial unmarkedness itself that creates the problem but rather the common scholarly misperception that the unmarked status of whiteness is impervious to history, culture, or other local conditions.

Moving to language use, do we agree that speakers of Standard English generally see themselves as unmarked linguistically - or at least that Standard English is seen by many as the unmarked form? Do we also agree that most or many Standard English speakers see nonstandard forms as degraded forms of the language?

[metal56]

Let's see how what their speech is like when they grow up.

how what

[lolwhites]

how what

Yo metal! You're so down with the kids it hurts
Of course, the best way to embarrass teenagers (or at least get them rolling their eyes and groaning) is to speak like them.

[metal56]

Yo metal! You're so down with the kids it hurts

Well, I do have to teach quite a lot of kids who want to imitate American, non-nerdy, youth culture. How should I present the speech norms of American youth culture? What should I say about such norms and should I help my students speak in that way?

[lolwhites]

What should I say about such norms and should I help my students speak in that way?

I agree with what Michael Swan says in Practical English Usage, which is basically that when NNSs deliberately try to use slang and colloquial expressions it nearly always sounds artificial, unless they've spend a lot of time among NSs and picked them up naturally.

[jotham]

But do you know white people who do go out of their way to be marked as non-black, a non-dialect speaker, etc? I do, and I meet them all over language fora.

When talking about teenagers, I don't think that nerds' primary focus is separating themselves; neither do I believe that they're the ones rejecting people first. I think their focus is an early interest in the abstract and knowledge domain. (That may be difficult for a linguist to swallow or admit when they believe every behavior is necessarily based on cultural or social phenomena instead of abstract ones, which might explain why this article takes the approach it does to explaining nerds.) When one becomes proficient at one thing (like knowledge), one necessarily becomes deficient at other things (like social skills — for teenagers, who have yet in their short life to learn and practice them). Of course when we're adult, we've had opportunity to be sufficiently proficient in all these realms.
Most young people primarily focus on practicing and mastering social skills as a priority before being swayed to develop academic ones — and nerds vice-versa. These teenagers, like any normal person, would love to have a treasure of various kinds of friends, especially cool whites and blacks, if they were honest with themselves. But their personality and interests aren't readily understood by peers, especially cool whites and blacks, whose mean rejection shows that their social maturity hasn't developed as well. Some of these rejected nerds may repudiate their own interests in order to be accepted, and then become a fake imitator of others; a plastic personality. Other rejected nerds, however, may react and strengthen their resolve to be who they are and then behave as such to an extreme, in ways that this author might call "hyperwhite." But I doubt that it's because they're trying to be white, or non-black. It may be that they're trying to assert confidence about their personality that everyone else mocks. It's teenager issues.
And most schools don't reward intelligence and excellence to a demonstrably sufficient and obvious degree — at least not to peers — as the workplace usually does.