Colbert's recent spiel on academia has led linguistics to the spotlight (albeit unwillingly):
- Folks, in today’s ‘anything goes’ ivory towers, kids earn credit for anything. For instance, if an English major writes a poem for a class, his credit is worth just as much as an engineering major who designs a weapon that can be used to repel poets [Like a Job].
- Nation, our young people are being taught that all knowledge is valuable, whether or not it leads to a promising career. But the fact is, folks, there is a real world difference between a graduate with an advertising degree [Account Executive In Five Years] and one with an art history degree [Account Executive In Six Years].
- Thankfully, some state universities are recognizing that by making tuition for some majors more expensive than others.
- Now according the universities, they need to charge more for courses like business, engineering and hard sciences because of expensive lab equipment and high faculty salaries. They say they have no choice. Now, I don’t know whether they *have* a choice; I’ll leave that to the Philosophy Department [They Have Free Time, If Not Free Will].
- But I, for one, am excited about this. It’s a breakthrough that allows me to achieve a long time dream, arranging all fields of knowledge into a three-tiered pricing system: ‘marketable’, ‘non-marketable’, and ‘you KNOW this is killing your parents’.
- Now, ‘marketable’ is the priciest: business, engineering and science. And whatever future professional football players major in. [Dogfighting]
- Then there’s ‘non-marketable’. That’s for majors like history. Why spend a lot for it when you won’t get a high paying job? Plus, if you don’t learn history, evidently you’re doomed to repeat it, and you’ll find out what happened for free. [Are You Listening, Michael Beschloss?]
- Finally, the lowest tier, which includes classics, comparative literature, linguistics; basically, anything taught by someone who says he ‘lives to teach’. Of course, if these universities really want to revolutionize education, they should apply monetary values not just to majors, but to individual facts [Like Alex Trebek].
Of course, Stephen Colbert speaks from the experienced position of... growing up in a family of highly Catholic intellectuals. Obviously, I am neither speaking nor sparking with outrage here. However, his comment addresses an annoying fact: linguistics often receives little credit and much disdain as a science. I am currently reading the "Twitter Machine," and the introduction starts out with a defensive response to a withering quote against linguistics.
There has also been another recent Internet linguistic kerfluffle. To find out more, first go brew yourself a strong pot of tea or coffee -- this will take awhile. Then, go to Polyglot Conspiracy to read about the blogosphere's response to a recent NYTimes article on linguist Mary Bucholtz's work on "nerd" traits as a manifestation of "hyperwhite" behavior, and then go read Bucholtz's work. (Warning: PDF) For extra credit, go ahead and read Language Log's take on the situation, and delve into Mixing Memory's frustration with society's understanding (or lack thereof) in cognitive science. Take your time, my post will still be here when you get back.
With regards to Bucholtz's work, the responses can be sorted into a few (rough) categories:
- Linguistics lacks numbers, and therefore is so much intellectual hand-waving. Considering that Bucholtz conducted an intense longitudinal study in one high school, there are numbers and so on -- X number of personal narratives, X% of students defining Y behavior as "nerdy," and so on. The NYTimes article did not discuss her research collection, and did not provide external links to her research. I do wish that Bucholtz had addressed numeracy / math skills in her work, but those types of numbers is not her field of research (linguistic markers are), and it would be slightly beside the point for her to do so.
- Linguistics is a social science, dominated by the fluffy-minded, and is "not useful." I have a hypothesis that some of these comments stem from non-white (and non-black) self-identifying nerds who feel that Bucholtz is hinting that they are effectively race traitors. An additional concern that non-white/black "nerds" may have is that if nerd behavior is tagged as "hyperwhite," their right to identify as nerds may be questioned in the same way that society (wrongly) questions the notion of the "black nerd." (Cueing the Stormfront people to start vociferously arguing for non-white nerds to abdicate intellectual occupations in society that rightfully belong to the Volk and return to paddy-farming in Asia 3... 2... 1...) Considering the strong pressure on second generation U.S. immigrants to study "hard sciences" and lucrative jobs, it would not be surprising for many immigrants to internalize the idea that the social science field is not useful.
- Sociolinguists = RACE WAR. I think that race, and not health care, is the third rail in the U.S. system. Touch it and die. As a minority in the U.S., I admit to getting vaguely annoyed and offended when people use my race to stereotype me. The stereotypes are often positive (doing math well, being very pretty in a perpetually child-like way, excellent work ethic, in touch with some sort of ambient spirituality) but the mental short-cut annoys me. Anything that even remotely reinforces racial stereotypes (even without an agenda) worries me, because I feel that this will keep people from critical thought. (Translation: Bucholtz's paper made me personally uncomfortable.) Bucholtz's paper does leave me uncertain as to how au courant she is on race identifiers, along with nerd identifiers. Of course, coming up with a consensus on nerd identifiers may well be impossible, considering the cultural breadth of nerds around the world.
- Academic essays are full of horrible elitist/Marxist/impenetrable language, and act within a highly self-referential frame. Okay, I'll bite. Finding words like "hegemonic" in papers makes me cringe as well, because I have to mentally unpackage the higher-level language (super-standard English) in lower-level language (standard-level English). In a way, these linguistic traits are representative of what Bucholtz is discussing: since super-standard language is part of the "seekrit* intellectual handshake," an academic paper isn't going to be taken seriously if it uses standard-level language. Not that super-standard English is always consciously polysyllabic and logorrheic: Douglas Hofstadter demonstrates the reverse in Le Tombeau de Marot when he writes an entire chapter in monosyllabic English, where he ascends to heights of verbal agility in order to maintain said restriction. (This is unsurprising since the book also addresses Oulipo-style restraints in verbal translation.) As far as the self-referential frame, I used to feel the same way until I started doing papers of my own. I would turn up essays that I couldn't understand in the least bit -- until I read the accompanying dozen of referenced papers, which would in turn reference n number of essays and research, and... turtles all the way down, or until I reached a saturation of understanding on the subject. I do feel that academic papers suffer due to this, at least in that any cursory coverage (say, in the NYTimes) will fail to achieve understanding based on a single paper.
I would like to make some observational points on the topic of nerdiness. Nothing backed by research or anything, just just thinking points on my part. The whole "nerd" culture as we know it (language and ephemera) can be traced back to the post-war Big Industry workers in the U.S.: the IBM man, Bell Labs, radio, and so on. While scientific tinkering and exploration had been previously explored by gentlemanly dilettantes during the 18th century and industrializing inventors during the 19th century (Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park here), a few factors made the 20th century a more egalitarian time for home workshops in the U.S:
- The increasing uses and miniaturization of electronics in the 20th century made home tinkering possible on a national basis.
- World War II, and the G.I. Bill allowed a nation of men to reach a level of education that would have been less likely, had they remained in their previous towns and lives. Wars expedite technological advancement due to strategic necessity -- WWI brought sonar, WWII brought radar, and countless other examples can be cited. All of these pieces of equipment require maintenance, and the basic education required to maintain the equipment. have a technical manual from WWII for radio operators that starts from basic arithmetic and ends in basic electrical engineering in about 100 pages. These returning soldiers had basic technical skills and the chance to attend additional schooling.
- The post-war increase in living standards + electronic advances + post-war industry seeking outlets = more toys in the house. Refrigerators. Vacuums. TVs. People made concerted efforts to maintain their appliances.
- The Cold War carried over the emphasis that learning was not just a personal whim but rather a civic obligation. The arms race, the space gap... the smart gap. Learning could catapult the U.S. to victory over the communists I have one of my stepfather's high school yearbooks from the early 60's: the Science Club is presented in all of its "nerdy" glory as learning the weapons in fighting the Red menace. Remember how pivotal chess matches were back in the day? Yeah -- being smart meant being a fighter.
So if technology-nerd** culture seems "hyperwhite" -- it is. What I am trying to say is that contemporary nerd culture is possibly descended from the 50's technical boom which occurred in the U.S. It is this nerd boom that brought us the computer, which is the iconic standard for all nerdliness right now in [global] society.
Aaaaand, I think I'm done. Except I'm really not done, because I want to discuss the evolution of my pretentious speech and how the military changed my speaking habits. So belay my last: I'm done for now.
*As I wittily and not-so-secretly reveal my Internet meme humor handshake!
** Because this is a different nerd culture than say, Confucian scholars. Or post-war Japanese salaryman nerd culture.
