What is a nerd?

Mary Bucholtz, a linguist at UCSB, has concluded that nerdiness is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.”

The paper to read is, "The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness", from 2001, when she was at Texas A&M.

This might be an interesting take on the difference between nerds and geeks. But perhaps it's not as simple as that:

Nerds are not simply victims of the prevailing social codes about what’s appropriate and what’s cool; they actively shape their own identities and put those codes in question.

Plenty of Defcon attendees (or WoW addicts, for that matter) would accept the "nerd" label but are a far cry from "hyperwhite". And she has apparently never hung out on IRC.

By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white.

I'm sure the black nerd bloggers must be rising up, somewhere, in response to this article.

(See also, day-after coverage from NPR of the same story, including a 10-minute discussion with the researcher and the article's author.)