Dork

[Dennis R. Preston]

The line between amelioration and covert prestige is surely not too
carefully drawn.

How can we tell when a word used by insiders (in your face covert
prestige, sometimes called reclamation) has been ameliorated in a
more general sense by that use? Even after their reclamation, they
still seem very context-bound (where by context I specifically mean
to refer to user identity).

I hope our empirical observations will not overwhelm our need for
explanatory theorizing. I shudder to think we would turn out to be
the butterfly collectors some of our colleagues in other subfields
like to suggest we are.

dInIs (who still enjoys catchin them linguistic butterflies)



>I beg to differ, Jonathan. Damien's example seems to me to be a clear case
>of someone 'nowadays' taking 'pride in being a certain sort of 'dork'. But
>perhaps I'm being too empirical, and you may have a powerful theoretical
>argument for your analysis, rather than an emotional one based on your
>personal understanding or intuition.  Or maybe her stomach couldn't stand
>the chicken heads.  Whadda I know?  Not much, but I seem to hear and see an
>occaisional meliorated dork 'nowadays'. If there is a 'rule' underlying
>such transformations, why would dork (or any other term) be excluded, while
>geek and nerd are allowed rehabilitation?
>
>Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>>Nowadays one may take pride in being a certain sort of "geek."  But a
>>"dork"?  Never.
>>
>>Your student was deprecating her geekiness by ascribing it to simple
>>dorkiness.
>>
>>Were such distinctions available to the ancient Saxons?
>>
>>JL
>>
>>Damien Hall <halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
>
>>Here you go. One of the sophomores in the Linguistics 001 class I TA'd for
>>last
>>semester (a girl, from Southern CA I think), when her turn came to introduce
>>herself to the rest of the class, described herself as a 'grammar dork' and
>>proceeded to give several examples of things that annoyed her ('Betsy and me
>>went to the store', etc). Personally, I would have associated such annoyance
>>with *geek*iness. Of course, I'm British and don't have *dork* in my native
>>vocab at all, but my intuition about 'dork' and 'geek' does seem to
>>chime with
>>those of the other contributors to this thread.
>>
>>Damien Hall
>>University of Pennsylvania
>
>
>Michael McKernan


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu