>>"Related to the phonological formality of nerdy speech is its lexical formality.
Nerds often chose formal-register polysyllabic variants of Greco-Latinate
origin over more colloquial Germanic monosyllables, a longstanding
stylistic distinction based on ideologies in the history of the English language.
But where in Standard English these lexical items are associated with
different registers, in superstandard English they were used across registers.
Such lexical items therefore had the indexical effect of making speakers
sound smart or learned."<<
No, I do not think that *at all*. Actually, I really do not speak much like I write except in cases where features of my dialect leak through into my writing. The matter, though, is that when writing in forums I tend to prefer to use relatively formal writing, albeit with allowances for some standardized contractions. I view it as being on par with content in things like weblogs, which are commonly written relatively formally if you exclude the likes of MySpace, Facebook, and LiveJournal. This is different from how I write in, say, IRC channels, where I am much more informal overall. And even that is a good bit more formal than my actual everyday speech.
I did talk like that, a long time ago, though. That was before I realized that it made me sound like an ass and that I was better off speaking far more informally. These days I almost tend to favor the opposite extreme in everyday speech, even though I tend to not use a whole lot of slang that is not specific to computing.
Nerds often chose formal-register polysyllabic variants of Greco-Latinate
origin over more colloquial Germanic monosyllables, a longstanding
stylistic distinction based on ideologies in the history of the English language.
But where in Standard English these lexical items are associated with
different registers, in superstandard English they were used across registers.
Such lexical items therefore had the indexical effect of making speakers
sound smart or learned."<<
No, I do not think that *at all*. Actually, I really do not speak much like I write except in cases where features of my dialect leak through into my writing. The matter, though, is that when writing in forums I tend to prefer to use relatively formal writing, albeit with allowances for some standardized contractions. I view it as being on par with content in things like weblogs, which are commonly written relatively formally if you exclude the likes of MySpace, Facebook, and LiveJournal. This is different from how I write in, say, IRC channels, where I am much more informal overall. And even that is a good bit more formal than my actual everyday speech.
I did talk like that, a long time ago, though. That was before I realized that it made me sound like an ass and that I was better off speaking far more informally. These days I almost tend to favor the opposite extreme in everyday speech, even though I tend to not use a whole lot of slang that is not specific to computing.