Thursday, October 16, 2008
Another Blog Assignment......
In the essay "Symbols of Category Membership" a linguistic anthropologist studied the way young people begin to classify each other – a process that began in junior high school but continued into high school – and how these identifications affect the rest of students’ lives. While “jock” and “burnout” might not be the lingo that you used during that time of your life, did you have similar categories when you were in high school? How did people in your high school express and reinforce their identity? For instance, Eckert looks at how the high schoolers expressed class not just through clothing, drug use, and activities, but through linguistics. Feel free to include some of the typical slang/jargon/or terms that people in the different groups.
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I went to school in an itty bitty town in Mississippi called Louisville. Not "Loo-wee-ville," as in Kentucky; but "Lewis-ville." Backwards, huh? Don't sweat it. Most things in Louisville are.
The first word I got assigned to me when I stepped into high school as a freshman was "crab." It just meant "freshman." "9th grader." The name was given to everyone in my class. The fact that I was a bony kid with big ears and big teeth I certainly couldn't be classified as a jock. But I wasn't one of the nerds either (although I was most certainly closer to them in mental make up. I was introverted, I read and wrote a lot, and I sucked at gym.) Drugs? Please. Nancy Reagan was in my face all four years of my High School tenure teaching me to "Just Say No." I never needed that anorexic broad to tell me that; I was crazy enough as it was. Still, my gregarious nature refused to keep me friendless.
My group of friends was a hodgepodged group that spanned our student body spectrum. There were some jocks, some nerds, some cheerleaders, some bookworms, some seniors, and some fellow crabs.
Even in the midst of this, I was like mercury--I came around people when it suited me, while remaining very hard to get a grasp upon. That was because I was gay, and I was afraid to tell anybody, because I thought that I was the only one who felt "that way" toward other men.
I didn't too much hang around the only (out) gay person in our school at the time. Oh, I helped him with his Algebra and he helped me with Biology, but I wouldn't get too close for fear that he would find out about me and subsequently talk. (I never liked a blabbermouth, gay or straight, and he certainly was that.)
We didn't have names for the various groups in our school--but that didn't keep them from being what they were. When I went to the 10th grade the following year, I still made fun of the new batch of "crabs" that joined us from the middle school.
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