Stealth Geekery and FanSpeak

[alanajoli]

shanna_s has talked a number of times about the art of being a Stealth Geek: someone who appears to be a "normal" person to other non-geeks, but in actuality can speak geek just as fluently as he or she can speak pop-culture or sports or a host of other topics. I've always enjoyed this concept, though I suspect I'm a bit less stealthy than true Stealth Geeks.

Recently, however, willshetterly posted a link on FanSpeak as actual body-language dialect. I'm not sure how to think about this, as I suspect my linguistic usage tends to fall somewhere in between FanSpeak and Midwestern. (I catch myself using the past participle of buy not as bought but as boughten, which rhymes with gotten, which I either picked up in Iowa or Michigan. Also, I use cattycorner for... huh... I'm not even sure what the non-Midwestern word for that is. Just across, I suspect.)

So my new ponderance is this: is the difference between classic geeks and stealth geeks the use of FanSpeak (or lack thereof)? Of can stealth geeks just switch between the two? I'll have to ask shanna_s and see what she thinks...

Edit: According to lj's spell-check, ponderance is not an actual word. I think it should be, so I'm leaving it as is, which may somehow relate to the query I'm making.

Comments

[slwhitman.livejournal.com]

Cattycorner is very midwestern. I've gotten made fun of using it on two coasts and in the intermountain West. Apparently the "correct" term, according to those friends, is "kittycorner." Um, same thing?

My grandma always apologizes that her cookies are "store-boughten" instead of homemade, which is how she prefers to be hospitable.

I'm very much a Stealth Geek, to the point that most of my geeky friends deny that I'm any sort of a geek. Okay, whatever. Hey, I admit, I was a cheerleader in high school. (But I was also on the yearbook committee and captain of the scholastic bowl team.)

However, I very much do the talking-over-another-person if they're not listening to me. I don't think that's FanSpeak, I think that's my upbringing--my mom's side of the family is very much the same way.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I'm so delighted that "boughten" isn't only me (and, in fact, I'd completely forgot how often I used to hear store-boughten--I'm sure that's where I get it).

The other word I could come up with for cattycorner was cattywhompus, which was used in my home town. Whew!

I would have thought you to be too much a book nerd to be a true stealth geek... but then, we've always talked about books! And I know you play rpgs and ccgs now, and know what all the important acronyms mean. So stealthy you may be, but I give you total geek cred, cheerleader or not.

I'd like to see a discussion of whether fanspeak can be further distinguished in regionality. I completely buy the "pronouncing words like they're written" bit, because most of my academic geek friends do that (we were all huge readers in our childhoods and got our big vocabularies from books rather than conversation). But again I'm wondering how much the actual communication applies to fandom, and how much comes from the regions with the largest fan populations. (People in New England use much different body language than people did where I grew up, and have a different idea of what being "friendly"--as opposed to being "nosy"--means. I suspect regional culture is behind a lot of the FanSpeak discussion.)

[dmoonfire.livejournal.com]

I think there is definately an overlap with accents in this one. One of my coworkers can actually tell which part of Chicago someone grew up in based on how they pronounce certain words, roof and folk are actually two of them. Its one of those quirky things, so you can pronounce words differently based on locality.

However, I have also had my psych friend (working on her Ph.D. apparently) mention about the layers of conversation. In our games, it is not uncommon for people to be asking rules, in-character, out-of-characters all at the same time and everyone knows what is what and which.

fightertype has tried for the last few years to get us to stop interrupting people, but that doesn't work (and she interrupts us in the same way). It gets kind of frustrating when people don't listen, but we do that one heavily also. :)

[eclectic-writer.livejournal.com]

I think "preponderance" is a word and has to do with a lot of something.

One of my sisters' friends is what I call a "hot Geek". After reading this I'd probably call him a Stealth Geek because, seriously? The guy can party. He clubs, goes to raves, has intelligent, witty conversations with girls, is fairly good looking - the kind of dude you'd go with to just have fun. He's also a hardcore gamer and computer whiz, tests software coding for a big company, and knows all about 133t-speak. So I know they exist, perhaps in greater numbers than previously believed.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

You're quite right. According to Princeton's it is:

a) superiority in power or influence; "the preponderance of good over evil"; "the preponderance of wealth and power"
b) a superiority in numbers or amount; "a preponderance of evidence against the defendant"
c) exceeding in heaviness; having greater weight; "the least preponderance in either pan will unbalance the scale"

Perhaps "wondering" could be used as a noun instead? There really must be a word out there somewhere that means "a matter to ponder."

And hurrah for your "stealth geek" friend! I figure that there are more stealth geeks now than ever, due to the pop-culture influence on fantasy/sci-fi and vice versa.