Emerging Nerd Dialect in Math/CS Spaces of Higher Education
This post discusses how people, mainly in math/cs people, in higher education are applying words like "such that", "nonzero", and "nontrivial" to everyday conversations. In Natalie Schilling-Estes "Investigating Stylistic Variation", she considers the importance of examining intra-speaker variation in the context of the theories of audience design and speaker design. People change their lexicon, intonation, cadence, etc... in order to match the audience whom they are addressing and to construct a persona. I believe that this phenomena of using math/cs language in everyday life is a means to indicate one's belonging with in math and cs communities of practice and allows for the construction of a persona favorably viewed by others in the community. [Published on 07-19-2025]