Language is the most important resource utilized in the creation of social

identities and subculture. For this project we decided to focus on a contemporary

subculture, the “hip” subculture. This is interesting because on some level everybody

holds a social identity or is involved in a particular subculture. If language is the

mode through which we construct identity then it is not merely a resource for effective

communication, it is a fundamental tool in defining who we are as individuals,

communities and nations. In the next section, Eliana will discuss the origins of the

term “hipster”

“Hipster Origins”

A hipster is a contemporary subculture which first appeared as a slang term in the 1940s,

and was revived in the 1990s and 2000s, often to describe the types of young, recently-settled

urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interest in non-mainstream fashion and

culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock, independent film, magazines such as

VICE and CLASH, and websites like Pitchfork Media (music review website). 1 It has become

quite difficult to precisely define the hipster culture because it is a “mutating, transatlantic

melting pot of styles, tastes, and behavior[s]”. 2 One commentator argues that “hipsterism

fetishizes the authentic” elements of all the “fringe movement of the post war era-Beat, hippie,

punk, even grunge” look and draws on the “cultural stores of every “un-melted ethnicity” and

“gay style” and “regurgitates it with a winking in-authenticity” and a sense of irony. 3

When reviewing the ideologies or the “shared bodies of commonsense notions about the

nature of language in the world” (Rumsey 1990:326) 4 we stumble across two distinct elements

that influence the labeling of a hipster. First, the dress code of a hipster may follow or can be

influenced by the artistic, vintage, thrift store, American Apparel™ look. Right now the

generation of hipsterism is a copy of everything smashed into one thing; it is a style that is based
upon the copying of everything else. Time Magazine notes how instead of creating a culture of

their own, hipsters proved content to borrow from trends long past, stating: "take your

grandmother's sweater and Bob Dylan's Wayfarers, add jean shorts, Converse All-Stars and a can

of Pabst and bam — hipster." 5 It has also been noted that hipsters are incapable of thinking for

themselves, hence the ‘borrowed’ look from previous eras to create an individuality the hipsters

identify with.

Second, is the attitude that a hipster most likely carries. It says, “I don’t care what you

think about me,” which is usually perceived as a pretentious attitude. A stereotypical hipster can

be defined as a complainer who always denies being a hipster. Tucson hipsters are often

perceived as negative complainers about life. An example of this is an exchange with a friend

when saying hello and asking him what he was up to, he responded, “trying to find anything to

do in this God forsaken town.” This was not the first, nor the last time he expressed this

sentiment.

Exploring the influence of hipsters, a common theme occurred that a hipster wants to

look cool. Their clothing plays a huge part of expressing this cool image as a display for the

public. The image is to them not caring, but in reality it is them caring to project the image of not

caring. It also ties into the counter culture of developing an identity to be different and counter

against the elite others who blend into social formalities.

When interviewing a friend who is considered a stereotypical hipster, he denied being a

hipster. When we talked about the people around him and especially the people he hangs out with

and considers close, he was not hesitant to label them hipsters. When asked why he wasn’t a

hipster, he commented, “Because I stick with what I think is cool and don’t change for the social

norms”. Where drugs are rumored to be incorporated into the hipster scene, there is more truth
than fiction. The ladder of influences gets higher with each person. From the usual alcohol

consumption, to marijuana, up the line to cocaine, pills of many colors, mushrooms, acid, opium,

even heroin. When small talk with my friend lead to the question of what he did on his Friday

night, he responded “Was up till 7am at Dirty D’s. Every one was on ecstasy and acid.” Shocked,

I asked if he was involved, “Hell yeah. I love acid,” he said with a sense of coolest about it.

In other conversations, it was deemed that the look of a hipster comes from the attitude which in

turn feeds the look, “They want to be cool, more inventive look then what everyone else is

wearing to further distinguish themselves as an individual”, an interviewee stated outside of a

night club.

As many things can influence a subculture that is always changing, the two main ways to

differentiate a hipster from others is their clothing and their attitude, which end up feeding into

one other helping to build the image. In the next section, John will discuss his research on

“hipster” discourse.

“Hipster Discourse”

The “hipster” worldview can be understood by analyzing the content of their discourse. It

was hypothesized that within the “hipster” discourse there would be numerous cues and that

enable an observer to formulate a common thread, and the data collected within this portion of

the study yielded positive evidence for this common thread. The hypothesis for this portion of

the study was that the discourse of the conversations observed would primarily focus on music,

fashion, or intellectual concepts (books, politics, and news). In this study intellectual discourse is

defined as conversation about concepts in which critical thinking or analytical skills are

imperative for communicative competency between the people conversing. The data collection

method utilized in this potion of the study consisted of participant observation. The participant
observations occurred at various locations around Tucson such as: The Grill, Time Market, and

Epic Café. The next paragraph will provide the details of the participant observation portion of

the study in terms of how many conversations were observed, the gender of the participants in

the conversations, and the content of the discourse observed.

Ten conversations were observed throughout the course of the study: four at The Grill,

three at Time Market, and three at Epic Café. Note, the duration of the conversations observed

were roughly one and half minutes long, and the conversations were observed between the dates:

November 6 and November 30.

Two of the four conversations observed at The Grill were between males, and the other

two observed were between females. The content of the first male conversation observed

consisted of discourse about a recent show the males had attended at a local venue called plush.

The content of the second male conversation consisted of discourse about technical aspects

regarding fixing up a bike one of the males bought for fifty dollars. The content of the first

female conversation consisted of discourse about a friend whom was not present and how they

did not like the fashion she has been displaying lately. The content of the second female

conversation consisted of discourse about a show they had recently attended in Phoenix the artist

of which was titled “Why”.

The first two conversations observed at Time Market were between a male and a female,

and both conversations consisted of discourse about local music. The third conversation was

between two females, and the discourse observed was about a book they had read, in a class they

share, about psychological disorders.

The first conversation observed at epic café was between two females, and content of the

conversation consisted of discourse about preparation for a project they were presenting the next
day. The second conversation observed at time market was between two males, and the

conversation consisted of discourse about God and arguments against religion. The third

conversation observed was between two females, and the content of the conversation was about a

show they were planning to see in Phoenix.

In terms of supporting the hypothesis: five of the ten conversations were about music,

one was about fashion, and the other four could be considered intellectual discourse at some

level. The research implies that the discourse between “hipsters” consists mostly about music.

The observation of the other four conversations about intellectual discourse could imply that

“hipster” discourse tends to be more intellectual. There are limitations to this portion of the

study, but the most important limitation is the amount of conversations observed. It could be

hypothesized that observing a larger number of conversations could yield a more representative

sample of conversational discourse amongst “hipsters”. However, the findings of this study infer

that observing a larger representative sample would be likely to reinforce the data collected

within this portion of the study. In the next section, Josh will discuss imagined communities and

communities of practice amongst “hipsters”.

“Hipster” Imagined Communities

I think there is a definite perspective on the world that comes with the hipster identity. It

is common for members of the community to embrace artistic expression, and to listen to music

that is often produced independently. Hipster subculture seems to adhere to very liberal

ideology, heavily influenced by the beet and hippie cultures of 50 years ago.

The term "hipster" goes back to the 1940's; it’s meaning has evolved along with the ones

it defines socially. The first definition of hipster was "characters who like hot jazz." This

definition appeared in a short glossary titled "For Characters Who Don’t Dig Jive Talk." At this
time the term seemed to define a scene of young, middle class, white Americans who sought to

emulate the life style of the, predominantly African American, jazz musicians that were popular

amongst the alternative crowd of the day. (Wikipedia, 2009)

Today there is a far different meaning attached to the term hipster. Today's hipster is hard

to define because there is no unique defining characteristic, and "hipsters" now exist in a very

large imagined community. In a July 2009 article in time magazine everything that constitutes

hipster today was described as a borrowed feature or trait of already established, sometimes long

past social identity. (Fletcher, 2009) Because the term is so widely known and there is a social

identity that goes with it, the term hipster has become iconic, in the minds of American youth, of

a certain type of person.

Media outlets such as alternative weekly newspapers, specialized magazines, websites

and even particular record labels are seen as "hip." This helps to create a shared sense of

community and ideology on a large scale. Media outlets that target their content towards hipster

subculture often contextualize facets of other subcultures in an appealing fashion for the hipster

audience. "Vice" magazine is a prime example. Although it targets the "hip" community, the

magazine publishes articles on other subcultures in a way that relates aspects of them to its own

target audience. Because "Vice" targets kids who hold the social identity of "hipster," it helps to

create this large imagined community. Images, and language used in this magazine become

iconic of what is "hip," both as a state of being and as an identity. People who relate with this

material will be able to recognize persons of similar interests and tastes wherever they go, they

will seek out certain forms of entertainment and particular forums of social interaction. People

who subscribe to the perceived identity of hipster are in a large way influenced through national

outlets. This allows for a common interpretation of the idea of "hip.

 “Hipster” Communities of Practice

Born through the media, and extrapolating from already well know cultural phenomena

the hipster identity may further evolve, into separate communities of practice that communicate

through complex social networks, at a local level. I hope to be able to define a linguistic

community of practice, by looking at a local community of "hipster" subculture.

The locality to be focused on here is Down Town Tucson. There is a definite community

of young people, in Tucson, that embrace the hipster identity as their own. It is their own use of

speech, and the speech resources they choose to utilize that enable them to construct identity and

interpret the world around them as a community.

Communities of practice exist all around us; they are things like sports teams, unions,

students, musicians, etc. One can distinguish a distinct community of practice for almost

anything. However, there are fourteen constitutive features that define a community of practice.

(Eckert, 1992)

When looking at the Tucson hipster community I saw evidence of these five constitutive

features: 1. rapid flow of information and propagation of innovation; 2. the members have local

lore, shared stories, inside jokes, etc; 3. members share jargon and shortcuts to communication as

well as ease of producing new such; 4. certain styles are recognized as displaying membership;

5. a shared discourse reflects a certain perspective on the world.

There is a large population of young people in Tucson that fit, in one way or another, the

social image of "hipster." There is a rapid flow of information between this population, due in

large part to technology. Although every individual member of the large imagined community

does not necessarily interact on a daily basis there are a couple social forums where interaction

regularly takes place. One is online, online social networking has become the domain of the hip.
 During my research I found an example of propagation of innovation. In a conversation

with two young members of the downtown Tucson social community I kept hearing the repeated

use of the word "fliff." This word was new to me and seemed to have a number of contextual

meanings I did not quite understand. So I asked.

"Fliff, yeah we got it from a cartoon. He was talking about all his dough, and how he just

flashes it around like 'fliff, fliff not even counting it.' It was pretty funny so we started saying

fliff fliff all the time. Then I guess we just started fliffing everything. Fliff is funny, like dude,

dude is funny. I like to call chicks dudes, it's funny, they get all fliffed up about it." -J Coleman

This quote demonstrates shared, inside knowledge. These two individuals, as well as

their friends and people they frequently interact with know the contextual reasons that make the

use of "fliff," funny. They would also then have to understand the story behind it; which

exemplifies member exclusive knowledge of shared stories and jokes. Because it was taken

from an existing cartoon it must have, to some level, been prepared for detachability. Then these

two individuals reused the word in a new way, and that is re-contextualization.

The two individuals I was talking to told me after they started saying it to their friends it

sort of spread around their social network and in now used regularly by those in constant social

contact with them. A regular use of the word "fliff" may refer to money, beer, fun, or be used as

a swear word.

It is hard to exemplify any one certain linguistic style belonging to the Tucson "hip"

community. One reason could be that a lot of the people who make up this community are here

going to school and have come from other places. Another factor is the way hipsters have

borrowed much of their persona from other subcultures. In talking with and listening to hipsters
speak in Tucson I noticed that they tend to use the standard American English accent, but there is

no real particular dialectical marker of a hipster.

I have also noticed that within the hip community in Tucson there is a definite sense of

how small Tucson is and how one must inevitably leave for a time gain better a better

understanding of the world. Many of the young people I spoke with expressed a desire to move

to places like Portland OR, Brooklyn NY, Austin TX, Chicago IL, or San Francisco CA. What

all these cities have in common is that they are demographically liberal, and have even become

somewhat like hipster Meccas. It is interesting that so many likeminded people feel that they

have a unique attraction to a place where people similar to them already have established

communities. The attraction is not unique; people simply tend to seek out communities similar

to the ones they are used too. Because the attraction to these places is common amongst multiple

members of the social community in Tucson it has an impact on the world perspective of the

community as a whole. In the next section, Eileen will discuss “hipster” formality.

“Hipster Formality”

The communicative interaction within the Tucson hipster speech community complies

with the Four Aspects of Formality, as proposed by Judith T. Irvine in her article Formality and

Informality in Communicative Events. The four aspects of formality that apply cross- culturally

are increased code structuring, code consistency, invoking positional identities, and emergence of

a situational focus. Research was conducted by applying these concepts to the hipster speech

community. These concepts were observed in a local diner and club in the evening, which are

both popular places amongst the hipster crowd.

Increased code structuring was seen in both the diner and the club, mostly in the form of

linguistic and dress codes. Linguistic codes included elaborated structuring, like intonation and
turn taking. Dress codes were formal amongst men and women. Women wore skirts and dresses

and men wore pants and smoking jackets.

Code consistency and co- occurrence rules were often violated within the community,

reinforcing irony and humor. However, because irony and humor help distinguish, the hipster

community, this type of discourse can be considered formal.

Social identity within the hipster community plays a large role. A formal setting invokes

public, positional identity and is seen at music shows and other events where the attention is

directed towards a local artist or musician. This aspect of formality usually goes in hand with a

central situational focus.

Emergence of a central situational focus includes a band or performance where there is a

focused attention, even if talking is occurring on the side. This is another situation where

formality is seen.

The Tucson hipster speech community can fit into all of the aspects of formality, perhaps

for the simple reason that it is a speech community. However, the speech community observed in

the local diner and club locations, almost always complied with at least three of the four aspects

of formality. Therefore, in the correct setting, the speech community of hipsters is considered

linguistically formal. In the next section, Melissa will discuss idexicality and iconicity within the

“hipster” community.

Indexicality and Iconicity

The common hipster can be best identified when analyzing the semiotics of linguistic

signs within the subculture. In this study, I concentrated on aspects of social indexicality, and

iconicity. Through identifying these signs observers develop a stronger understanding of the

various communication practices that make up this attitude, and character type.
 In this portion of our study, Indexicality was defined as hipsters being grounded in

relation to their objects by spatiotemporal contiguity. Iconicity was defined as hipsters being

grounded in relation to their objects by resemblance. I collected most of my data through

participant observation, online social networks (such as facebook and myspace), magazine

articles, and online websites prone to aesthetically appeal to the common hipster.

When breaking down my data in order to analyze these signs I found a rather abstract

common thread between the entire subculture: the element of “indie” (independent). Overall, the

concept of indie is a rather loose umbrella of ideas and things. When focusing on social

indexicality, I found this element of indie essential throughout the language of hipsters. Unlike

other subcultures, slang for instance is difficult to identify. This is due in part to the attitude of a

hipster, which we found is normally prone to display an ambience of formality. Instead of direct

correlations between slang and the hipster (such as a specific word representing the word cool), I

found more of an independent usage of quirk, whit, and cleverness throughout their social

indexicality. Meaning the social indexicality behind a hipster varies from hipster to hipster. This

theme of indie has left an indentation in the way hipsters communicate, to the extent at which

ones speech must be independent as well. Had our study been conducted on a larger scale, I’m

certain there would be direct words for social meanings found. However, our studies rather small

regional constraints did not allow for such discoveries.

Iconicity was overall rather simple to identify. While conducting research at a local

“hipster party”, I counted well over fifteen identifiable American Apparel V-neck tees.

Coincidentally I found a few magazine articles that claimed American Apparel to be the “hipster

headquarters” for fashion. At this same party, nearly all of the alcohol being consumed was Pabst

Blue Ribbon (PBR) beer. Various online sources and articles, such as urbandictionary.com and
Adbusters magazine claim PBR as the adopted beer of the hipster subculture. I am employed at

Time Market (a central figure for our research), during one of my Friday night shifts I began to

observe the patters of who purchases PBR. Within this time period of making these observations,

nearly every customer I encountered purchasing PBR was in fact of the “hipster” aesthetic. Thus

supporting the claims of PBR being the hipster beer. This trend of “indie” follows us into the

music scene, which is a defining social marker throughout the hipster community (particularly

indie and local music). Music sites such as Pitchfork, Brainwashed, and RCRD LBL, all cater to

the broad tastes of indie music. Making these sites key components to developing the common

hipster tastes. The language utilized within these sites incorporates the same type of social

indexicality as identified earlier: full of quirk, whit, and cleverness. Language is a lot more than

speech; it is also a form of communication. All of these identified icons are representations of the

hipster subculture, and add an identity to this community’s mode of communication.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the research attained throughout this study has revealed general

characteristics of the “hipster” worldview and linguistic tendencies. Commonalities were not

only found within the individual research of each topic, but within the research of the project as a

whole. These commonalities such as: fashion, music, media, alcoholic beverage of choice etc…

demonstrate that the complexities of the “hipster” community can be synthesized into a common

thread, which entails that further research on the “hipster” community could be plentiful. As the

popularity of the “hipster” sub-culture grows, so too should the research, because understanding

American sub-culture reflects American culture.

Wikipedia: Hipster (contemporary subculture).

1. Douglas Haddow (07-29-2008) Hipster. The Dead End of Western Civilization

AddBusters.

2. Christian Lorentzen (May 30-June 5, 2007) Kill the Hipster. Why the Hipster must die: A

modest proposal to save New York cool. Time Out New York

3. Rumsey, Alan. 1990. Word, meaning, and linguistic ideology. American Anthropologist

92(2):346-361.

4. Dan Fletcher (2009-07-29). "Hipsters". time.com.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1913220,00.html.

Sources.

Wikipedia (2009). Hipster (contemporary subculture). Retrieved November 17, 2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subculture)

Dan Fletcher (2009). Hipsters. Retrieved November 12, 2009

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1913220,00.html

Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992.

Think Practically and Look Locally: Language and Gender as Community-Based Practice.

Annual Review of Anthropology. 21, 461-90.

Duranti, Alessandro. (2001). Linguistic Anthropology, A Reader. Massachusetts: Blackwell

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