work the hyphens
English
Etymology
Coined by Michelle Fine in her 1994 paper Working the hyphens: Reinventing the self and other in qualitative research, which was published in N. K. Denzin & Y.S.Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research.
Verb
work the hyphens (third-person singular simple present works the hyphens, present participle working the hyphens, simple past and past participle worked the hyphens)
- To facilitate the integration of people who belong to marginalized subgroups.
- 2000, Judith Glazer-Raymo, Estela Mara Bensimon, Barbara K. Townsend, Women in Higher Education: A Feminist Perspective, page 268:
- Thus, they simultaneously worked the hyphens of their mutual existences, forming at times a balanced equation, at other times highlighting the knowledge and strengths of one particular author.
- 2004, Bonnie G. Smith, Beth Hutchison, Gendering Disability, page 61:
- Outside the Gallaudet academic community, I have often, although not always, used two different long-standing interpreter-friends as my contact points at academic conferences and some academic social gatherings — helping me to work the hyphens between the hearing academic world and my own hard-of-hearing capabilities.
- 2011, Leila Christenbury, Randy Bomer, Peter Smagorinsky, Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research, page 338:
- One of the ways to work the hyphens is through curricula that engage students in writing and inquiry using both students' multidialectal repertoires and the schools' literacies.