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; in reference to the grammatical use of hyphens to represent a unified form of two discrete concepts, such as in blue-green or hunter-gatherer.

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)

1. To facilitate an improvement in communication and understanding between oneself and a person or group with a differing perspective, by comparing and contrasting the differences and fostering mutual adaptation around them.
   • 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.