Submitting to SpecGram

Who & What

Anyone and anything related to linguistics, in theory or in practice. Satirical Linguistics, the specialty of SpecGram, is a meta-field that covers everything from Abkhasian to Heinrich Zimmer. Everything linguistic is fair game—uh, that is—acceptable subject matter.

SpecGram is seeking witty, erudite papers in satirical linguistics that demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the field of linguistics as a whole, a subtle wit, and a refined sense of written language. Preference is given to material that rouses the passions and evokes the intellectual delight of the editors and publishers.

However, as those kinds of papers are pretty hard to come by, SpecGram is accepting papers that are moderately clever, can be edited into some passable form, and don’t rely too heavily on bodily function humor.

Everyone who has ever been a grad student has written some clever little piece of fluff that made them laugh. Now your own little bit of fluff can pad your CV. On the other hand, if you aren’t sure how your peers and colleagues will react to your flight of linguistic fancy, our Author Protection Program allows you to publish under a well-protected pseudonym.

Material written in a language with a passing similarity to English is, for practical reasons, handled more quickly, but is in no way preferred. Anything else we would probably view as a worthy challenge!

It is important to remember and respect the history of our field, and remain mindful that—as in many if not most areas of academic concern—much crucial work has been done by dedicated amateurs and passionate non-academics. SpecGram embraces this tradition to the fullest, and accepts submissions from all comers, which will be judged (let’s be serious here) subjectively, but without regard for the formal academic qualifications of the author.

In simple terms, despite pressures to the contrary, SpecGram does not discriminate against linguists with formal degrees in the field or working in academia. Some people just can’t get a real job, y’know?

When & Where

Right here! Right now!

Thanks to the non-circadian joy that is the internet, our submissions office is open every minute of every day, and physical location is of no consequence.

On our end, the publication schedule has always been mildly erratic, what with controlling the destiny of nations or going underground to avoid extermination, we’re never quite sure when we’ll publish next—in defiance of all tradition and expectation, we’ve been holding on pretty well to a monthly schedule for some years now, so we’ll try to stick with that for now.

How & Why

All materials should be emailed to . We’ll get back to you as soon as possible after that.

As for Why? you’d want to submit to SpecGram. Fame? Glory? Adulation of your peers? You won’t get much of that around here! The best reason is because there is a little voice inside you telling you that you must! If the other little voices don’t shout that one down, then you are the kind of person we’re looking for!