Curses,
Foiled Again!
A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief
As is my wont, I spend a significant (p < 0.01) portion of the summer “J-months”—June, July, 九月, Joulukuu, January, and Jasykõi—in various Rivieras: French, Italian, Irish, Albanian, Austrian, Makarska, Mayan, Red Sea, Slovene, etc., etc., etc. This period has come to be known around SpecGram Towers as “Coup Season”, during which various editorial entities in various roles and of various ranks try to stage various rebellions against my firm-but-fair editorial oversight (and various dictatorial whims).
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Claudia von Aufschnaiter, Sibel Erduran, Jonathan Osborne, and Shirley Simon, 2008, “Arguing to Learn and Learning to Argue: Case Studies of How Students’ Argumentation Relates to Their Scientific Knowledge,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45, pp. 101–131,
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David H. Jonassen and Bosung Kim, 2010, “Arguing to Learn and Learning to Argue: Design Justifications and Guidelines,” Educational Technology Research and Development, 58, pp. 439–457.
Chiasmus of the Month
August 2019
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This most recent summer was no different—they tried, they failed, they have been punished—though the uprising rose up considerably higher among the editorial echelons than usual and thus is worthy of discussion here; in particular, Executive Editor Keith “Ꮶеⅰth” Slater was not only involved in the insurrection, but he apparently instigated it. Given my own history of Machiavellian manœuverability, I can’t really fault him for reaching beyond his grasp. No harm, no foul, right? But there must be some sort of consequence, so his pay will be reduced by 114% and as a result, he now he must pay SpecGram 97¢ for the privilege of working on each issue (this is, alas, not Ꮶеⅰth’s premier pecuniarily retributional rodeo).
Some of the proposals made by Ꮶеⅰth and his failed but apparently egalitarian-minded co-conspirators include:
- Coming out strongly in favor of allowing more concrete ideas by replacing Speculative in the journal’s name with Completely Serious, Logically and Epistemologically Sound
- Changing the name of this journal so as not to privilege grammarians, per se, by replacing Grammarian with Linguists of All Flavors, Even Those Namby-Pamby Ones Who Get Mere Courtesy Appointments in Linguistics Because They’re Really Philosophers or Something Worse
- Reducing the prestige of words and language in general by replacing “Letters to the Editor” with “Numbers to the Editor”, though the only such epistolary submission from the last decade was “Phi”, from one “U. Clid”.
- Renaming the journal to one of the following:
- Speculaticious Grammarizer
- Speculatorious Grammarer
- The Taco Belle-Lettrist: Having Runs at Disciplinary Borders
- The Postmodernist—though this suggestion was shut down hard; even the most underhanded /kwɪzlɪŋ/ has a line they will not cross
- Spawning subsidiary and/or auxiliary journals such as...
- Pondering Sumerian
- Questioning Agrarian
- Angry Contrarian
- Chocolate Bavarian
- Dumb-Ass Barbarian
- Beleaguered Librarian
- Spectacled Vegetarian
- All-Knowing Hibernian
- Spectacular Mammarian
- Introspective Mammalian
- Retrospective Siberian
- Vituperative Libertarian
- Vocative Vulgarian
- Peculative Inegalitarian
- Grammative Specularian
- Unconflicted Totalitarian
- Outlooking Speechlorer
- A duo of titles, Disrespected Arian and Unquestioning Trinitarian, so that “we can spread the word(s) to everyone, Naughty or Nice(ne).”
- Unrelated suggestions of Modern Antiquarian and Young Centenarian were met with calls that the two should be merged.
- Creating a special 1000th issue named Speculative Kilogrammarian and/or a mini-zine called Speculative Milligrammarian.
...along with other, even more incomprehensible ideas—though I must admit that Grammative Specularian has a certain ineffable que c'est niais joie.
So, here but for the grace of I goes CompSerLojEpisSowLingO’AllFlave.
