Dear Speculative Grammarian,

I was shocked to see that the wugs depicted in “When Irregular Forms Become Productive” were not observing social distancing.

Don’t they know there’s a nasty bug going around?

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Dear Epiglottal,

You need to brush up on your ornithological virology and/or virological ornithology. Wugs are quails and thus not vulnerable to CORVID-19.

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Yo, chum(p)s,

I would like to chime in with complete agreement with your recent article on the role of diacritics in silencing critics. This is entirely true. I have found that a swift diaeresis to the eyes with the index and middle fingers, followed by a swift cedilla with the foot to the crotch will silence all but the most resolute critic, in which case an acute accent with the left hand followed by a grave accent with the right usually does the trick. This is, of course, only if they’re too tall to start with a circumflex with the two hands to the top of the head.

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Hello, Clarice.

Your discourtesy is unspeakably ugly. Listen carefully. Look deep within yourself, Clarice—be better than that.

Even if you never perform the ghastly violence you describe, remember that words are living things. They have personality, point of view, agenda.

We do wish we could chat longer, but we’re having an old friend for dinner.

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Dear Editors,

We could not be-lieve what we were reading. ‘Be-autiful poetry’? Bah! we thought it was be-astly. Aesthetically, it has no be-nefit, but philosophically, it was be-nkrupt. Perhaps if you were to look be-yond and be-hind the mere linguistics, you’d be able to ask some serious and be-nign questions about being, non-being, becoming, and the ontology of existence. Read some Be-rtrand Russell.

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Bs,

Begone!

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Dear Eds,

We live somewhere slightly fancier than Slough and were interested to read details of your review process in a recent issue. We have clear and distressing memories of recent next-door back-garden disturbances somewhere slightly fancier than Slough which consisted of a series of loud sniffings, the braying of Himalayan donkeys (there are three still munching flowers in our conservatory) and the drone of fans. It spoilt an otherwise perfect rainy June afternoon.

Please run your staff training sessions somewhere even fancier than somewhere slightly fancier than Slough next time.

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Dear KirTris and TenTan,

Can we have our donkeys back please? Admittedly, there are many donkeys at SpecGram Towers, but we do need to balance the donkey books for accounting purposes. We’ll be over with a donkey barrow shortly.

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Dear Editors,

Knuttink Gnu & Underda Sun recently noted that “You can get any grammaticality judgment you need with the application of sufficient amounts of ethanol.” This is true only during the winter months, of course. Ethanol is rendered useless in temperatures over 50 degrees.

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Dear Billy Beer,

The issue is more complicated in Inner Asian and Siberian linguistics, where the utility of informant sessions is determined by the ambient temperature in proof. Thus, Yakutsk has an average winter temperature of around 100 proof (meaning that vodka with a lower proof will freeze, thus rendering it useless for informant work), though record lows of around 165 proof have been recorded.

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Dear Eds,

I found myself appalled by the recently published ‘poem’ (I use the term loosely) entitled ‘Semiotica’. Quite apart from basic conceptual errors (semiotics is not a ‘corner of linguistics’; rather linguistics is a tiny angulette in the vast meaning-sphere of semiotics), you have oversimplified and essentialised the œuvre of my late husband, the great Charles Sanders Peirce (who, I might add, while never enjoying ‘lofty prof’ status, did not suffer from psychosis as a result of the study of signs).

To label my husband’s system as ‘triadic’ and leave it at that is to gloss over the complexities of various sign typologies, the combinatorial potentialities of signs in the system, and the relevance of semiotics to logic and philosophy. Ironically (if sadly not iconically!), the semiotics of the poem are simply thus: the writer (will not say ‘poet’) has not understood semiotics.

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Dear Jolly Old Puss,

Please sign off!

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DEAR EDITORS,

I MUST TAKE ISSUE WITH YOUR RECENT /NUZ BAITS/ ITEM ON CAPITALISATION. I AM A CAPITALIST WHO, AFTER LEAVING THE ARMY, HAS MADE HER MONEY BY SHOUTING. WHEN I WRITE, I WRITE IN CAPITALS. LIKE THIS. IT NEVER DID ME, MY EMPLOYEES, MY CUSTOMERS OR MY SUBORDINATES IN THE ARMY ANY HARM AND I’M THEREFORE INCLINED TO VIEW YOUR REPORTAGE AS YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF SATIRICAL PUBLICATIONS SIDING WITH THE PROLETARIAT.

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Dear Cat Pain,

Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

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dear editors,

thank you for your enlightening reporting on recent rumblings in the globalosphere re capitalisation of addressee lines with ‘all’ etc. this comes at a crucial moment for global anti-capitalisation. indeed, if governments were to take seriously proposals by the capitalist harmony e.e. cummings society for the abolishment of capitalisation (cheec-sac) to rid the world of this terrible hang-over of pre-modern typography, events like this could be minimized, both literally and typographically. please pass out best wishes on to dave mcdave and his fight for non-discrimination of capitalist grounds.

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Dear Alphabet Soup,

TBC!

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Speculative Grammarian accepts well-written letters commenting on specific articles that appear in this journal or discussing the field of linguistics in general. We also accept poorly-written letters that ramble pointlessly. We reserve the right to ridicule the poorly-written ones and publish the well-written ones... or vice versa, at our discretion.

	Satirising Satire: A Plea for Help From Our Loyal Readers—A Letter from Associate Editor Deak Kirkham
	University News
	SpecGram Vol CLXXXVII, No 4 Contents