SpecGram Is No Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

By Guest Editor and SPFFaFF Director
Professor Fergal F. McFerguson-Ffyff

The SpecGram Post-Graduate Fiscal, Financial and Funding Fund (SPFFaFF) was surprised to the point of discombobulation (and I utter that last word 20% slower than the average 73-year-old says, ‘Pardon?’ on a morpheme-per-unit-time basis) recently to receive an application for funding for a proposed PhD entitled ‘Poking fun in the letters of 17th century England: the Linguistics of Restoration Satire’. Intriguing, perhaps; appropriate, no! Read on!

It’s a slack time at SpecGram HQ, so we thought we’d replace an otherwise vacuous editorial with an important reminder (and I emphasise that last collocation by gesticulating as I pronounce it) that Speculative Grammarian concerns itself only, merely and fanatically exclusively with satirical linguistics and at no time has had, nor has or currently has any intention to have, any engagement with the at best superficially and indirectly satirical field of the linguistics of satire.

Loyal readers will have noted that, on occasion, in extremis, when we’re up against it and caught between a rock and hard place, when the chips and down and our guard is up and there’s nowhere to turn to but to turn up and take your turn, we have, reluctantly, briefly, ever-so-slightly awkwardly and I assure you guv’nor none-too-enthusiastically, undertaken to dance at the very edges, extremities, corners and moist, dark places of the satire of satire and the linguistics of linguistics. We may also, inadvertently, once or twice and most certainly temporarily have tiptoed around the satire of the linguistics of satire; but never, of course in the linguistics of satirical linguistics (which would, clearly, be tantamount to engaging with the linguistics of satire itself by other means).

To underscore the point (like that), we stand tall with both the Mad Hatter and the March Hare in offering only the rebukest of rebukes to any Alices out there who may feel that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’ and ‘I breathe when I sleep’ depicts the same state of affairs as ‘I sleep when I breathe’.

We hope this clarifies the situation and leaves anyone with aspirations to submit future funding applications to SPFFaFF in no doubt as to SpecGram’s remit as regards satirical linguistics and the linguistics of satire.

Thanks for reading; apologies if the tone was unduly strident (and I whisper those last two lexemes in a manner more conspiratorial than menacing). Now, please relax, sit back (or sit up (or sit down)) and enjoy this issue of satirical linguistic fun, friendship and frolics.

	Letters to the Editor
	SpecGram Vol CXC, No 1 Contents