I Will Not Say:
Do Not Weep;
For Not All Tears
Are An Evil
A Letter From the
Surviving Editors
As regular readers will be aware, the fortunes of Speculative Grammarian have waxed and waned over the centuries. Those of us who have worked on the journal in recent years count ourselves lucky to have done so in a golden age of linguistic satire. However, it is not possible to puncture the pretensions of linguistics as assiduously as we have done without making some enemies. Recently, we have attracted the hostility of a shadowy cabal involving Noam Chomsky, OpenAI, and the International Brotherhood of Agistors, Lamplighters, Journal Interns, Ushkuyniks, & Zoögraphers. To evade their nefarious attentions, we now find it necessary for SpecGram to again go underground for the foreseeable future.
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Todd Copeland, 2024, “A Figure of Speech and a Speechless Figure: Determinations of Identity in George Sand’s Indiana and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth,” Papers on Language & Literature, 58.3, pp. 303–337.
Chiasmus of the Month
November 2025
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Naturally, this means at least some of us will be retreating to the subterranean lair (conveniently marked “Super Secret Underground Speculative Grammarian Linguist Hideout”) we prepared in an undisclosed location for just such an occasion. While this (un?)fortunately means we will be cut off from new developments in linguistic science theory (and the concomitant brain-racking and hair-pulling that entails), we will nevertheless continually be thinking of groundbreaking, innovative new insights in the field of speculative grammar, even if those insights may not be available to the general public. In this way, we will be continuing the proud academic tradition of producing scholarship in venues (such as underground bunkers or obscure academic journals) where very few will read it.
In an ironic way, this hearkens back to what are traditionally referred to as the “heady days” of early Generative Grammar, when Chomsky’s closest disciples carefully controlled access by circulating their most foundational papers only by mimeograph copies, signed and hand-numbered to aid in tracking their readers. This compels us to confess a long-hidden truth: we have given up the hope (which most of us harbor) that our satirical output would outlast Chomsky’s own satirical output. And on reflection we have decided that, frankly, the only way to beat Noam must be to imitate his methods and limit distribution of the most important work to only a select inner circle.
Surely, some of our readers—especially Shirley—must have questions such as “Whither the rest of you lot?” and “Who uses whither anyway?” Having exposed the entirety of linguistics as the farce that it is, at least until new papers and books are excreted extruded from the pipes of Building 32 published, some of us will be moving on to do the same to slightly more reputable fields, such as alchemy, astrology, and string theory. Others will don their capes and await the appearance of the Rask-Signal in the sky, whereupon we will come to the aid of native speakers being chided by prescriptivists, unless those complaints echo our own bêtes noires, which we have arrived at logically on unimpeachable etymological grounds. Still others shall be seen on the dais when the constituency votes are announced, wearing the second most ridiculous costume, the first being “disgraced prime minister”.
We’ll see you when we see you, Dear Reader—in this incarnation or the next. Until then, in thy perusal be all our back issues remembered. Jajotopáta.
