Are you in a world of linguistic hurt? The SpecGram Linguistic Advice Collective (SLAC) will offer you empirical, empathic, emphatic advice you can use!*
Remember, if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, then you don’t need advice! So, if you need advice, trust us
Dear SLAC,
My favourite satirical linguistics journal is closing down. What can I do?
Yours disconsolately,
—B. Reft
My dear secondary flotation device,
The answer is obvious: You must join their editorial board and take over. Seize the means of joke production, the joke means of production, and the mean jokes of production!
—SLAC Unit #44616e69656c
P.S. Unless by some baffling twist of fate you’re actually talking about us, in which case you have terrible taste and there’s nothing to be done; we will never abandon monarchy.
Dear BB,
Embrace the suck. Welcome your AI Overlords. Teach your favorite LLM to write in the style of your favorite authors or articles from that journal, and have it generate an endless stream of vaguely satisfactory pale reflections of the real thing.
—SLAC Unit #54726579
P.S. Unless by some bizarre circumstance you’re actually talking about us, in which case M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. will hear about it and our copyright lawyers will be all over you like syntax on trees.
Dear B,
If you have to ask this question, you haven’t been reading carefully. SpecGram has completed its mission to train you to discover satire in the entire field of Linguistics. If you can still read Language or Linguistic Inquiry and not laugh out loud, go back to the SpecGram archives and start learning again.
—SLAC Unit #4b65697468
Dear B-Girl (nil points),
You need to go back in time and prevent this happening. You can borrow my time machine, after I’ve fixed the mess I made by giving all those PIE speakers laryngealitis.
—SLAC Unit #50657465
Dear B-Girl,
Didn’t I see you hopping at the Olympics? Never mind.
The key thing is not to be too downhearted. Yes, linguistics will never be the same. Yes, a whole troupe of wild linguists will now be let loose on all and sundry. Yes, we’ll now have to actually read theoretical linguistics.
Oh no, this really is horrible, isn’t it? [Dramatic nose blow]
—SLAC Unit #4a6f6e617468616e
Dear BB Gun at a Mafia Shootout,
Just remember that to every thing there is a season, and that with strange aeons even death may die. Were we to brave on like Shackleford to the Pole we would become no different than, say, Atlantic Monthly or Linguistic Inquiry, and no one wants that, especially Atlantic Monthly and Linguistic Inquiry.
—SLAC Unit #4d696b61656c
Not only good things must come to an end...
—SLAC Unit #50756d7074696c69616e
* Advice is not guaranteed to be useful, practical, or even possible. Do not attempt at home. Consult a doctor (of linguistics, philology, or