Speculative Grammarian
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 | |
| Editor | Trey Jones |
|---|---|
| Categories | Satirical linguistics |
| Publisher | Speculative Grammarian |
| First issue | 1988 |
| Country | United States |
| Website | specgram |
| ISSN | 1938-0720 |
| OCLC | 227210202 |
Speculative Grammarian (often referred to as SpecGram) is the self-described "premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics". It is a parody science journal, similar in nature to the Annals of Improbable Research or the Journal of Irreproducible Results, but with content focusing on linguistics and closely related fields. It has also been compared to The Onion, but "for linguists."[1]
The journal includes humorous articles often written in an exaggerated scholarly tone. Also regularly featured are poetry, cartoons, puzzles (including crosswords, and several other puzzle types[2] adapted to have linguistic content), and parodies of book reviews, book advertisements, calls for papers, and other scholarly announcements.
Many papers properly apply serious linguistic concepts to absurd or inappropriate topics. Others provide linguistic analysis of absurd and fabricated language data, or provide a perverse analysis of real, though often severely and selectively limited, data. Still others directly parody linguistics or linguists themselves.
Publication history
Based on the online SpecGram archives,[3] the journal has been published sporadically under several names (Psammeticus Quarterly, Babel, and The Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia) since 1988, with consecutive issues being anywhere from one month to six years apart. From 2004 to 2006, the journal was published more consistently on a quarterly basis. In 2007, the journal was published bimonthly, and from the summer of 2008 through 2021, it was published monthly. Since 2022, the journal has been published quarterly. The journal was first edited by Tim Pulju and Keith Slater (now Executive Editor), and is currently edited by Trey Jones (now Editor-in-Chief).
Fictional history
One of the conceits of the journal is that it has existed in one form or another, and has wielded great influence in world events, for hundreds of years (including implications of competing with the Illuminati).[4] This fictional history ("much of this rich and varied history is concocted ad lib and ad hoc")[5] is occasionally revealed in pieces in Letters from the Editor. The first installment[6] claims the journal was "founded by Petrus Hispanus, one of the original speculative grammarians, in 1276". Later installments trace the inconsistent and fantastical history through the present day. In June 2009, the fictional origin of the journal was pushed back almost four centuries, when the journal had a different name: "Íslensk Tölvumálvísindi ['Icelandic Computational Linguistics'] was founded in Reykjavík in 881 by Ingólfr Arnarson".[7]
The first issue available in the archives bearing the Speculative Grammarian name is Vol. CXLVII, No. 1 from January 1993. However, the "Letter from the Managing Editor" for that issue makes it clear that, despite the assumption of a long previous history, SpecGram is a continuation of the previously titled Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia (the last issue of which was sub-titled Langue du Monde).[8]