« previous post | next post »

Weird Al Yankovic's new song "Word Crimes" has generated a lot of heated discussion among linguists and other descriptivist types who didn't take kindly to its litany of language peeves — satire or no satire. (See my original post and Lauren Squires' guest post for extended commentary.) But in detailing various "word crimes," Weird Al managed to commit a linguistic foul of his own. And no, I'm not talking about the split infinitive at the end of the song ("Try your best to not drool"). Weird Al assured his Twitter followers that the line was an intentional bit of trolling:

If you thought I didn’t know that I ended “Word Crimes” with a split infinitive… you don’t give me nearly enough credit. — Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 20, 2014

[Update: In an interview on the Grammarly blog, Weird Al further elaborates: "I purposely left a split infinitive at the end of my song … to be ironic, and also to see how many online grammar pedants it would annoy."]

The "word crime" in the song had nothing to do with prescriptivist canards. Instead, it was Weird Al's use of the word spastic:

Saw your blog post

It's really fantastic

That was sarcastic

'Cause you write like a spastic

Here is Weird Al's heartfelt apology:

If you thought I didn’t know that “spastic” is considered a highly offensive slur by some people… you’re right, I didn’t. Deeply sorry. — Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 20, 2014

The apology may be in response to various online objections, mostly from British commenters. See, for instance, comments on Reddit (in turn responding to comments on Tumblr), Pharyngula, and 16 Kinds.

This is all highly reminiscent of an incident I wrote about on Language Log back in 2006, when Tiger Woods was taken to task by the British press for saying in a post-round interview at the Masters Tournament that he played like a "spaz." After a flurry of criticism, Tiger apologized, issuing a statement that he "meant nothing derogatory to any person or persons and apologizes for any offense caused."

As I explain in the 2006 post, spaz and the longer form spastic have "become innocuous playground slang in the U.S. but a grave insult in the U.K." I provide some history for that divergence of usage and conclude:

For someone like Tiger Woods who came of age in the '80s… the American usage of spaz had long lost any resonance it might have had with the epithet spastic. This is not the case in Great Britain, however, where both spastic and spaz evidently remain in active usage as derogatory terms for people with cerebral palsy or other disabilities affecting motor coordination. A BBC survey ranked spastic as the second-most offensive term for disabled people, just below retard… The BBC attributes the British resurgence of the epithet to publicity in the early '80s surrounding a man with cerebral palsy named Joey Deacon, particularly his appearance on the children's television show Blue Peter in 1981. The word spaz and other variants like spazmo became firmly connected with Deacon among British youth, according to the BBC report.

All of this helps explain the reaction Tiger's comments engendered in the U.K. press. It would be helpful for British golf fans (and activists for the disabled) to know, however, that… he was no doubt oblivious to the cultural resonances the term might have had across the Pond.

Weird Al, too, missed out on these cultural resonances. (For more, see the Wikipedia entry for spastic, which cites my Language Log post, and Lynne Murphy's post on her Separated by a Common Language blog.) But he was swiftly made aware of the potential for offense and just as swiftly apologized in a forthright manner. If linguists do indeed use "Word Crimes" as a teaching tool, the debate over spastic can serve as an illuminating example of cross-cultural miscommunication and its repair.

Permalink