Linguistic Insults for Every Occasion

Snidely von Särcäästïcüt and Yo Ma-Ma

X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies

I t is a generally accepted fact that the field of linguistics is known to suffer a bit of physics envy from time to time. However, linguistics should never come second to physics in matters of language. That is why we have taken it upon ourselves to provide our fellow linguists with the material they need to make sure such a fate never befalls them.

In particular, we are referring to the sociologically important area of insults. Take, for example, this excellent physics one- liner: “You are like a proton: positively repulsive.”

We can’t have linguists and physicists running into each other in hotel lobbies at conferences or in staff cafeterias at university with the linguists wholly unprepared to respond in kind should the need present itself. We’re not going to win their respect tossing around equations; our best shot is to garner some modicum of respect with and for our verbal skills.

To that end, our crack research team — including ourselves as well as several dozen unnamed and uncredited sociolinguistics grad students with field experience — has collected the following corpus of natural examples of winning insults. Each of these bon mots elicited “oohs” and “aahs” from bystanders, and left their targets red- faced and defeated. Use with care.

“Down- step rightly describes the evolution of the quality of her argumentation.”

“His talents would have been more profitably directed at providing us a source- filter model of the Great Highland Bagpipe.”

“That grad student’s really a sub- optimal candidate for a Ph.D.!”

“F*** you and the alogon you rode in on.”

“A work that achieves the seemingly impossible: it is both grammatically ill- formed and semantically null.”

“Well, ain’t you an empty category!” ( or, “... a null morph!”)

“He should be promoted without leaving a trace.”

“He puts one in mind of the genitive absolute, as he’s absolutely degenerate.”

“Her contributions to semiotics were semi- otiose to begin with and have since fulfilled their early potential.”

“A schwa’s got more distinctive features than you.”

“She writes with the eloquence of a Vocoder and the native- speaker competence of Koko the Ape.”

“You rule- bleeder you!”

“I suppose sociolinguists have to get their jollies too, but they shouldn’t expect the scholarly community to underwrite them.”

“Your momma’s a real slot- and- filler.”

“He made ‘economy of effort’ not only his research topic, but also the guiding principle of his work.”

“Go reverse copulate yourself!”

“Well, you certainly applied yourself vacuously to that problem.”

“You nonce!”

“Your whole thesis is just one long tag question.”

“Chomsky’s latest argument is as solid as an INFL without a maximal projection.”

“Would that the Great Ordered Rule System in the Sky had epenthesized something ’twixt your ears!”

“ Non seulement il est CON, mais ça ne le GEN même pas. ”

“He abandons a Pāṇinian analysis for Wonder Bread and mayonnaise.”

“He puts the LOL in ‘philology.’ ”

“Is that a topicalisation in your sentence, or are you just happy to see me?”

“You documentary linguist, you!”

Never again need linguistics tolerate the bullying of the “cool kids” from the hard sciences! No more purple nurples, atomic wedgies, or questioning the legitimacy of our field for us!