Crossing the line

A few months ago I ruminated in my usual tongue-in-cheek way on how during the opening sequence of the Colbert Report election night special the word that is conventionally spelled "judgment" employed the alternative spelling "judgement." Afterward I left a comment on the Indecision 2008 site with a link back to my post, and I got quite a number of hits from that. A few visitors from there even left comments. One of which was a very not-tongue-in-cheek response to what I'd written.

However, I am not here now to write about an overly nitpicky criticism; I most certainly can take it or else I wouldn't put this out into the world. No, it's something that the person wrote in an effort to lend credibility to the criticism. The person identified him /herself (I don't know the commentor's gender) as a "grammar Nazi."

And I imagine when you just read that it scarcely elicited a reaction from you. It's a term I suspect many of us have heard enough times that it's almost commonplace. In our modern society, to be concerned with traditional grammatical rules (and, by implication, spelling, syntax, and other elements of language addressed by the MLA or the Chicago Manual of Style) draws a certain level of disdain from those who (shall we say) are not as concerned with it, and what was undoubtedly intended pejoratively at first has since been adopted by those who were its target: grammar Nazi.

Obviously it can be empowering for a subjugated group to take an insult and turn it into a badge of honor (of sorts); it strips the word of its power. For example, gays employing the term "queer" to refer to themselves is different than a homophobe saying it about them, and works to take it away from the intolerant.

And while I am of the attitude that, Hey, people can do whatever they want, I do think it's interesting how half a century after actual Nazis perpetuated the Holocaust the term "Nazi" has been co-opted to suggest merely that one is strongly devoted to a particular area—all of which has nothing to do with actual genocide.

While I concede the Nazis do not deserve to have their name "respected" (and used only in the original context), it started me wondering if this suggested decades from now other terms that are presently associated with hideous evil would be similarly appropriated for innocuous insults and then co-opted by the insulted as that semi-ironic badge of honor.

I doubt anyone was nonchalantly throwing around the term "Nazi" in the late '40s; I have no doubt that the term may have been employed as a charged slur, but it still held the provocative aspect of the original meaning.

(Of course, in the late '40s that "grammar Nazi" would not have been used would be as much a function of the stance on grammar at the time as it would reveal the exposed nerves about World War II. But I digress.)

To this day, I doubt anyone who actually lived through one of the concentration camps would use "Nazi" in any context other than to describe the monsters who tortured and killed their people; it's only a generation or two later, that those who remember the Nazis as the cartoonish villains of Raiders of the Lost Ark could place the term in a context where it's divorced completely from the atrocity but still linked with strict adherence with an agenda. But such is the nature of the passage of time; what used to be awful gets supplanted by new awful and is nostolgically redefined as almost quaint.

So, as I said, I began to ponder if, say, the middle of the 21st century would find users of message boards employing a term like "grammar terrorist" to put down someone who points out when a previous commenter has included an apostrophe in the possessive of the pronoun "it"? By then would "terrorist" be stripped of its current abject evil association?

And my next glib thought was: Of course not. By the middle of this century grammar will be relegated to the same level of importance as studying Latin has now—a quaint amusement for the erudite. So few will remember what the grammatical rules were that they'll be virtually no one left to pompously correct the overwhelming majority. And those few will be the first ones rounded up by the literal grammar terrorists, who will actually be terrorists against grammar, during the coming revolution.

And the pseudo-punchline was: So enjoy these grammar Nazis now, while you still can; your grandchildren will only remember them as a footnote in egregiously poorly written history books.

[Insert rimshot here.]

~

Subsequent to when I started composing that silliness, I did a modicum of research (which is to say I Googled something), which for me is a pretty fair amount. And that revealed one key thing: That hypothetical future is now.

The term "grammar terrorist" has already been used. There's a blog with that as its name already in existence. And there's another blogger also identifying himself as "The Grammar Terrorist" (so there seems to be a slight competition for the title).

In any case, my sardonic rumination about how fifty years from now the practice of applying "terrorist" as blithely as "Nazi" is done in contemporary day has proven to be attributing five decades too long to the process. The former is not as common as the latter, but there are those for whom the risk of association with the Bush administration's favorite vilification already holds no concern.

(Of course, neither "grammar terrorist" site has been updated in over a month, so perhaps it proved to carry more of a backlash than either writer realized when choosing such a moniker.)

So, apparently, for those on message boards who seek to find a term that could be so shocking that it would be legitimately insulting, it appears that they may have to invoke really vile terms; for example: "grammar child molester."

before it loses its hideous association.That, I must admit, strikes me as something that even one with the most ironic sense of humor would take pause before willingly identifying one's self as such. "Nazi" and "terrorist" may be innocuous by now, but "molestation" should still carry at least some stigma. Granted, it's crossing a line, but presumably "Nazi" and "terrorist" were on the other side of that line at some point, too. But "molester" may actually take the 50 years I speculated about with "terrorist" for it to lose its hideous association (but only if at some point soon child molestation is completely eliminated).

In any case, it does appear that particular term is still available as a website name*.

Why I'm striving to help people on message boards and website comment sections find novel ways of being offensive to each other is a question I cannot even begin to understand. It's probably insulting of me to presume they need the assistance; I should already hold total confidence in their natural depravity when it comes to being able to put down those who put down their grammar.

My sincere apologies to them. And to anyone who read this.

(I can only hope there will be some quality responses left in the comments.)

* Which may be one of the last elements proving our society has not collapsed completely.