… is classed a toxic mental substance, banned by official decree. Its use – as with tobacco consumption – tolerated in private. Inadvisable in public to refer to ‘parts’ of ‘speech’ or ‘elements’ of ‘language’.
‘Grammar fiends’ are dealt harsh fines, and failure to pay them is to risk arrest and imprisonment.
Martha has done time in prison, having prioritised the ability to properly and freely express herself over unrestricted physical movement.
Anti-grammar police …
… operate through an unholy trinity of vices: secrecy, viciousness and unquestioning acceptance. Of course, to a fascistic mind-set (of Josef A’s minions) they are virtues.
Their mission, bluntly defined, is to extinguish all known grammatical knowledge.
Cctv is ubiquitous. Merely whispering any parts of language is to risk arrest… whether at work or in an official space of leisure.
In the year of my birth, Josef A campaigned to have all grammar books burned. Martha recounts that, prior to the paper pyrotechnics, there had been a grammar book amnesty. Provided the offending books were promptly handed in, Josef A ‘promised’ there would be no prosecutions. Unlike the majority of people, Martha courageously kept all of hers.
Books (on grammar) in their thousands were burned in towns and in the countryside. Books which spoke of the noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, definite and indefinite articles. No language rules exempt from destruction; into the flames they all went. Even the shy retiring gerund was not spared.
Soon afterwards Josef A added to the index of prohibited books, all those in paper format. Books in other words! The city bonfires made for crowd pleasing spectacles. Their street theatre potential fully exploited by Josef A.
Knowing about words and how they fit together endangers Josef A. He knows that. Intellectual curiosity, he argues, is a way of gratifying solipsistic desires. The public must therefore refrain from commiting such acts of selfishness. Josef’s A reasoning being as follows: Your ‘own’ thoughts are best expressed by the best computers which select the best words, arranging them in the best order.