Enforcer Syndrome (pre-adolescent phase)
enforcer
Sometimes the signs can be observed at a young age.
Unfortunately, no truly effective treatment has yet been found.
Here's a report of a case with especially florid symptoms, from A. J.
Jacobs's
The Know-It-All, p.
177:
Grandma starts passing around the bowls of
food. "This is less potatoes than usual," she apologizes.
[Jacobs's 11-year-old cousin] Douglas suddenly stops
pecking away on his computer and looks up.
"Hold it!" he says. "That's incorrect!"
Douglas takes out a piece of paper and pencil, checks something off,
then leans across the table and slides the paper toward Grandma.
I pick it up. It's something called a "grammar
citation." It's got a list of grammar infractions like "free
gift" and " 'impact' misused as a verb." Douglas has checked off
a box that says " 'fewer/less' abuse." Apparently, grandma should
have said "fewer potatoes than usual" instead of "less potatoes than
usual."
"Douglas has gotten into grammar," explains Jane
[his mother]. "He's an officer in something called the grammar
police."
"Word police," corrects Douglas.
"Isn't that something," says Grandma, chuckling.
"He gave a citation to his teacher last week," says
Jane.
"What'd she do?" says Grandpa.
"She said, 'Between you and I.' " replies
Douglas. He shakes his head, no doubt feeling both sorrow and
pity at her pronoun abuse.
What to do? What to do? Throttling him is illegal, and
gagging him surely counts as child abuse. Some authorities
recommend a studied absolute failure to respond: just ignore the
symptoms. Other authorities report that the silent treatment
fails to dampen the manifestations of the syndrome and may in fact
exacerbate them. It is known that the condition can persist
throughout life;
David
Foster Wallace, for instance, is an admitted sufferer from Adult
Enforcer Syndrome.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at June 22, 2005 12:53 PM