When Language Eats Itself: A Field Guide to A-Semantic Speech
Or: I’m Not Going To Write This Article
This is just, Huh.
Here’s what happened.
Someone said words.
The words had nouns and verbs.
They followed grammatical rules.
They sounded like English.
They meant nothing.
Not “nothing” as in “lies.” Not “nothing” as in “spin.” Nothing as in the meaning collapsed before it could form, like a soufflé in a earthquake.
Let me show you.
This is 44 Seconds of speech.
The Original Text
Read this slowly:
“I had a little bit of a Pritsker joke. I was going to talk about Pritskar in size, but when I talk about Pritskar, I get angry because he’s not letting us do the job. So, I’m not gonna tell him my Pritskar joke. They have a very cute little joke. You know, some speech writer wrote some joke about his weight. Uh, but I would never want to talk about his weight. I don’t talk about people being fat. I refuse to talk about the fact that he’s a fat slob. I don’t mention it.”
Your brain just tried to parse that.
It failed.
This is not your fault.
What A-Semantic Means
A-semantic: lacking coherent semantic content.
The structure of language without the substance of meaning.
Think of it like a chocolate cake made entirely of cardboard shaped like chocolate.
It has layers.
It has frosting.
It sits on a cake stand.
But bite into it and there’s nothing there.
This speech has:
Subject-verb agreement ✓
Pronouns with antecedents ✓
Temporal markers ✓
Meaning ✗
The Self-Eating Sentence
Watch what happens in real-time:
Sentence 1: “I’m not gonna tell my Pritsker joke”
Sentence 2: [describes the joke in detail]
Sentence 3: “I would never want to talk about his weight”
Sentence 4: [talks about his weight]
Sentence 5: “I don’t talk about people being fat”
Sentence 6: “I refuse to talk about the fact that he’s a fat slob”
Each sentence devours the previous one.
Statement and negation occupy the same breath.
It’s Schrödinger’s insult—simultaneously delivered and withheld.
This Is Not A Lie
A lie has semantic content that happens to be false.
“I never met that woman”
is a lie if you met her.
It means something; it’s just untrue.
This isn’t that.
This is language where true/false, said/unsaid, meant/not-meant collapse into quantum superposition.
The joke is both told and not-told.
The insult is both delivered and refused.
The weight is both mentioned and never-mentioned.
Calling it a “lie” gives it too much credit. Lies require commitment to a reality, even a false one.
Why Your Brain Hurts
Human brains evolved to extract meaning from language.
We’re pattern-recognition machines.
When someone speaks, we automatically build a model:
What are they trying to communicate?
A-semantic speech breaks this process.
It’s like being handed a jigsaw puzzle where every piece fits everywhere and nowhere. Your brain keeps trying to construct the picture, but the pieces actively resist forming an image.
The cognitive load isn’t from complexity.
It’s from impossibility.
The Structural Breakdown
Let’s map the terrain:
Crime in Chicago (topic A)
Granting mercy/pardons (topic B—abandoned mid-sentence)
Pritzker blocking federal work (topic C)
The joke about Pritzker (topic D)
Not telling the joke (negation of D)
Describing the joke (execution of D)
Never talking about weight (principle statement)
Calling someone a fat slob (violation of principle)
There’s no through-line.
No argument.
No narrative arc.
Just linguistic pinball.
The Monty Python Problem
In Life of Brian, when the guards are ordered to “Wait here and make sure he doesn’t leave,” they respond with earnest confusion about whether they should also leave or just wait.
The humor works because the contradiction is external—the order itself is contradictory.
This is different.
This is internal contradiction.
The speaker negates themselves within their own speech, apparently without noticing.
It’s not “make sure he doesn’t leave” while you leave. It’s “make sure he doesn’t leave while I leave while I stay while I never mention leaving which I’m doing right now but didn’t do.”
What This Does
A-semantic speech creates a specific kind of cognitive environment:
Exhaustion: Parsing meaning becomes labor-intensive
Disorientation: The ground keeps shifting
Doubt: “Am I understanding this wrong?”
Surrender: “I’ll just accept whatever conclusion is presented”
When language stops meaning things, power stops needing truth.
The Technical Term
Linguists might call this performative contradiction—when the act of speaking contradicts the content of the speech.
But that’s too narrow.
This is systemic performative contradiction.
Every clause undermines itself.
It’s contradiction as the operating system, not a bug.
How To Spot It
Three diagnostic markers:
Immediate negation: “I won’t say X” followed immediately by saying X
Principle violation mid-statement: “I never do Y” while actively doing Y
Quantum statements: Assertion and denial occupying the same sentence
If you find yourself asking “Did they just...?” and unable to complete the question—that’s a-semantic speech.
What It Isn’t
Not metaphor (which creates meaning through comparison)
Not poetry (which creates meaning through compression)
Not confusion (which attempts meaning and fails)
Not code-switching (which creates meaning for specific audiences)
It’s the absence of semantic function wearing the costume of communication.
Why It Matters
Democratic discourse requires shared reality.
Shared reality requires language that means things.
When language becomes a-semantic, we lose the ability to:
Fact-check (what claim was made?)
Hold accountable (for what statement?)
Build consensus (around which position?)
It’s not that truth becomes contested.
It’s that truth becomes unavailable as a category.
The Original Question
“Does Trump have no separation of truth and false or wrong and right?”
After looking at this speech: that’s not quite it.
It’s that the categories themselves—true, false, said, unsaid, meant, denied—exist in simultaneous superposition until observed, at which point they collapse into whichever state is most convenient.
The separation isn’t absent.
The categories are non-operational.
A Practical Test
Take any sentence from the speech. Ask:
What claim is being made?
Is that claim affirmed or denied?
Does the next sentence support or contradict it?
If you cannot answer these questions consistently, you’re looking at a-semantic speech.
Conclusion
I’m not going to conclude this article.
I refuse to write conclusions.
I never write conclusions about articles that analyze self-negating speech patterns, which is what I’m doing right now but didn’t do.
🪶Peace, Love and Respect
Stay safe out there.
This has been a public service announcement about the structural integrity of language.
No meanings were harmed in the making of this analysis, because none were present to begin with.
This is 44 Seconds of speech.
Now listen to the audio?
2.33 to 3.17