How academic debates flare up

There's people out there that other people call word or grammar Nazis. Linguists get mad at his pigeonholing, and not just because of the reference to fascism. Language, they argue, is the most effective means humans have devised to communicate with each other. While most animals can communicate basic concepts such as "danger here" to each other, humans have developed the ability to explain abstract concepts to each other.

At this point biologists step forward and point out we don't know that other animals can't communicate as effectively as we can. Linguists respond by politely asking the biologists to shut up, they're trying to make a point here.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, right. The point of language is effective communication. If people are using a word incorrectly, then they are not communicating effectively.

But, Joe Sixpack points out, even if I'm using this word wrong, so's everyone else. So they all know what I mean.

Linguists, who are beginning to lose patience at this point, resist the urge to stamp their feet. Everybody being wrong in the same way doesn't make them all right, they say. Before Columbus, everyone was wrong about the world being flat. Doesn't mean the world was flat.

Hang on, say logicians. Your counterargument doesn't apply. Language is a human construction, plastic and evolving, while something like the shape of the Earth is solid physical fact, and no amount of rhetorical prowess can alter it.

At this point historians, who happened to be passing by and caught the tail end of the conversation, come storming in. Dammit, they shout, we're so tired of hearing that. Look, nobody in the 15th Century thought the Earth was flat. Pythagoras proved it was round over 2,000 years ago. Columbus thought...

Look, look, linguists say, we're getting away from the original point, which was...

No, by God, historians say. It's time the record got set straight, and we're gonna...

Come on, linguists say, the story about Columbus and the orange and all that are in the collective unconscious by now. You can't...

Oh, say historians, so now you're psychologists?

Did someone mention us? Psychologists ask.

Stay out of this, everyone else yells.

Keep this in mind next time some reactionary calls Universities a breeding ground for sedition.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights