Okay, I can&#x27;t not respond to this because this makes you seem a bit more sincere than your previous posts.<p>I appreciate that English is your L2, and I will try to keep that in mind.<p>But you are still blindly asserting that Language has one and only one purpose, and that it cannot be used for any other. I disagree with that, and I think that you will find that many other artists and philosophers of language disagree.<p>But let&#x27;s back off from such a highly charged subject for a moment. Let&#x27;s consider the case of the lowly hammer.<p>A hammer has one purpose, right? To drive nails by hitting them. That&#x27;s all it is supposed to do. Unless it has a claw, in which case, it has a purpose for removing a nail. Or perhaps you can generalize that a hammer has only one purpose: to communicate force to a nail, in some way or another. Possibly in a positive way (to drive the nail into something), possibly in a negative way (to remove a nail from something).<p>What do you call a hammer that&#x27;s used in a hammer throwing contest? Something that has nothing to do with nails? It&#x27;s just people completely outside the context of the normal use of a hammer throwing it as far as they can. Is the hammer being used to communicate force to a nail? No.<p>What about a hammer being used to destroy the video screen of an authoritarian figure? Again, not the normal communication of force to nail that you would expect.<p>What you are basically saying is that you can&#x27;t use a hammer to do anything but hit or pry a nail. And that&#x27;s simply not true.<p>Language plays a huge role in communication, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient tool for communication to happen. And it is absolutely possible to use language in ways that are non-communicative.<p>Let&#x27;s say I speak only German, and I visit Inuits in the tundra. When I meet them, I quote Rilke on Snow. I am speaking to people who have no knowledge of this language and no hope of understanding it, and I don&#x27;t care. I am saying the words because the words themselves are beautiful in and of themselves.<p>There is no communication there. Information has not been transmitted. These are just noises to the Inuit that have no meaning, yet language still preserves a function. We&#x27;re sort of getting into a tree falling&#x2F;no one around&#x2F;sound of one hand clapping&#x2F;sort of situation, but my point stands, and your baseless assertions do not.<p>You are claiming, with a lot of arrogance and no evidence, that language can only do one thing: communicate. I don&#x27;t agree. I think that language can be used for lots of different things, much like a hammer can. If you disagree with this, that&#x27;s fine, we will have to agree to disagree.<p><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i>*<p>I do not think I drew a profile of someone who is &quot;so pedantic that I can&#x27;t interact with other people.&quot;<p>I think there&#x27;s a difference between me and a pedant, and the difference is what you get out of it. In my opinion, a pedant gets off on showing other people that they are wrong.<p>In my case, I am just trying to understand what the person said. Much like the author of the original article, I constantly wonder, &quot;What does this question really mean? What does this statement really mean?&quot;<p>Because my ultimate goal in any social situation is to understand the people I&#x27;m interacting with. A pedant is someone who doesn&#x27;t care what the other person thinks and just wants to go around showing off how smart he or she is.<p>But a pedant and a thoughtful person can often appear very much alike. Which is a shame.<p>As far as your last paragraph goes, there&#x27;s nothing in my original post or in this one that implies anything other than that I am the one with the problem. So your point about me admitting that I have a problem is either moot or, dare I say it, pedantic.<p>Regardless of how much I disagree with you, I appreciate your willingness to clarify and am giving you an upvote.