Okay, I can't not respond to this because this makes you seem a bit more sincere than your previous posts.

I appreciate that English is your L2, and I will try to keep that in mind.

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.

But let's back off from such a highly charged subject for a moment. Let's consider the case of the lowly hammer.

A hammer has one purpose, right? To drive nails by hitting them. That'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).

What do you call a hammer that's used in a hammer throwing contest? Something that has nothing to do with nails? It'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.

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.

What you are basically saying is that you can't use a hammer to do anything but hit or pry a nail. And that's simply not true.

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.

Let'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't care. I am saying the words because the words themselves are beautiful in and of themselves.

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're sort of getting into a tree falling/no one around/sound of one hand clapping/sort of situation, but my point stands, and your baseless assertions do not.

You are claiming, with a lot of arrogance and no evidence, that language can only do one thing: communicate. I don'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's fine, we will have to agree to disagree.

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I do not think I drew a profile of someone who is "so pedantic that I can't interact with other people."

I think there'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.

In my case, I am just trying to understand what the person said. Much like the author of the original article, I constantly wonder, "What does this question really mean? What does this statement really mean?"

Because my ultimate goal in any social situation is to understand the people I'm interacting with. A pedant is someone who doesn't care what the other person thinks and just wants to go around showing off how smart he or she is.

But a pedant and a thoughtful person can often appear very much alike. Which is a shame.

As far as your last paragraph goes, there'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.

Regardless of how much I disagree with you, I appreciate your willingness to clarify and am giving you an upvote.