Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Jeremy (in Zits-world) disputes with his mother over what it means to argue:

An echo of the “argument clinic” sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus (show #29):

… Man [a client of the clinic]  Well, an argument’s not the same as contradiction.

Mr Vibrating [apparently in charge of the clinic]  It can be.

Man No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.

Mr Vibrating No it isn’t.

Man Yes it is. It isn’t just contradiction.

Mr Vibrating Look, if I argue with you I must take up a contrary position.

Man But it isn’t just saying ‘No it isn’t’.

Mr Vibrating Yes it is.

Man No it isn’t, argument is an intellectual process … contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.

Mr Vibrating No it isn’t.

[and so on, maddeningly]

This entry was posted on March 19, 2010 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.