prescriptive
Explanation
This comic explores the debate between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics, then takes an unexpected philosophical turn.
A character asks a linguist whether she is "prescriptive or descriptive." She explains the descriptive position: that words' meanings are determined by how people actually use them, and language evolves naturally over time. She notes how mispronunciations become standardized, meanings shift with usage, and former descriptions become slurs.
Her interlocutor appears to agree enthusiastically ("Exactly!") and then applies the same logic to the word "accept" -- arguing that since many people use "accept" to mean a situation with an unknown outcome or any situation that could go differently, descriptively speaking, the word now means something broader than its traditional definition.
The linguist becomes visibly upset, and the man smugly notes "I don't know why you're feeling so, you're in a 'complicated emotional state.'" He has weaponized her own descriptive framework against her, using loosened definitions of words to strip her of the precise language she needs to articulate her frustration.
The final panel shows her attacking him while yelling "DIE! DIE!" -- the joke being that her response has been reduced to the most primitive, unambiguous language possible. The comic satirizes how taken to its extreme, pure descriptivism can become self-defeating, since precise communication requires some shared standards of meaning.