> fwiw, a minor (so, ~4 uni classes) is not what I would flex as credentialization in a subject.

It's not a "flex," it's an honest contextualization of an anecdote. They certainly studied more linguistics than I did. I, uh... had a minor... crush on a linguistics major I met through the teaching union, and we had a few casual conversations about their thesis? Now that's a weird flex.

The point of their comment was not to introduce the well-known concept; it was to relay their impression of the culture that they experienced. Please be more charitable with folks' contributions here.

The concept has historically gets an order of magnitude more push back without the tiny amount of creds to go along with it. People really latch on to the English teacher style prescriptivist view and assume that linguistics in general takes that view too.

And for me it was eight classes, ~1 a semester.