Casual tourist (CT) outside Trinity, Great Gate : Excuse me, is this Trinity College?
Transparent Ironist (TI) : Well, I would hope so!
CT : And you study here?
TI : I certainly try to do so.
CT : Ermm, is this the way you always talk?
TI : You mean the way I am talking to you right now?
CT : Yes, I mean this hypothetical, hesitant, and tentative way of speaking?
TI : Perhaps yes, but why do you allow it to bother you? Say if I stood up there in front of this Great Gate and declared to you, 'X is the Truth, the Way and the Life', what would you do?
CT : Probably laugh it away, probably not pay too much attention to it, probably declare it to be a form of intolerance.
TI : So there! If I told you, 'This is Trinity', you might not take too much note of it either. You might even think that I am some sort of a propagandist on Trinity's behalf, that there is some sinister power-play that I am trying to mask and that you must excavate by going behind the scenes. But if I dress it up a bit more carefully, your ears stand up to take it all in.
CT : Why do you think this is so?
TI : Well, it is all a part of a merry-go-round game that we play, both inside and outside the Academy. Outside, nobody likes the way people talk inside, they complain that people inside the famed ivory-tower are trapped in their webs of language and their theoretical mazes, and yet for all that, they do have a curious fascination for the arcane talk that goes on within. They like to 'problematize' things, to have a 'critical perspective' on matters, and to do a bit of 'deconstructing' every Sunday morning.

CT : And why is that so?

TI : Well, I don't know. But before your tour-guide moves on to St John's, here is a bit of bone to gnaw on. Perhaps we most violently reject in people around us what we most passionately dislike about ourselves.