Zachary Amaranth said:
The "pop culture" thing may be the most relevant, since terms tend to go to the public acceptance. It may bother people that "literally" can literally mean "not literally," but hey. It's the way the language goes. And definitions of "champagne" have been changed or modified because I doubt many people other than snobs and the French really care.
Even inside of linguistic descriptivism, there are some cases where terminology isn't defined by popular vote, so the majority of people can be wrong.
If most people say that the Immaculate Conception refers to Virgin Mary getting pregnant with Jesus, but the Pope says that it refers to Anne getting pregnant with Mary, then guess what? The Pope is right. If most people think that whales are a type of fish, but biologists categorize them as mammals, then the biologists are right.
Not all word usages are equal, a jargon is more strongly influenced by it's core users, than by random people who barely know about the concepts that it involves. Determining a word's "usage" doesn't just mean polling the Earth's whole population about it and let that decide: authoritive main users are also a factor.
If my mom thinks that anime is all that stuff with the shouting and the swords and the flashy attacks, but the anime fandom in general identifies itself by caring about japanese animation, and fan sites regularlycover shows like Mushishi, or Monster, but not Avatar, then my mom's uninformed opinion does not carry the same weight as an anime fan's who actually uses a consistent terminology every day.
Zachary Amaranth said:
I think part of the issue is exactly that. We have anime snobs.
I think the problem is that some people really care about turning this into a matter of snobbery, even where no value judgements need to be involved.
It's like if some people would be trying to categorize paintball as a video game, (since it involves shooting others with guns, just like video games, so it's the same style), and if gamers protest, call them elitist snobs who want to exclude others from their hobby.
It's not a matter of snobbery, the problem is that the outsider definition itself is based on a misguidedly narrow and stereotypical definition where an older and more consistent one has been doing fine.