This morning I was reading Hofstadter and I realized that one thing in this book that annoys me is his wordplay. I mean, as you all know, I am heavily in favor of wordplay in almost every situation, but Hofstadter's endless wordplay leads me to suspect that he makes arguments just so he can play with spelling in punny ways.

This connects to my other peeve I just discovered. de Becker does this and lots of rather unprofessional writers do this. They'll mention a word root or a dictionary definition as though that, in and of itself, is an invincible argument for their position. It's often a conclusion/capstone or an introduction rhetorical trick. Definitions should be used to clarify the premises of arguments, not to make arguments. And word roots are seldom relevant to the discourse.