Language lawyers - or why words can have precise meaning

I was called a language lawyer the other day, because I attempted to be precise about the state of play with some code. Initially I was taken aback, but eventually concluded that the phrase "language lawyer" was not being used precisely. It was used in the sense of, "Saying exactly what you mean." If I had clarified this the self-reference may have meant I got lost down a rabbit hole, so I left it.

The situation came about because a co-worker is changing some code in a repo which has a few unit tests, but due to circumstance I won't bore you with the code is in two repos - one has the tests and the other doesn't. I have been tasks with getting tests round any code changes he makes. I am therefore working in the repo with the tests. He, of course, has decided to work in the repo without tests so doesn't know if his code changes break any existing tests.

/head-desk

It's like pair-programming but we have to talk in words rather than code.

I cannot manage to guess what his code changes might do to the tests. This would be so much easier if he ran the tests as he changed the code. In fact, by definiton, refactoring should involve running the tests as you go. Trying to ask questions like "Have you deleted the isValid function or changed its behaviour?" in order to try to get the tests to match his changes have resulted in answers like "No, well a bit, but I haven't decided yet."

My attempted to print off the test names so we could discuss how the code actually behaved before the changes have been met with ,"I haven't looked at the tests yet - I'd need to look at the code to see what they test." I think the tests have really clear names - like FooWithDefaultDateIsNotValid, He could look at the test code but I was rather hoping this was clear enough. I tried asking what new test *names* we might need, but got no-where. He did suggest I check the private container didn't contain any default dates - and offered to add a getter so I could verify this from outside the object in test code. I muttered something about encapsulation and seppuku and encapsulation.

I'm not sure if this is happening because people are used to function names making no sense and figuring out  one line at a time in a debugger, or if some people genuinely don't think in words. It's very difficult to communicate if people assume you aren't saying what you mean, realise you are and then call you out for trying to be clear.