It all sounds like a purely semantic argument, and maybe it is.

For semantic arguments in linguistics, see verb argument.

"I don't think I want to get into a semantic argument."

He had made it into a semantic argument, but the truth was that he did like action.

An important distinction acknowledges both syntactic and semantic arguments.

The semantic arguments of the predicate, in contrast, remain consistent, e.g.

You turn everything into a semantic argument.

In this way, Smuts took a key role in debating the complex legal and semantic arguments.

But surely this is just a semantic argument?

A lot of people really enjoy this little semantic argument about whether it's "theft" or not.