Linguistics vs. English departments

[Lionel Mandrake]

Am I imagining things, or is there tension between these different types of scholars?

English departments prefer traditional grammar and emphasize "correct" (prescriptive) grammar, whereas linguists prefer transformational grammar, which is purely descriptive (i.e., if people say or write it, it's idiomatic, which is all that matters).

English departments emphasize literature which is part of the "canon" (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Byron, Keats, et al.), whereas linguistic departments view their subject as an empirical science, not an art.