This was a really hard comic to review for me. To start, the source of the premise is so obscure that explainxkcd.com had to quote Wikipedia to live up to its URL.
One of my major issues with XKCD has always been that it never explains itself. Some comics are almost like Rorscharch tests or postmodern art, open to interpretation but really meaningless when you get right down to it.
I could understand the lack of elaboration on the jokes if XKCD's "thing" was really complex and detailed art, like one yaoi comic I found once that had a really stylized, slightly abstract painted style. XKCD doesn't. It's not like it would take a massive amount of effort to draw another black and white panel with a talking stick figure in it.
I could also understand it if the jokes were always cheap, easy, and accessible, but they're not. Some of them, like this one, require a knowledge of a specific terminology in linguistics, the kind of joke that makes me imagine Randy coming up with his ideas by hitting the Random Article button on Wikipedia.
Another issue that affects a lot of XKCDs is the really weird way the characters talk, really blunt and direct. I've had an XKCD fan write in before saying that it's just part of the minimalism, to which I respond: Okay, sure, he's allowed to do it, but that doesn't make it any less of a terrible idea. To paraphrase half of all complaints about The Great Gatspy, doing something in a deliberately boring or irritating way to make a point may make the point well, but it sure doesn't make me want to hear your point out.
Lastly, the caption doesn't accurately reflect the joke. "Linguist with a foot fetish" means "A linguist that also as a foot fetish". A better phrasing would be "Linguists have a different meaning for 'foot fetish' than most people."
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