Post 2

This article really reinforces some important ideas that I have learned about in my Linguistics classes.  Williams uses this article mainly to illustrate a few specific points about the usage of language and how it is perceived.  Errors have become a concrete social faux pas in our society.  They are easily identifiable because they are given so much attention in academic settings that using an incorrect form in conversation suggests that the guilty party must be uneducated and ignorant. This black and white notion of correctness is a serious problem because language is fluid and changing.  It shouldn’t be constrained by the idea of wrong and right.  Williams further elaborates on this idea by describing the process of adding words to a dictionary.  He attests that by acknowledging that a word might be incorrect we are giving editors an ability to arbitrarily construct language.  He also discusses the idea that some errors are more severe than others.  This, he says, is a view that many academics share, but is not really anything taught in classes.  The idea that something can be acknowledged as correct and yet be wholly ignored (or not brought into usage) underscores Williams’ conclusion.  He states that his “essay is an exercise in futility” because people enjoy the idea of right and wrong, black and white too much to make a gray area for passable errors.  I think that Williams is indicting the general public with this essay.  We are the ones who continuously perpetrate the idea that error is concrete and unchanging and that it should be avoided at all costs.  These ideas hold us back, but we will continue to value them for the foreseeable future.