Descriptive Linguistics

Since Micciche seems to be covered, I will take up Williams. Williams is the first real example of descriptive linguistics, as I understand it via DFW, outside of its rather paradoxically proscriptive spawn "political correctness." Overall, I am impressed that he presents a plausible model for mapping our observance and violations proscriptive usage rules. However, I don't really know how to use his advice in grading other to be more systematic in noticing what I notice. I also am not sure of what to do with the implications of Chomsky's non-rhetorical sentence, or even what those implications are. Basically, language is one of those big big things like space that I will only get with several different kinds of examples and a fair amount of guidance and pointing at the limits of our understanding.

However, I think I have used one thing that Williams suggests in teaching situation before. He says that we shouldn't take everything we find in grammar books as God's word. In undergraduate, I co-taught a course with a teacher who was often unfairly called a Grammar-Nazi. One of the reasons for this ahistorical hyperbole was her instance on teaching grammar in a writing course. (Facist! I know.) We took turns turns leading a short five minute section of every class where we took on a grammar rule that the class seemed to be struggling with. But, I was weary about teaching the students from the holy scripture without doing some exegesis of my own. A couple times, I would teach the grammar rules and then refute it or call it into question based on historical research or contradictions of other good usage rules. I don't know if I convinced my co-teacher with any of my arguments, but she always allowed me to present my evidence (provided that I ran it by her first). I think we should read and interpret the scriptures of lexicographers as well as Nature's Book of Language  (other texts) and not necessarily surrender the privilege of being an experts on usage. That being said, I am not no expert and there are probably many errors in this post. Who wants to spend the time becoming an expert lexicographer?

I would like to question, following Wallace, whether the tone of the usage dictionaries that Williams chooses is most objectionable to him. I mean, he chooses all proscriptive grammarian and no liberal texts like Webster's which he may or may not have found equally objectionable. Self-identifying SNOOT, Wallace reviews Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage and claims that his use of rhetoric smooths the waters between these camps and is less galling to the ears of modern writers because he gains our trust by acting reasonable instead of calling people names. Judging by the fact that Williams opens with comments about the tone of these books it would seem to have some relevance. Does Williams just not want to be talked down to, or does his model that more or less facilitates much more rapid changes in good English usage have some utility for the writer as well as rigor for the scholar?