Response to “The Phenomenology of Error” by Joseph M. Williams

     In “The Phenomenology of Error”, Joseph Williams aptly points out that the typical treatment of grammatical errors is far harsher than the error itself merits. He questions why this is so and also questions how the seriousness of the error is determined.  This question is puzzling especially since a group of university professors, after reading a manuscript about the proper treatment of errors, disagreed with each other about which of the errors was serious enough to merit attention.  Add to this the fact that after defining faulty parallelism in his trusted grammar handbook, The Elements of Style, E.B. White committed the error – according to his own definition-- twice in one paragraph.  So, one student paper will be corrected differently by whatever number of “experts” read the paper.  The corrections will be based on a number of factors including the experts’ “emotional investment in defining and condemning error” (155) and the perceived seriousness of the error. This seems an inefficient approach if our goal is to improve student writing.  It also seems an extremely prescriptive treatment of language. 

     Language is constantly transformed by usage especially in diverse populations.  The idea that grammatical rules should stand while linguistic styles, word definition of  and usage and idiomatic expressions change and are adopted into  mainstream vernacular speech is absurd. Just consider how the tech explosion influenced language, we’ve added to the mix verbs like text, upload, download and google. We’ve also layered meanings onto older verbs such as search, surf and scroll. There are also hundreds of new nouns and word combinations that left the world of jargon and entered mainstream language. It seems incongruous to take a descriptive approach with regard to meaning and a prescriptive approach with regard to grammar.