Authority and American Usage
| Author | David Foster Wallace |
|---|---|
| Published | 2005 |
| Format | Article |
TL;DR — Wallace’s long essay on usage dictionaries, prescriptivism versus descriptivism, and what he calls the politics of Standard Written English, framed as a review of Garner’s usage dictionary.
A scan of the essay as it appears in Wallace’s 2005 collection Consider the Lobster; an earlier, shorter version ran in Harper’s in 2001 as “Tense Present.” It is nominally a review of Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage.
Wallace uses the review to stage the “usage wars” between prescriptivists, who hold that there are correct and incorrect forms, and descriptivists, who hold that usage is whatever speakers actually do. He argues that usage is unavoidably ideological and political, that Standard Written English functions as a dialect of power that teachers should be candid about, and that Garner earns authority through what Wallace calls a democratic, persuasive rhetoric rather than by decree. Like much of his non-fiction, it is heavy with footnotes and digressions.
What it is: a classic essay by a major American writer, scanned from an in-print book.
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
31 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.