David Foster Wallace, author of the essay “Authority and American Usage*,” praises and advocates for “good” writers who have a strong rhetorical ability, which he defines as “the persuasive use of language to influence the thoughts and actions of an audience” (Wallace 628). To have a strong rhetorical ability, an author needs to be aware of whom their audience is, in order to present their information in a way that will be influential on their audience. Wallace recognizes that an author who applies
Wallace’s Authority and American Usage takes an unique approach to the English language. By unique, I mean that Wallace is having a conversation with his readers while critiquing Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage and justifying prescriptivism over descriptivism. Wallace does an excellent job using Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage as an example in examining the pros and cons of prescriptivism and descriptivism. The key argument in Wallace’s essay is the
David Wallace’s purpose for writing his essay, “Authority and American Usage”, was to give a book review on Bryan Garner’s, “A Dictionary of Modern American Usage”. Wallace does this tremendously; in doing so, he provides references to other dictionaries showing the good and bad aspects of them. He then goes on to explain how Garner’s dictionary does a very good job at staying neutral in the so-called “Usage Wars”. Wallace explains how there are two main viewpoints that derive from today’s standard