The Phenomenology of Error has an interesting concept behind it, and one I never actually took time to think about until now. Joseph Williams, author of the article, begins by talking about constructs and the difference between a social construct and an average construct. A construct is a standard in which we define the way we operate and write. Each culture has their own, just as they also have their own social constructs. Social constructs can be thought about as a chain of knowledge and how something became the way it is today. Going off of an example Williams brings up, say you have an essay. That essay exists because of what was in the student's mind and what was in the student's mind exists because of a book he/she was reading and that book he/she was reading was written by a writer who had other former knowledge in their head as well. Somewhere down the line, each fact, each story, develops it's own minor details. Who decides which facts and stories are legitimate enough to be deemed academically correct though?
The errors found on Wikipedia today, are much more of a grammatical academic error, rather than the abrupt strange attacks on particular articles that the site used to face. Wikipedia receives a lot of criticism for the mistakes that occasionally grace the site, but I think people forget that Wikipedia was created as a site specifically based on social constructs.
Brittanica has been called academically acceptable by someone anonymous who most of the general public do not know. One person or just a few, decided on the correct ways to spell things, use commas, list facts about history etc, and those facts were placed in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia however, allows users to act on their own knowledge and provide valuable information to a page where perhaps the author before them missed a couple of interesting facts. If everyone shares something on the site it all adds up and joins the community that Wikipedia tried to set up in the first place. I can honestly say, I have never been on Wikipedia and seen a messed up page and the facts I do record, I compare to books and legitimately based library sites and the knowledge matches up. I don't believe we give the general public as much praise we deserve. Sometimes I guess it is just easier to leave it up to one person to decide what's factual and what is not.
I like your thoughts on encyclopedias. I never really thought about the fact that as the general public we have no idea who these people are who are deciding what facts are correct and what is incorrect. I like the fact that when you read a wikipedia article you have a list of authors and editors that you can easily contact and discuss their topic and re validity of their information.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point about it being easier to give one person the authority to decide factual information (like grammar), instead of a community. There are so many problems with this way of determining 'correct' grammar. Firstly, that person is a product of constructs, just like everyone else; this isn't a new idea, no one can ever be truly objective when doing anything, even determining 'proper' grammar. Secondly, those constructs that he/she operates in (academic, erudite, arcane communities) are of a higher tier than the general public has access to, or quite frankly care about; even though we use grammar just as much as they do. Finally, you would think that grammar, like language, is born from a group consensus that ascribes meaning to things, so members of the group can effectively communicate. If this be the case, it doesn't make sense we should raise a small group, or an individual, on a pedestal, to tell us what's what about grammar.
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