Actually before reading Williams Phenomenology of Error I looked up the definition of error. According to dictionary.com definition #1, "Error - A deviation from accuracy or correctness; a mistake, as in action or speech: His speech contained several factual errors."
After having read Williams paper, I feel that the first few pages were simply describing the common misunderstanding of what an "error" is on a social level. Due to so many people seeing just the "seriousness" of error, it lacks that understanding that the definition of error itself is not a serious or unjustified action; simply just a "deviation from accuracy or correctness."
I feel that the main point Williams is trying to tell us is that even though he might see error one way(on a more proper professional level), us(general public) might see error another way, and when asking one another if there is an error in X we ourselves end up with more errors than we began with.
Williams goes on to show that people with fine grammar violate their own rules which I feel correlates to what I said in the paragraph above. It has to be seen as what the reader understands to be an error, and how that understanding of error got into them from it's origin. I see that Williams is more closely trying to explain error in the sense of the reader rather than the writer because error is physical on paper; but not physical when it come's from within ourselves.
Even after writing this post I noticed multiple errors in my preview in which I understand to be simple grammatical errors, but maybe to others something far more different.....
Nice post & discussion, Owen.
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed about readers and what they SEE when they look at a piece of writing. Often, with respect to errors, we only find what we're looking for...