Review/Summary of Wallace's "Tense Present"

Ok, as I have not yet actually finished reading "Tense Present" I cannot speak for the article as a whole, but being only 10 pages into the article I felt compelled to say something already. What Wallace is talking about (so far) is questioning who comes up with the definitions that we "normal people" look up in the dictionary and take as concrete, and asking who appointed them or who the hell are they to tell me what this word means. The problem in doing that is that he, himself becomes (by his own admission) just as SNOOTY as they are, but quite a bit more pretentious in my opinion.

One thing that I have yet to come across is his reason for attacking the people who come up with the definitions. Is it that he came across a word that he didn't agree with? Does he not think that a cup looks like a cup or that a giraffe should be called a moose instead? He's right, no one appointed these people to come up with the definitions (unless you're going back to the time of Samuel Johnson, who was infact paid to write the first dictionary of the English Language), but the bigger question is who is he to condemn these people for trying to create some sort of understanding amongst the chaos that is the English language? Why is he so important or feel like his questions are so important that he needs to go and piss in someone's coffee? So far the entire article comes off as his way of trying to substantiate Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage and, in my opinion at least, is one step short of Wallace strolling up to Garner and actually phallating the guy.

Insert pause here - I'm reading again....*Play Jeopardy Music*

Ok, I still haven't completed the reading yet, but I think I've got his main point. And that is that the English language is being diluted to rediculous amounts. And therefore, who's to say what the definition of a word is, since in about 5 years we will probably have about 15 more definitions for that word. My problem here is that, even though we must understand the way a word is being used to discern where it would go when diagramming a sentence, this article is more for a Linguistics class rather than a grammar class. We're not discussing why this word is or is not a noun due to its modern usage, but more or less bitching about language as a whole. And in doing so, seems to have as much of a political agenda as the people he's ranting about.

I do however agree with Wallace when he says that some R.M. (rural midwestern) terms are more suited for casual conversations, than their SWE counterparts. For example, he uses "Where's it at?" (R.M.) and "Where is it?" (SWE). The R.M. terms just seems to fit better when having a conversation between friends. I can however, see what he means with this article about language getting out of hand, as I too, have wanted to cave in the head of a teenager that once told me to "Chillax." Which I'm guessing is the equivalent of combining "chill out" and "relax" but just makes that person sound retarded. But again...is not that a question to be dealt with in a language class instead of grammar? Maybe I'm wrong, but I see small things that help (in relation to grammar) and the rest of the article just seems sophistry.