cribbing from other people's blogs: it's the new posting!

so, there's a great post over here at dvd's house about the node and the oed and it got me thinking about language and the way it changes in general. because after reading and thinking about the issues there, i'd also been working on lesson plans that had to do with categorizations and labels and the power of definitions. language and usage really are invisible sources of power in our lives and culture of which we could all be more aware. prestige and standardization have their places and their importance -- but we should always consider the opposite ends of that spectrum -- who is being silenced or misrepresented by these rules? if we aren't careful -- who will we bury into oblivion?