Two languages. In a pamphlet about the short story, William Carlos Williams draws a contrast between two ways of speaking about people. In places such as newspapers, writers commonly use stock phrases, a jargon that is both debased and debasing, says Williams, calcified language that is "fixed by rule and precedent," treating one person as pretty much the same as another one. But our most thoughtful language can raise a person above stock language, distinguishing one individual from another in the well-earned specificity of a portrayal. This distinction a person deserves when acknowledged in speech or writing by others. There is language, Williams claims, that is adequate to human complexity, to "the extraordinary responsibility of being a person." If he's correct, then we're always at risk of being demeaned by the language others fix upon our lives, and perhaps always hopeful of being recognized for the particular person we have each worked to become.