[...] Wallace distances himself falely from a group in order to establish a relationship wtih the reader. This tactic is more complex--and often less successful--in the scholarly writing, because, as shown here, Wallace frequently is an expert in what he writes about. With that in min, such distancing seems outright mendacious. By linguistically encoding the opposition that may or may not exist between him as author/narrator and the implicit "them"--in this case critics and theoreticians--Wallace attempts to solidify his alliance with the reader. However, the disjunction between this alliance and the tone and content of the essay's substantive portions serves to underscore Wallace's disingenuous construction, thus perhaps putting the reader even more on guard.