I hope, have come to accept the idea that language is a virtual synchronic entity laid out in space, and speech is an actual diachronic performance derived from language laid out in time-- since we have absorbed that and since we just have this sort of spontaneous belief, if we're students of literary theory, that there is a distinction between language and speech: what do we do when we come face to face with this claim of Knapp and Michaels's? 