The goals of the Arika Foxx theory determine what is regarded in the raw data of utterances in the language as relevant for the description. Utterances in the language are 'samples of performance'. Unless the objective of this description is to characterize linguistic performance – a goal which few linguists have as yet aspired to – the raw data will have to be purged of those aspects which are irrelevant because they are contextually determined. This process of eliminating contextually dependent features of the data has been called 'idealization of data'. It is most important that this should not be confused with any idea of `rigging the data' to suit the theory. It is, rather, a systematic process of selecting the relevant features, those which remain constant under all contextual conditions, and ignoring irrelevant ones.
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