# I have a coworker who uses 'literally' incorrectly **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 27, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834 "2016-05-27T17:46:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/221 "2016-06-04T08:52:06Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Why would the author write something that is a lie and then immediately follow it by a quote that **reveals it to be a lie**? Because he’s a writer at Breitbart, he is lying about what Clinton actually said in order to support his narrative, and his audience does not care whether the facts support his assertion. This is hardly an unusual occurrence in U.S. politics. You are so determined to find examples of ambiguity that you have rationalized yourself out of your ability to understand plain English. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/222 "2016-06-04T09:29:17Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > …another ratcheting up of the increasingly strident position that anyone who disagrees with you must be badly misinformed on basic science… You advocate authoritarian prescriptivism on trivial usages, you claim the language is in a serious state of deterioration, and you think this is congruent with the science of linguistics. You **are** therefore “badly misinformed on basic science”. I’m not ratcheting up - I’ve said this all along, quite explicitly. And you’re on shaky ground calling me “strident”, when you have no humility or respect for evidence, you misrepresent your unsupported opinions on trivial usage as objectively valid and important rules, and call speakers who do not follow your silly rules “stupid” and “ignorant”. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/223 "2016-06-04T14:41:53Z")
I find wolfpup’s own language to be interesting. How does he describe other people? Strident, shrill, ignorant. Their posts are diatribes. They need to calm down. How does he describe his own absurd random guesses? He calls them “hypotheses.” He’s got a narrative going on that he clearly believes in, and that he tries to use loaded language to persuade other folks is true. The problem is, when you set aside his loaded language, there are no facts to support his narrative. He may not be interesting to discuss things with, but he’s kind of interesting to discuss, the way he tries to use connotations, rather than facts, to win an argument. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/224 "2016-06-04T18:48:52Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > You advocate authoritarian prescriptivism on trivial usages, you claim the language is in a serious state of deterioration, and you think this is congruent with the science of linguistics. You **are** therefore “badly misinformed on basic science”. I’m not ratcheting up - I’ve said this all along, quite explicitly. > > And you’re on shaky ground calling me “strident”, when you have no humility or respect for evidence, you misrepresent your unsupported opinions on trivial usage as objectively valid and important rules, and call speakers who do not follow your silly rules “stupid” and “ignorant”. That seems all very bizarre, but bear with me because this is all leading up to a simple question. I don’t advocate “authoritarian prescriptivism”, and most pointedly not on “trivial usages”. Nor do I lack the linguistic understanding you claim I do, despite your constant denigrations. But let me get to the point. In this and other discussions I have yet to get an answer from self-identified descriptivists to a simple question. I see these folks defending all kinds of language abuses (upthread we even had one of them defending “could of” and “should of”) while claiming that accusing them of promoting language anarchy (or “anything goes”, as you like to put it) is a despicable calumny. So tell me then, **where do you draw the line in deciding what language usage is acceptable and what isn’t? What is your rule book?** Descriptivists seem strangely coy about ever letting themselves get pinned down to an actual answer to that simple question. Here’s my answer, keeping in mind that the level of formality always depends on context. I’ve already told you – apparently to no avail – that I have no use for excessive pedantry like the blanket prohibitions against splitting infinitives and ending a sentence with a preposition. I wholeheartedly agree with the observation of the late Antonin Scalia that the first rule of English usage is that no construction should call attention to its own grammatical correctness, so that it may sometimes be preferable to be technically ungrammatical instead of pedantic. Scalia was a man that I disagreed with on just about everything else, but he had a flair for language, and engaged for years in witty exchanges on the subject with William Safire, a master of the craft who did much to elevate the language. My sentiments are also well expressed in the following exchange from a chapter in Safire’s _The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time_ in which he quotes a variety of scientific and other technical specialists “fulminat[ing] about raids by the general public on their fields’ linguistic larders.” One of his readers responds: Your last column was turned into a soapbox for a bunch of language curmudgeons. It seems only fair that you give some equal box time to some looser linguistic thinkers. Words get reused in different disciplines and words become trendy and overused, but neither of these things makes a word usage incorrect or inappropriate. If the curmudgeons had their way, every word would have a fixed definition and there would be no poetry. (For what is poetry but a play on words?) Where would our language be if it wasn’t allowed to move, stretch and dance? Oh wait, language cannot dance, dancing applies only to physical objects, right? It is fair to criticize a true misuse (like _penultimate_ or _literally_, both of which are misused all the time), but these people seem to have no love of language, only a bean counter’s love of organization and rules. Amen to that. In short, taking technical terms that have precise scientific meanings and adapting them to a common usage with looser meanings can be perfectly acceptable and is just one example of the many different ways the language is enriched, as indeed was done a long time ago with words like _hypothesis_, contrary to the ironic fulminations of our otherwise descriptivist friend here. But when a word like _literally_ is misappropriated to mean something that, rather than being closely related, is entirely the opposite, this is not a beneficent adaptation but is at best in an entirely different class of usage that seems akin to linguistic anarchy. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/225 "2016-06-04T19:46:58Z")
My post #75 > [@Riemann](#): > > Prescriptivists also commonly misrepresent linguistics (i.e. descriptivist linguistics) as “anything goes”, which is nonsense. And yet at post #224, after this has been discussed extensively, you are still doing exactly the same thing: > [@wolfpup](#): > > …Nor do I lack the linguistic understanding you claim I do, despite your constant denigrations…So tell me then, where do you draw the line in deciding what language usage is acceptable and what isn’t? What is your rule book? Descriptivists seem strangely coy about ever letting themselves get pinned down to an actual answer to that simple question… Here you claim to understand linguistics, but immediately then state the you **still** don’t understand what a linguist means by an empirical rule in language. “Strangely coy”? I have already linked to Geoff Pullum’s article twice in this thread at post #79 and post #129. Pinker also discusses it in _The Language Instinct_ extensively. If you continue to repeat the canard that descriptivism (i.e. all of linguistics) means “anything goes” then this is now willful ignorance on your part. For the third time: [Everything Is Correct vs Nothing Is Relevant](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html) [QUOTE=Geoffrey Pullum] [A prescriptivist commenter on Language Log] cannot see any possibility of a position other than two extremes: on the left, that all honest efforts at uttering sentences are ipso facto correct; and on the right, that rules of grammar have an authority that derives from something independent of what any users of the language actually do. But there had better be a third position, because these two extreme ones are both utterly insane… [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/226 "2016-06-05T00:19:31Z")
What’s a good garden hose? Well, the purpose of a garden hose is to move water from the side of the house to the garden without spilling it, directing it onto plants. We could fiddle with this definition, but that’s the basics. So when I’m evaluating a garden hose, that’s what I look for. Is it moving water from the side of the house onto the plants? If so, that’s a good garden hose. I don’t care about its color, or about the history of garden hoses, or about the material it’s made from, or any bullshit like that, when deciding whether it’s a good garden hose. What’s good language use? Well, the purpose of language is to copy an idea from the speaker’s head into the audience’s head. We could fiddle with this definition, but that’s the basics. So when I’m evaluating language use, that’s what I look for. Is it copying an idea from the speaker’s head into the head of the audience? If so, that’s good language use. I don’t care about the history of the words used, or the pedantic “rules” it violates, or what a computer running COBOL would think of the words, or any bullshit like that, when deciding whether it’s good language use. Now, I know some things about hoses. Is there a big leak in the hose? Is it a meter in diameter? Is it half a millimeter in diameter? It’s probably not going to work very well as a garden hose. I know some things about language. Is the speaker using a definition only she knows about? Is the speaker using a word with strong connotations that she doesn’t intend to convey? Is the speaker actually writing and in so doing spelling words in an unorthodox manner that will confuse the reader? Is the speaker failing to use shibboleths the lack of which will induce an undesired contempt in her elitist audience? If so, it’s probably not going to work well as language use. But the appropriate bedrock is whether the language use functions as language. ---
**Author:** ![Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mona_Lisa_Simpson)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/227 "2016-06-05T00:33:05Z")
> [@BeeGee](#): > > I’ll trade you a co-worker who manages to use the word “arthurized” or “arthurization” at least once a day. I have a mental picture of the person on the other end of the phone turning into Dudley Moore wearing a top hat in a bathtub. I just started reading this thread. But although I am several days late, I want you to know this is the best thing I have read today. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/228 "2016-06-05T02:09:40Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > In this and other discussions I have yet to get an answer from self-identified descriptivists to a simple question. I see these folks defending all kinds of language abuses (upthread we even had one of them defending “could of” and “should of”) while claiming that accusing them of promoting language anarchy (or “anything goes”, as you like to put it) is a despicable calumny. So tell me then, **where do you draw the line in deciding what language usage is acceptable and what isn’t? What is your rule book?** Descriptivists seem strangely coy about ever letting themselves get pinned down to an actual answer to that simple question. I think I already answered this question, but I’ll spell it out more clearly. Off Of course, maybe since my post had a bit of “a pox on both your houses” to it, you don’t think I’m a “real descriptivist.” I guess I could live with that. To the point: The only person who can really judge a given usage is the language user. Take the word _penultimate_. It’s just a hunch, But I suspect that most people who use it to mean something other than “next to last,” would, if corrected, feel embarrassed and would change their usage as a result. It was genuinely a mistake, made out of ignorance. Now, you’ve made the same claim about people who “misuse” \* literally,\* and I think this is where some criticism of you has been misguided. If you are correct about why people use \* literally\* in a figurative way, then you are right that it’s an error, which some have denied. But people have also cited knowledgeable and careful authors who used the word figuratively by intention, and you’ve also claimed that they were in error. In error of what? What fact are they incorrect about? Back to\* penultimate\*, I think most people would correct themselves given accurate information about how the word is usually used, but what if someone said, “I know what the dictionary says, But I don’t care. I was speaking to my brother, and we’ve used it to mean \* awesome\* with each other since we were little kids.” Would that still count as an error? What if they said, “I know what the dictionary says, but my friends didn’t go to college, they use it mean\* awesome\*, and i’d sound like a dick if I corrected then or spoke differently”? What if they said, “Really? I didn’t know that, but now that I do, I don’t care. I like the way it sounds and my friends are used to me saying it that way.” I think that in ANY of those cases, the word has developed a new meaning. It might be hard or impossible to tell the difference between the last case and one in which the speaker WOULD correct themselves if they knew better. Sorry if you don’t like living in a world filled with ambiguity. BTW, speaking of coy, you never answered my question about an analogous situation in ballet. Can a dance be “incorrect” if it is done deliberately? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/229 "2016-06-05T09:43:25Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > … Here you claim to understand linguistics, but immediately then state the you **still** don’t understand what a linguist means by an empirical rule in language. > > “Strangely coy”? I have already linked to Geoff Pullum’s article twice in this thread at post #79 and post #129. Pinker also discusses it in _The Language Instinct_ extensively. If you continue to repeat the canard that descriptivism (i.e. all of linguistics) means “anything goes” then this is now willful ignorance on your part … Two manifestly evident things might be noted about my post in #224. One is that it quite clearly describes how I approach language usage, and that judging this to be “authoritarian prescriptivism” is obviously laughable. Equally laughable is that I’ve ever alleged that descriptivism must mean “anything goes”, or worse, used it to condemn the entire field of linguistics. This is, again, just plainly delusional. The second thing is that anyone engaged in an honest debate instead of taking a relentlessly confrontational position would surely recognize this fact and the common ground that it offers for a constructive discussion. Instead, **you completely ignore the clear advocacy of a middle-ground approach without comment** and simply continue to hurl invectives and accusations of “willful ignorance” (which in retrospect makes some of your earlier commentary less surprising than it was at the time). And then you deflect the basic question I ask by throwing out a link to Pullum’s blog. I have no issue with Pullum’s thesis – in fact I quite like it, and he advances valuable ideas, and indeed rejects extremism on both sides of this debate – but it doesn’t answer the specific question I asked. It tells me absolutely nothing about how his empirically determined “correctness conditions” would be _ **applied** _ in _ **your** _ specific language framework and how _ **you** _ would make pragmatic judgments therein. I tried to do so; you didn’t. Until you are prepared to scale back the ceaseless invective and and acknowledge the facts being presented, I respectfully see no point in continuing this discussion with you. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/230 "2016-06-05T10:09:58Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Now, you’ve made the same claim about people who “misuse” \* literally,\* and I think this is where some criticism of you has been misguided. If you are correct about why people use \* literally\* in a figurative way, then you are right that it’s an error, which some have denied. But people have also cited knowledgeable and careful authors who used the word figuratively by intention, and you’ve also claimed that they were in error. In error of what? What fact are they incorrect about? I agree. But I think the argument that the majority of such use is mistaken, and that it’s due to an acquired sense from the way people frequently hear the word used that “literally” is just an intensifying adverb, is a very plausible one. Mistakes like that are not unusual, but they more often result in a word being used inaccurately rather than in glaring contradiction. As for the authors, the only specific example I’ve seen is the one from F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is an interesting one that I don’t consider a misuse for the reasons already mentioned. It’s certainly not a mistake, and the way it flows into the rest of the sentence is positively lyrical. I haven’t seen the other ones, but you’re right, they’re unlikely to be mistakes. They’re probably stylistic choices that I might disagree with, but I’d have to see them. > [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Back to\* penultimate\*, I think most people would correct themselves given accurate information about how the word is usually used, but what if someone said, “I know what the dictionary says, But I don’t care. I was speaking to my brother, and we’ve used it to mean \* awesome\* with each other since we were little kids.” Would that still count as an error? > > What if they said, “I know what the dictionary says, but my friends didn’t go to college, they use it mean\* awesome\*, and i’d sound like a dick if I corrected then or spoke differently”? Effectively they’re creating a dialect. So, no, it’s not wrong in their dialect by definition of what a dialect is, but it’s wrong in the context of standard English. > [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > BTW, speaking of coy, you never answered my question about an analogous situation in ballet. Can a dance be “incorrect” if it is done deliberately? It’s a good question, and I wasn’t avoiding it, it just got lost in all the commotion. Let me resurrect your original version: > [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > By the same token, if you saw a ballet in which the dancer made an awkward flailing move that looks like an accident, but insisted afterwards that it was deliberate, and pointed out that the same exact move had been carefully choreographed and performed by many famous dancers in the past, would you continue to insist that the dancer was ignorant and didn’t know “correct ballet,” or would you just say, “Well then I don’t like that dance”? I think the distinction depends on what kind of language use we’re talking about. Language at the most basic level can be regarded as a symbol-processing system, a computational system where we make associations between meaning and phonological symbols and their associated syntax in order to communicate, so that in any given context any instance of such a system can be said to be right or wrong (or “working” or “broken”) in terms of its utilitarian computational objectives, in the same way as any other computational system. To most of us language becomes interesting only at higher levels of abstraction. So to say that a ballet dancer was doing it wrong might be analogous to saying that a creative writer or a poet is doing it wrong. Which is to say, it may not be an unreasonable judgment, but it’s purely an aesthetic and not a functional one (unless of course the poet is just spouting words at random or the ballet dancer is down on all fours barking like a dog). The problem with language is that most of the time it’s used in a middle ground with utiliarian objectives but with elements of style and aesthetics, so that when discussing such language use, fisticuffs literally break out (by which of course I mean “figuratively”) between proponents of competing principles. I must admit though, that, just like William Safire in his later years, I find myself drifting slightly more toward the descriptivist side of the fence, not that I was ever a raving prescriptivist to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/231 "2016-06-05T11:56:58Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I have no issue with Pullum’s thesis – in fact I quite like it, and he advances valuable ideas, and indeed rejects extremism on both sides of this debate – but it doesn’t answer the specific question I asked. It tells me absolutely nothing about how his empirically determined “correctness conditions” would be _ **applied** _ in _ **your** _ specific language framework and how _ **you** _ would make pragmatic judgments therein. It’s an awful misreading of Pullum to say that he “rejects extremism on both sides”. He exposes the **false dichotomy** stated in the title of his piece - a false dichotomy repeated _ad nauseam_ by prescriptivists who don’t understand what descriptivism means. The false dichotomy is: _if you don’t like my externally-derived arbitrary rules, either tell me how you work out your own set of externally-derived arbitrary rules, or I will have to conclude that you must be a linguistic anarchist_. That false dichotomy is **exactly** the implication in the way you framed your original question when you archly said descriptivists are “strangely coy” about stating how they form their value judgements about what’s “acceptable” in language. You are asking it again in a slightly reframed way above, but you still don’t seem to grasp that to a linguist, the question of whether a string of words is “correct” or “incorrect” in a dialect is not a subjective question that requires value judgement. It is an _empirical_ question. It involves working out the correctness conditions for a dialect from many examples of native speech, then determining whether a sentence fulfills those conditions. Pullum’s **exposure** of the false dichotomy is not advocation of a middle ground between the two prongs of the false dichotomy! He is saying that prescriptivists _don’t understand how descripivists think about rules_, leading to the misconception entailed in the false dichotomy. He is certainly **not** advocating a middle ground between descriptivism and prescriptivism. In linguistics, rules (and thus things that are “correct” and “incorrect”) are derived empirically from actual usage. A sensible question to ask is - what usage _counts_ in establishing the rules? The answer is that consensus rules for a dialect emerge (and evolve) spontaneously within the society that speaks that dialect. In other words, your model for how the fundamental rules of language are established is wrong. That is betrayed by the type of question that you asked - you asked what is _my_ value system for deciding if a rule is acceptable? This is misconceived because the meanings for words and the fundamental rules for building sentences are not established by intellectuals mulling over an ideology for clarity of communication and then making conscious value judgements as to whether usage is “acceptable”. The rules emerge and evolve in a society by a process of **spontaneous consensus-building** , and if want to work out what those rules are we do so empirically by listening to the way native speakers _actually use_ the language. These fundamental rules are acquired by children early in life by unconscious (implicit) learning. Children already know most of the incredibly complex rules about how to build valid sentences when they arrive at school. A problem is that most people take these incredibly complex spontaneous-consensus rules for granted, because every native speaker knows them, regardless of intelligence or level of education. It then becomes commonplace to obsess over additional _minor_ trivial issues for which there is no clear consensus. And this is what prescriptivist language pundits do. Now, beyond all of these fundamental spontaneous-consensus rules - the ones which determine whether a sentence is “correct” or “incorrect” in a dialect - there is obviously a substantial additional dimension of **conscious** learning about language that we undertake at school. Learning to read and write. Expanding vocabulary, creative writing, aesthetics of literature. As for matters of writing _style_, any linguist will set aside the science and will certainly also have personal subjective opinions about clear and elegant writing, figurative language, the aesthetics of literature, etc. But descriptivist linguists understand that it’s misplaced to be using the term “acceptable” for such stylistics matters. Descriptivist linguists understand the difference between fundamental empirical rules (correct/incorrect) and stylistic opinions (value judgements). ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/232 "2016-06-05T13:04:33Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > A problem is that most people take these incredibly complex spontaneous-consensus rules for granted, because every native speaker knows them, regardless of intelligence or level of education. It then becomes commonplace to obsess over additional _minor_ trivial issues for which there is no clear consensus. And this is what prescriptivist language pundits do. I think I pointed out earlier that this is a bizarre and oddly, well, prescriptivist sort of criticism to make. No one has disagreed that 99.99% of language is acquired subconsciously, that’s not ostensibly what this thread is about. In fact, it’s not even about the 0.01% that you admit comes from education and schooling. It’s about one single usage. If you find that usage uninteresting, that’s fine, but why disparage others who are interested in it? Why characterize their interest as “obsession”? There are more ways to be interested in language than linguistics, and that is not a moral failing. > [@](#): > > Now, beyond all of these fundamental spontaneous-consensus rules - the ones which determine whether a sentence is “correct” or “incorrect” in a dialect - there is obviously a substantial additional dimension of **conscious** learning about language that we undertake at school. Learning to read and write. Expanding vocabulary, creative writing, aesthetics of literature. As for matters of writing _style_, any linguist will set aside the science and will certainly also have personal subjective opinions about clear and elegant writing, figurative language, the aesthetics of literature, etc. But descriptivist linguists understand that it’s misplaced to be using the term “acceptable” for such stylistics matters. Descriptivist linguists understand the difference between fundamental empirical rules (correct/incorrect) and stylistic opinions (value judgements). Here we see you continue with your narrow, rigid and _prescriptivist_ rambling. Why is it **wrong** to use the term “acceptable” in stylistic matters? What makes that opinion an objective fact? **Wolfpup** hasn’t done the discussion any favors by making a clear and consistent argument for their positions, but I _think_ that your debate could essentially come down to this vey point: can words like _acceptable_ and _correct_ (or _wrong_ and _incorrect_) apply to more than just conformity to scientifically derived rules of grammar? You say they cannot and _should_ not. **Wolfpup** , I _think_ (they haven’t been entirely clear and consistent) is arguing the opposite. From a purely objective and descriptivist perspective, **wolfpup** is right and you are wrong: those words are actually used outside of linguistics to make all sorts of judgments about all sorts of topics in relation to morality, social conformity, expediency, aesthetics, etc. They may not always be the best or clearest words to use, but that too is a subjective and prescriptive opinion. Though in terms of “subjective” and “objective” statements, you also have a somewhat blinkered view. As you admitted earlier, clarity and effectiveness _could_ be studied empirically. Linguists for the most part have chosen not to, and in the absence of such data, people like _wolfpup_ are left making subjective and impressionistic determinations about what usages are clear and which cause ambiguity and misunderstanding. **Wolfpup** also continuously conflates that issue with one of aesthetic value, for example praising Fitzgerald’s use of _literally_ as “lyrical,” as if that had anything to do with whether the usage was deliberate and hence not a mistake, but that’s no excuse for you to do the same. Just because linguists generally and you specifically have chosen to ignore questions of clarity, aesthetics, etc., doesn’t make them unworthy of judgment and it doesn’t mean that those who express such judgments in terms like _correct_ and _ignorant_ are the linguistic equivalent of young earth creationists, _even if you and I disagree both with the judgments themselves and the use of those words to express them._ ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/233 "2016-06-05T13:51:02Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > **Wolfpup** hasn’t done the discussion any favors by making a clear and consistent argument for their positions, but I _think_ that your debate could essentially come down to this vey point: can words like _acceptable_ and _correct_ (or _wrong_ and _incorrect_) apply to more than just conformity to scientifically derived rules of grammar? I’ll reiterate what I said earlier, and ask for your comment: > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > 1. Phrases like “the incorrect meaning of literally” are either incoherent, incorrect, or incomplete. If you’re saying that it’s an objectively incorrect meaning, that’s incoherent, because there’s no coherent arbiter of correct language usage. If you’re saying it doesn’t use a commonly-understood meaning of “literally,” that’s incorrect, because even though people might struggle to define the meaning of “literally” in a phrase like “she literally glowed with pleasure,” most folk know what the phrase means. If you’re saying it’s incorrect in certain settings, that’s incomplete: in what settings is that considered incorrect usage? I know it’s incorrect usage in Zork Returns, for example, but you need to specify other settings in which it’s incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/234 "2016-06-05T16:47:47Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > …it’s not even about the 0.01% that you admit comes from education and schooling. It’s about one single usage. If you find that usage uninteresting, that’s fine, but why disparage others who are interested in it? Why characterize their interest as “obsession”? There are more ways to be interested in language than linguistics, and that is not a moral failing. I did **not** say that only a tiny amount of language skills come from education and schooling. I said that most of the **rules of the fundamental structure of oral language** are acquired unconsciously by implicit learning by young children without explicit teaching. At school, we learn a huge amount of language skills: we consciously learn to read and write, we expand our vocabulary, we acquire sophisticated creative writing skills, we develop and aesthetic sense for literature. Where on earth have I ever disparaged those who are **interested** in this use of _literally_? This is exactly the kind of thing one might discuss at school. I spent a good deal of time pondering how best to analyze the usage myself. What I disparaged was the prescriptivists who: (a) generally had no humility or respect for evidence; (a) claimed the usage should be disparaged as an “opposite” meaning, when it is more subtle; (b) claimed without evidence that it generates ambiguity; (c) denied that analogous “acceptable” usages are relevant to showing that it’s a stylistic matter; (d) presented their unsupported opinion as fact; (e) and above all, decried speakers who use the word as “stupid” and “ignorant”. > [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Why is it **wrong** to use the term “acceptable” in stylistic matters? What makes that opinion an objective fact?..I _think_ that your debate could essentially come down to this vey point: can words like _acceptable_ and _correct_ (or _wrong_ and _incorrect_) apply to more than just conformity to scientifically derived rules of grammar? You say they cannot and _should_ not. **Wolfpup** , I _think_ (they haven’t been entirely clear and consistent) is arguing the opposite… Well, let’s get one thing straight first of all, and this is **not** a matter of opinion. **wolfpup** has argued that prescriptivist views are congruent with linguistics. They are not. Linguistics is a science, and science is empirical. The fact that no linguist is a prescriptivist is not any ideology beyond the definition of the scientific method. Respect for empirical evidence is not peculiar to _linguistic_ scientists. Second, it’s perfectly reasonable to want to develop principles for clarity and elegance in writing in a scientific way. One would presumably do that by (a) learning some linguistics to have the toolkit to understand and analyze language; (b) use data to develop hypotheses and test them. This is clearly\*\* not \*\* what prescriptivists do - they pull their ideas from their backside. So now, let’s consider what’s beyond the science - **subjective** stylistic matters. I completely agree that **wolfpup** wants to apply the words “unacceptable”, “incorrect”, “wrong”, “stupid” and “ignorant” to subjective matters like clarity and elegance of writing, and that is our bone of contention. Are you really suggesting that our positions are _prima facie_ equally reasonable? Would you try to teach a student clarity and elegance in writing by excoriating poor style (from the student or anyone else) as “incorrect” or “wrong” or “stupid”? Would you try to make the case that Shakespeare is a great writer by using such descriptors as “acceptable” and “correct”? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/235 "2016-06-05T17:10:57Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Would you try to make the case that Shakespeare is a great writer by using such descriptors as “acceptable” and “correct”? Many people consider Shakespeare the most acceptable writer in the history of the English language. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/236 "2016-06-05T17:15:33Z")
**Alan** just to add - linguist Steven Pinker has done precisely what you suggest. A scientific guide to clear and elegant writing. > **[The Sense of Style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_Style)** > > The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century is a 2014 English style guide written by cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author Steven Pinker. Building upon earlier guides, such as Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, it applies science to the process of writing, and explains its prescriptions by citing studies in related fields – e.g., grammatical phenomena, mental dynamics, and memory load – as... > **[Steven Pinker](https://stevenpinker.com/publications/sense-style-thinking-persons-guide-writing-21st-century)** > > Web site for Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and author of books on language, mind, & human nature. > [@](#): > > It begins with savoring the good prose of others. It requires an act of imagination: maintaining the illusion that one is directing a reader’s gaze to something in the world. A writer must overcome the Curse of Knowledge—the difficulty we all have in imagining what it’s like not to know something we know. Skillful writers must be sensitive to the ways in which syntax converts a tangled web of ideas into a linear string of words. They must weave their prose into a coherent whole, with one sentence flowing into the next. And they must negotiate the rules of correct usage, distinguishing the rules that enhance clarity and grace from the myths and superstitions (and thus should not be afraid to boldly split their infinitives). > > Filled with examples of great and gruesome modern prose, and avoiding the scolding tone and Spartan tastes of the classic manuals, Pinker shows how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right. I must confess that I have not read it, but you have spurred me to do so when I have some time next week. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/237 "2016-06-05T17:26:09Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > **Alan** just to add - linguist Steven Pinker has done precisely what you suggest. A scientific guide to clear and elegant writing. > > [The Sense of Style - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_Style) > > [http://stevenpinker.com/publications/sense-style-thinking-persons-guide-writing-21st-century](http://stevenpinker.com/publications/sense-style-thinking-persons-guide-writing-21st-century) > > I must confess that I have not read it, but you have spurred me to do so when I have some time next week. I have. It’s a great read. I don’t agree with all of it, but it is, like everything else I’ve read by Pinker, well-reasoned well-cited and thought-provoking. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/238 "2016-06-05T17:27:45Z")
**Alan** on the dismal reputation of prescriptivism, Pullum in his article describes it thus: [QUOTE=Geoff Pullum in Everything Is Correct vs Nothing Is Relevant] Prescriptivists claim that there are certain rules which have authority over us even if they are not respected as correctness conditions in the ordinary usage of anybody. You can tell them, “All writers of English sometimes use pronouns that have genitive noun phrase determiners as antecedents; Shakespeare did; Churchill did; Queen Elizabeth does; you did in your last book, a dozen times”…; and they just say, “Well then, I must try even harder, because regardless of what anyone says or writes, the prohibition against genitive antecedents is valid and ought to be respected by all of us.” To prescriptivists of this sort, there is just nothing you can say, because they do not acknowledge any circumstances under which they might conceivably find that they are wrong about the language. If they believe infinitives shouldn’t be split, it won’t matter if you can show that every user of English on the planet has used split infinitives, they’ll still say that nonetheless it’s just wrong. [/QUOTE] Now, if you advocate “rescuing” the word prescriptivism to mean something scientific, evidenced-based, thoughtful and constructive, and above all with a sense of humility, perhaps along the lines of Pinker’s book - an empirical approach to clarity and elegance - then of course I applaud that. But it’s going to take the word a few decades in rehab to shed it’s ugly connotations. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/239 "2016-06-05T18:06:14Z")
[QUOTE=Max Weinreich] A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. [/QUOTE] On a slight tangent, I’d like to illustrate why I feel we must be so careful about use of the words “correct” and “incorrect” in language (let alone “stupid” and “ignorant”), and most especially to maintain humility that the details of semantics and grammar (above the level of Chomsky’s UG) are entirely arbitrary. Some dialects had and still may have a widespread social connotation of ignorance - but that’s getting cause and effect backwards. Such dialects acquire that reputation _because_ they are spoken by a social underclass. There is no evidence whatsoever that there is any less complexity, sophistication, or capacity for richness and clarity of communication inherent in the fundamental linguistic structure of dialects spoken by modern social groups that might be deemed “inferior” on any social metric - level of education, level of technology etc. Nobody would claim that British English is more “correct” than American English, because we are social equals. Yet claims that non-“mainstream” regional dialects or the dialects of socially underprivileged groups are _ignorant_ are still widespread. If less thoughtful people lose humility about the arbitrary nature of language, the story of Rachel Jeantel, a witness at the George Zimmerman trial, shows how ugly things can get. This would not have been shocking in Victorian times, but this reaction took place in a modern society that otherwise generally abhors others forms of prejudice. Languge log on [Rachel Jeantel’s language in the Zimmerman trial](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5161) ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834/240 "2016-06-05T21:55:45Z")
I’ve long respected Pinker and have no argument with Pullum, but some of the commentary that they seem to have provoked here deserves a response. When a linguist like Pullum prescribes logically derived rules of usage on his blog, and ridicules everything from poor style guides and bad fiction writing to confusing wording on a hospital garbage bin, he is not doing science, he is pontificating on preferred usage. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say, but let’s be clear about what’s actually happening. He’s doing something subjective that is rather tangential to his scientific expertise, and wading into the war zone between prescriptivists (whoever they are – I personally don’t know any such purists) and descriptivists. Now that Pinker’s book on language prescription has been mentioned, it’s interesting to observe that as laudable as the book may be, Pinker is doing the same thing. And as thoughtful and valuable as their prescriptive efforts may be, to call either of them “empirical” and “scientific” is wrong, and the latter word is misapplied and entirely meaningless in this context. How can one criticize the use of a word like “correct” to describe language use, but in the next breath describe a style guide as “scientific”? It makes equally little sense to describe either one’s efforts in this regard as “empirical”. In many cases they derive their usage prescriptions from underlying principles of formal grammar or even basic language theory, not always from the empiricism of observed usage. Indeed the _New York Times_, which observed that Pinker’s book “talks more about grammar and usage than about style itself”, also remarked on the “drooping, willow-tree-like diagrams of how the mind creates strings of words and phrases” on which he presumably bases many of his recommendations. The _New Yorker_ took particular issue with Pinker’s permissiveness (bolding mine): … it is difficult to shake the suspicion that Pinker’s list of “screwball” rules simply seeks to justify bad habits that certain people would rather not be bothered to unlearn. “Fewer” versus “less”? Do whatever sounds good, Pinker says, but maybe favor “fewer,” if you can, but not because “less” is wrong. Good luck! Dangling modifiers? Pinker likes them, sometimes. (His criteria are too elaborate to be described.) He stresses the importance of matching usage to what feels “natural” and intuitive. But natural and intuitive for whom? The kind of syntax that’s natural to kids growing up in a Maine bungalow isn’t the same as the syntax that feels natural in East New York. … “Correct” usage is our translation tool. The written language isn’t supposed to eclipse the variety of American English, but it’s not meant to comprise the full range, either. It’s a lingua franca, based on clear and common rules: anybody who makes it to high school can learn to use the written language correctly and be broadly understood …Pinker’s insistence that written language loosen to reflect natural American idiom is parochial: there’s too wide a range of idiom to be captured in one style. **Better that everybody speak his or her own forms, and then use “good” English, too. If ambitious writers work at the boundaries of the written language (as they should), then they ought do it from a path of mastery, not ignorance**; broken rules carry no power if writers and readers don’t notice the transgressions. Proper usage shows us where the earth is, so that, when the time comes, we know what it means to fly. > **[Steven Pinker’s Bad Grammar](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/steven-pinkers-bad-grammar)** > > In his new book “The Sense of Style,” the brain scientist is trying to shoot down basic principles of the English language. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-a-coworker-who-uses-literally-incorrectly/755834.md?page=13)