Hmmm.
JOHN: I am so furious at Camille! I could shoot her on sight!
ED: Really? Do you mean that literally?
JOHN: I do!
Question: is Camille in actual danger of being shot?
He veers almost immediately into superstition with the notion that there is any significant semantic difference between the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’ and that any language ever seeks to avoid ambiguity. He’s wrong on both counts (and not only that, his test sentence is, stylistically speaking, awkward and contrived. Most speakers would say ‘more,’ rather than ‘better’ in order to avoid the ambiguity he’s so concerned about). Ambiguity is perfectly achievable within written sentences that obey prescriptive rules. Ambiguity happens all the time in spoken sentences, and yet listeners rarely have any difficulty deciphering the meaning of the sentence. In spoken English in particular, in sentences where it would be grammatical to say either ‘I’ or ‘me’ (“This is better for John and me,” “This is better for John and I,”) there is no semantic distinction between them. Even in sentences where you can only use one of them (“Chocolate tastes good to me”), a sentence constructed using the wrong pronoun ("#Chocolate tastes good to I") is ill-formed only syntactically, not semantically.
Nope, sorry, I don’t buy it. I am perfectly happy to grant that conventions of style and word choice mean a great deal when it comes to the aesthetic impact of the language, either spoken or written, but there is simply NO basis for rules for “correct usage,” because, malapropisms aside, no native English speaker can unintentionally speak an ungrammatical sentence. Worried about losing a useful word? Get the fuck over yourselves. You are still perfectly able to distinguish between the use of ‘literally’ as a general intensifier and ‘literally’ to mean “in actual fact.” That’s the amazing thing about language - you don’t actually have to worry about it! In fact, it is futile to do so.
PLEASE stop bleating about this nonsense. Thank you.
I’m with the OP on this. If the meaning of literally is changed to a mere emphatic explanation, what new word takes the place of literally? And how does language benefit with this new use of the word literally?
I’m ready for a party!
I have to agree with the OP – “literally” when misused badly enough just makes me laugh and feel sorry for the poor schlub who misuses it thusly.
Whether or not you can see beyond the curvature of the earth is derived from a consistent position with respect to the earth’s properties. When self-styled descriptivists can do the same vis-a-vis the properties of colloquial language, then perhaps I will be convinced by this argument. Until then, the idea that prescriptivism is somehow superstitious does not persuade.
Literally may be a poor example, since it is attested about 100 years ago. I cheerfully maintain that this usage of the word is poor.
I suppose I will have to continue to argue that how language “works” is a dialectical process and not merely the uncritical adoption of any neologism that a critical mass of people start using. As such, criticism of how people use language is not only not useless but an integral part of the evolution of language.
I understand the OPs point, but the example is poorly-chosen. The TITLE of the thread is of course an excellent example. “Literally blowing a gasket” is a contradiction in terms. But like the others in this thread, I understand the meaning of the linked example quite well. People often use hyperbole with small numbers of things. For example, “There are only, like, 2 people in the world who haven’t seen The Simpsons on TV.” has quite a different meaning from “There are literally only 2 people who haven’t seen The Simpsons on TV.” So saying “literally a handful” means literally a very small number, as opposed to claiming a very small number as an exaggeration.
It’s true that “handful” is a figure of speech, but in the case of “literally blowing a gasket”, the word “literally” is completely superfluous, which is why it’s so annoying. In the case of “literally a handful”, it is not.
(Although I admit it would have made more sense to say one could “literally count them on one hand”, which is probably what he really meant.)
Oh god the irony…it burns…
LOL…LMAO…ROFLMAO…
Let’s start with this, and see if there is a distortion of linguistics in his summary.
Here he is stating his position without contrasting it to descriptivism. Do you object to any part of it? Is any part a distortion of linguistics, or superstitious?
You say he’s wrong, I say he’s not. People who agree with you are right, people who disagree are superstitious. Got it.
The author suggests that it facilitates putting thoughts into other people’s minds.
The only way I can make sense of this is as a corollary to “There is no such thing as grammar.” Is that what you mean?
It isn’t bleating and I will not stop. Sorry.
Whoosh.
You wish!
So does this mean words can only have one meaning?
What about words that have distinctly opposite meanings (eg cleave)?
The meaning of a word can be parsed from it’s use in a sentence. If the language doesn’t benefit from the new use of the word, then why do people feel the need to use it?
Amen! I’m on your side, and on the side of the OP.
But, in the other side’s defense, it can be tricky deciding just what is literal and what is a figure of speech. “A handful” of something is, indeed, a small number of something, but the word itself is a sort of figure of speech. In its origin at least, it means an amount that could fit in your hand. That’s the image the word conjures up. If you talk about “a handful of something,” I’m going to picture an actual hand, full of that thing—say, a handful of Cheerios or a handful of pennies. If you’re talking about something that wouldn’t actually fit in someone’s hand (like people or buildings), I’m going to think, “Oh, it’s just a figure of speech.” But if you talk about a literal handful of people or buildings, I’m going to think, WTF? What do you mean by a “literal handful”?
I’ll interrupt the grammatical throwdown with my favorite misuse of the word literally, from the movie “The Big Picture” (starring the only man with a Bacon score of zero, Kevin Bacon):
Some landlord, talking about an actor he’d helped become famous: “I made that kid a star, a big star! And then he turned around and crapped in my face. Literally!”
(I’m guessing I’m the only person who will think this post is funny. Ah, well…)
Even from a strictly descriptivist point of view, at any one time there’s a set of production rules that describe a language, and there are disadvantages to departing from them - those disadvantages being, each departure makes it less likely that other speakers of the same language will correctly comprehend you.
if i wuz to rite like this! wiv non?standurd speling an punktuashion, by the strict descriptivist standard proposed by some in this thread, I’d be using standard English; I’m a native English speaker, and a native English speaker reading it can understand me … eventually. Nonetheless, it’s incorrect in terms of the currently prevailing rules of language … and, because it’s incorrect, it’s harder for someone to read it and understand it. Poor grammar, and the use of words in non-standard ways, are also barriers to communication and comprehension.
To take the example in the OP, the word “literally” can now be used in two ways, to mean “literally” and “not literally”. I don’t think this is a great aid to clarity, here.
Of course, I can usually work out from the context which sense is intended. Well, of course I can; I’m familiar with current usages and misuses, and moreover I have an MA in freakin’ linguistics, so you’re going to have to work hard to mangle the English language so badly I can’t puzzle out the meaning, in the end. But it’d help me a whole lot if people would choose their words carefully.
In short: you don’t use correct English because the Great Grammar Marker In The Sky will wave a red pencil at you if you don’t. You use correct English so that other English speakers will understand you correctly. Simple as that.
Perhaps he did mean it literally.
(There’s an image for you.)
What does he mean by systematized?! It’s an natural language; it has an inherent system to it … we don’t need some schlub coming in and “systematizing” it.
Sound English?! It may not be what you should write in a paper, but I think we all get his meaning. When Mick Jagger sings “I can’t get no satisfaction,” did you honestly think he meant he could get some?
You know, the rules of Latin are really stable, and you know why? Cause it’s DEAD.
Yes and yes.
I’m gonna go have a beer, because you’ve totally stressed me out. I swore I would never get into another linguistics discussion after this one because prescriptivists who refuse to listen stress me the fuck out. Just ignore this post…
This, by the way, is flat out false. Words in all languages are multi-ordinal.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
~yawn~
The English language is doing just fine, people can still use the connotation and denotation of various words, and if you really wanted to be exacting in your use of the word ‘literally’, you could.
Yeah, right.
Well, not quite. You use language to communicate effectively. To do that it is best to tailor your use of the language to the people you are trying to communicate to. If the people you are communicating with use a “non-standard” dialect with different rules of grammer, then it is best to use that dialect. You cannot single out one English dialect and say it is more correct than any other. You can say that some of the rules of grammer are more widely spread than others and to effectively communicate to a wide variety of people it would be best to stick to those rules though. Like speaking on a message board.