
I literally hate it - 10ren
http://www.slate.com/id/2129105/?nav=tap3
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byrneseyeview
An alternate view (text not safe for work):

<http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/van/144733448.html>

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russell
A language maven tackles the use of "literally." I confess, I love this kind
of article.

My pet peeve usage: "allegedly", for convicted criminals. After the trial
there is no more allegation; they've been convicted. Their participation in
the crime is legally a fact.

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tstegart
Legally a fact doesn't mean actually a fact. I can name a few people who
legally killed someone and then it turns out they didn't.

But if its your pet peeve, you should read the New York Post, where they drop
the "allegedly" and go right to calling them "scum" "perps," "villains," and
"thugs." :)

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stewiecat
The NYPost isn't exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity and award-winning
reporting.

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gruseom
The title edit here ("I literally hate it") means literally the opposite of
what the article says.

Because of that, I almost didn't bother reading it. Language peeves are not
only tiresome, they're ignorant. Every correct usage started out as an
incorrect usage.

On reading the first sentence, I noticed the author is a dictionary editor and
wondered why on earth he would be making a mistake of this order.

Then I read the rest and realized that he's actually _defending_ this use of
"literally" to the peevers, showing that it (not surprisingly) turns out to
have a long and distinguished history. In fact, the whole piece is a gentle
smackdown of what he calls "usage criticism".

Great article, bad title edit.

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mdemare
What "literally" does is turn off the automatic evaluation of (stale)
metaphors, thereby drawing attention to the metaphor itself.

And although it has been overused tremendously, this is a very useful feature
to have in a language (just like being able to say "hopefully she'll come" is
a useful feature to have).

Another way of explaining it is that "literally" should not be understood as
"what follows is not a metaphor" but instead as "what follows is not a stale
metaphor".

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hcayless
This is not a criticism of the article, which is actually very balanced, but I
get very impatient with people who attempt to proscribe perfectly legitimate
usage. "Literally" can be used as an intensifier, regardless of the truth of
the statement it intensifies. People have been doing it for a long time. You
can avoid it in your own writing if you hate it.

The article's point (in my reading anyway) is that "literally" sounds a bit
silly when used to intensify a clichéed or fantastic statement. I'd say that's
true. Of course, that means that "literally" can have the opposite effect than
the one intended. Instead of intensifying your statement it can, by making it
sound funny, unintentionally defuse it instead. Oh, the irony.

I love the English language.

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ardell
> People have been doing it for a long time.

Why is it that commonplace misuse of a word justifies the misuse? Should we
get rid of "they're" and "their" and simply use "there" in all circumstances
since it has become so common?

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hcayless
Your example is of misspellings, which are incorrect. But the use of
"literally" as an intensifier is common usage and can't be called incorrect.
Languages evolve, and the meanings of words can change as they are used by
their speakers and writers. That's how it works.

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yan
... this. And the misuse of "irony" which is slowly beginning to mean anything
remotely humorous.

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tdavis
At this point it seems to mean everything which is a coincidence and
occasionally, perhaps by accident, events which actually are ironic.

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whacked_new
People like these dictionary editors have an interesting place in the
evolution of language. They contribute to the stability of the language, which
allows us to communicate more effectively by enforcing clarity and precision,
but at the same time, the ideals they champion cannot survive longer than a
few generations. Something like a "defender of punctuated equilibrium," which
is actually not equilibrium.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_drift>

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cperciva
My favourite example of this type of abuse comes from Radio Australia: "To see
a 70 year old woman, literally glued to her television..."

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tokenadult
I like how he pointed to "really" as an example of a usage resembling
"literally" that is objected to much less often.

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ardell
Huge pet peeve. I think less of a person when they use "literally" improperly.

Why can't they just say: I mean her hair was _figuratively_ on fire!

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codyrobbins
Huge pet peeve. I think less of a person when the perfectly legitimate use of
'literally' is a pet peeve of theirs.

If you read the article you would understand how there's nothing improper
about the usage. If you knew anything about human language you'd know that
there's no such thing as an improper usage. Sheidlower is a highly respected
lexicographer and his entire article subtly acknowledges this fact. The speech
community uses the word in a certain way, and all who hear it understand what
is being said, without even consciously realizing it. There is nothing
improper or wrong about how it is being used. The amazing richness of language
is due in part exactly to the kind of mechanisms that cause drift such as seen
with 'literally', and it's a testament to the endless versatility of the
language mechanism. On the surface at which the average person contemplates
it, sitting around in their armchair, language is not a rigid, logical
artifice that makes the sort of naive sense they want it to.

Read Pinker's 'The Language Instinct' for a good discussion of the topic of
language mavens. My pet peeve is people like you, who have pet peeves that are
grounded in your own ignorance.

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ardell
> If you knew anything about human language... > My pet peeve is people like
> you...

Wow, that was kind of mean. I understand that you have an opinion about this
topic but I don't think that's a legitimate reason to be insulting.

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codyrobbins
Accept my apologies -- I honestly didn't intend that reply to come across as
mean-spirited, but I guess it did. I just feel like judging a person just
because they use a particular turn of phrase is kind of awful, especially
when, as the article explains, they are actually using the phrase in a highly
subtle and expressive way, which the entire speech community implicitly agrees
on (and has agreed on for hundreds of years, in this case).

I don't see how it's any more insulting for me to say that my pet peeve is
people like you than it is for you to say that your pet peeve is people who
say 'literally'. In any event I'm not proclaiming you ignorant as an insult or
name-calling -- I'm simply stating that I believe it's ignorant to think less
of a person because you don't think their usage makes 'logical' sense.
Language is a locus of communicative intent and its purpose is being achieved
marvelously by this usage: otherwise people would not be using it.

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bdr
Misuse of "proverbial(ly)" is just as prevalent but doesn't get nearly as much
attention as "literally".

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time_management
This (ab)use of _literally_ doesn't mean its opposite, "figuratively". It's a
sloppy shorthand for "without exaggeration".

"Without exaggeration, I got my ass kicked on the exam." = Right. "I literally
got my ass kicked on the exam." = Wrong.

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dominik
> _"I literally got my ass kicked on the exam." = Wrong._

Usually. I'm sure conditions exist where such a statement evaluates to true.

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time_management
There are idiomatic phrases like that. For example, I wouldn't consider it
wrong to say "I literally fucked that exam up" because "to fuck up" is a
vulgar idiom for "to botch" and usually has nothing to do with literal sex
(not that sex can't be fucked up). So it translates to "I literally botched
that exam", which is not an abuse of "literally".

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scott_s
I disagree. To me, the literal meaning of "fuck" is "to have sex." I see the
qualifier _literaly_ as meaning "the next phrase is being used in its original
sense, not its figurative sense."

I see it similar to using \ in regular expressions. In the regular expression
"\\.", the \ acts much as the word _literally_ , and modifies the special
character so that I get the literal/actual meaning as opposed to the
figurative/special meaning.

As for your example, I think it's meaningless. The phrase "fuck up" is a
figure of speech, and has no literal meaning. It just has a meaning.

