Column inches have been filled with prescriptive attitudes to the English Language since there have been column inches to fill. Notions that textspeak is encroaching on our patriotic tongue and the success of Lynne Truss’ Eats, shoots and leaves show that we are a society keen to maintain our language.
As an English Language and Linguistic graduate I have been trained to have descriptive attitudes to our language and to accept change and non-standard varieties as part of the beauty of language. This view is, I believe, an appropriate one. Once you trace the legacy of English you see it’s these non-standard varieties that have made standard English what it is today. However. There is one misuse of language that is creeping into all forms of language which should not be readily accepted as simply non-standard but rather horribly incorrect - the misuse of literally.
The word should be used when a turn of phrase, an idiom, or expression that is most often used in a figurative sense is used in a context where the event has actually happened and the said phrase is not being used in its normal figurative sense.
“I’ll be two seconds” - the person will be a very short period of time.
“I’ll be literally two seconds” - the person will be two seconds, you can count them on your watch.
It is so frequently used as a redundant word in sentences when you wouldn’t expect anything other than it to be literally: “I’m going to literally punch you”. I doubt the listener would have been confused about whether they were about to receive a literal or metaphorical punch had the speaker not stated it explicitly. Other times it’s just used incorrectly: A cricket commentator described a jubilant crowd as: “literally going mental” considering they were literally going mental there were very few men in white coats and straight jackets around, I cant help but think “going mental” would have more than sufficed.
The problem with using literally to incorrectly give emphasis is that the meaning of the word weakens and leaves a gap in the language. Now whenever literally is required, audiences will be unaware of literally being used in the literal sense causing a communication breakdown. It’s getting to the stage where actually and literally have to be used as a compound to express what a single literally would have been capable of conveying in the past.
When Britain first went to war in Iraq, Bush came over here on a visit amid anti-war protests. One protester was interviewed and said: “He’s taken us to war with him and now he’s come here to literally rub our faces in it” - surely that’s not legal.
