This quote right here is fucking gold.

I didn't read the past 13 pages but something tells me that I shouldn't touch this thread, even with a 10 foot pole

But without a doubt, you know what the absence of doubt implies in terms of certainty. But you certainly often use these expressions to express moderate conviction or mere hypotheses. I'm sure you're (arbitrarily) less strict about these usages than about the emphatic usage of "literaly". If so, why the double standard ?


Why. It's some sort of meta-metaphorical usage. It's not much different from "I swear, if you weren't here I would have strangled him" (no you wouldn't). It's contextual. "It literally blew my mind" (no it didn't) means -often- something else than "it was literally swept away". Using both, to convey different things, doesn't imply an ignorance of that word's meaning. People know what an oath is, even when they "swear" a blatant exaggeration. And t's no perjury either. It's not much different from literary "effets de réel" such as introductions claiming that a blatant fiction is actually papers discovered in a bottle, or videotapes found in the forest, or a found testimony written by another person than the author. It's a rhetorical device that fools no one, but just increases an effect. In practice, "literaly" often means "please suspend your disbelief while I pleasantly exaggerate something". It serves a function, emphasizes a metaphor. The fact that this word is hijacked for that does not invalidate it. Many words are hijacked like that. What's the difference between "i swear he hit the ceiling when i startled him" and "he litterally hit the ceiling when i startled him" ?

Plus : drama. Langage serves to convey meaning, and works on consensus. This consensus defines the meanings, both through actual usage and institutional officialisations, with often a gap between them. This means that, when it comes to language, you may indeed consider that "people doing it makes it right". The relations between sounds or markings and a given meaning are arbitrary, and depend on what people make of them. As long as it "works", it's "true". That's why usages change langages, no matter how uncomfortable (or downright heartbreaking) it is at any moment of history - but the accepted and defended "orthodox" versions had themselves evolved the same way to become what they are now. It's often better to stay at a descriptive level than at a normative one, when it comes to this, because efficient communication is more determining than orthodoxy. Beyond a certain level of consensual acceptation, fighting a certain usage becomes pedantic at worst (when it's absolute), irrelevant at best (when it's contextual). If everybody decides that "cool" means nice, your insistance on temperature may become a bit out of place.

In short, language is evolutive and elastic, people toy with it a lot. The more "literate" we get, the more conservative we tend to become (it's a weird thing about langage), losing sight of the point and the reality of langage. Maybe using our expertise to reinforce our status and identity, as langage mastery is a powerful weapon for that. I've got my personal angers, my pet terms and expressions that I hate to see "misused", "deformed", drifting to new forms and meanings, and also irritatingly dumb neologisms that I reject. And it takes an effort to keep in mind that nothing ever stops, that many expressions that I use have taken the same road (and won't leave it), and that some concepts I had been trained to use in a very restricting way within a given field have a much broader, adaptable, imprecise, somewhat polysemic useage in other fields. It only annoys me when "misused" terms convey implicit meanings that people are not entirely aware of bringing in, but that are still present and can be used as manipulative troyan horses.

Words. Knowing their exact meaning is good. Understanding their collective usage is obligatory. Coming to terms with their flexibility (even appreciating it, and figuring out its reasons) sometimes helps everybody to breathe a bit. Ooh I could literaly bombard you with french exemples ("battre son plein", "nominer", "faire long feu", "pour ne pas le nommer", etc). After a while, "twisted" usages of words and expression (righlty!) enter dictionaries. What do you do then ?

Lit·er·al·ly.
adv.
ant. of figuratively.
fig : figuratively.

I don't believe I use the phrase "without a doubt". I generally express my certainty as a percentage, with 99% being the highest. I too often see people who appear to be absolutely certain only to find out they were wrong. It happened just today in fact. I am fairly careful with my words in general which is why it annoys me when others are not.

My point is, to be efficient and "careful" with langage, you have to take in account the meanings that the words hold for the people. When people say "i'm sure" to express "i suppose that, but I'm aware that I can be wrong, because I'm not using a straightforward affirmative declaration", they count on the fact that everybody understand this. Sometimes, being more literal (more "correct") than the usual usage of words, defeats the point and function of langage. It borderlines the Wishmaster miscommunication syndrome. I must be careful with my obviously limited english, but in french, "sans doute" (litt. "without a doubt") means "probably", and there's no nitpicking around this. Being careful when communicating through these words wouldn't mean avoiding the expression when a doubt remain (which would be the logical, grammatically correct stance), but, on the contrary, to know that it is commonly used and interpreted to nuance assumptions. It's not a "wrong" usage, because it's such a widespread usage that it efficiently communictes what it intends to. Taking it too literally would be false. Avoiding this expression because it doesn't match its own words would be misplaced cautiousness. And trying to prevent or discourage its usage, because the litteral meaning is too far from its everyday use, would be inadequately pedantic. See what I'm getting at ?

We've got to be careful about the "descriptive vs normative" aspect of dictionaries and grammar books. That's why I like linguistics (and no, am no linguist myself), it assesses langage usages, even its widespread, shared, "transgressive" forms, instead of trying to regulate it. So it stays closer to the truth of actual (practical) langage. It's not useless, for a careful usage.

Remember Dracula. He invited Harker to teach him how to behave in Enggland without attracting attention. That is, to teach him what isn't in the books about formal grammar, etc. If I want to make myself perfectly undrstood in english, I'll go for the most widespread usages of the words, not for the most academically correct ones. I'll consider the former as the most "right", the most "careful", the most likely to fulfill its communicative function.

That's what I'm trying to say...

More importantly is there any fit women on this forum or are you all munters? :-)

What the hell is a munter?

An ugly women. English slang word.

I completely understand what you are saying. My point is, just because the majority of people get it wrong, doesn't make it right, it just means the majority of people get it wrong :)

I ignored this thread until now, but now wasted quite a bit of time on it.

I'm not female, but my wife is (and so is my daughter, but not my son).

I'm also an agnostic atheist.

I'm not a brony, although I did enjoy the one episode of that show that I watched.

I don't know if this covers all the based for this thread, so let me know if I missed anything.

You forgot about the use of literally to emphasize things.

I literally don't care about that.

Ow.. don't get me started on "agnosticism"... =P

Precisely not sure this applies to langage. If a majority of people agrees on grulbok meaning "red", then grulbok does "mean" red. Langage is just a collective agreement on meanings.

That is why we have different langages on earth, none of them "wrong". Slightly less obviously, this is why "patois" are not wrong either, nor are local accents, prononciations, expressions, etc. Despite of the normative pressure of dominant official langages (along with their pseudo-neutral prononciations), and the political stakes around imposing one variation as normal and disqualifying the others as bastardized, primitive, illiterate, backwards, etc. Every shared communication "table" is a correct langage, if it functions accurately enough, for enough people.

So, if enough people do what you call a mistake, if a majority does it, you become the one who falls behind the communicative consensus, and don't use the existing lexicon. You become wrong (like, out-dated, or too restrictive). Because you're the one lacking the code that is used in the collectivity to communicate with each others. This is why dictionaries lag behind actual usages, and officialize them after a while. They don't impose what is "right" against a majority : they describe what is right "for" this majority, and serve as a (perpetually slightly outdated) reference for it.

By the way, I think that the usage of "literaly" as an intensifier for mere metaphores is now taken in account by official dictionaries. Don't hold onto right/wrong concepts too much, when it comes to langage, because your very sources of reference will necessarily betray you in favor of that "wrong majority" that irritates you. Langage is a bad place where to expect objective and immutable judgements, or to endorse minority-versus-majority struggles...

I agree without a doubt.