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It’s like ten thousand descriptivists, when all you need is a prescriptivist… I think words like “ironic” and “literal” have a lot of staying power, even if th

It’s like ten thousand descriptivists, when all you need is a prescriptivist… I think words like “ironic” and “literal” have a lot of staying power, even if they have seceded a little ground on informal use. There will always need to be a case when it’s important to disambiguate how ironic one is being. Irony is often made clear by over-exaggeration or stock phrases (eg “/s”, eye dialect “you guise”), but sincerity can be made unambiguously clear with a term such as “unironic”, which is often avoided in irony to keep things clear Obviously this begs the question of if someone were to use “unironic” ironically, but outside of being used in rare cases of hyper-irony, the only use I can think of this misdirection is to be purposefully malicious. So even without prescriptivism, I believe that irony (at least as made clear in “I was being ironic”) is a word one that is very hard to kill.

cortesoft 6y ago
I don't understand why people get upset at people using 'literal' incorrectly.... it is almost always used as a form of hyperbole, which seems like a totally valid linguistic use. If I say "oh man, I literally die every time someone complains about people using literally wrong", I am clearly using hyperbole... no one is being confused, and I am not changing the meaning of a word. Do people think we are going to ruin accurate measurements when I say something like, "this thing weighs a ton!" when the item clearly weighs a lot less than 2000 pounds?
- waterhouse 6y ago
  I was visiting a friend at college, staying in his room. I once told him that I would be literally sleeping with someone, and he at first didn't realize that this meant I wouldn't be sleeping in his room that night. So the corruption of "literally" has indeed interfered with my communication.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Huh? Do you mean the corruption of "sleeping with"? Or did you mean "someone else"?
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      It's the corruption of "literally" in "literally sleeping with". My friend didn't realize that this meant sleeping in that person's bed with them, until I explained it.
- rendall 6y ago
  While I agree that it's a valid example of hyperbole, to me, using literally to mean figuratively is the sonic equivalent to writing many exclamation points!!!!!!! You can do it, but it's bad form, and doesn't make the point the speaker wants to make
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    > using literally to mean figuratively I contend that this isn't a thing. It's absolutely the case that "literally" is often used when the sentence is figurative, but for it to mean "figuratively" it would have to be the intent of the speaker that the inclusion of "literally" makes the utterance more likely to be understood as figurative. I think it is instead used as an intensifier. All of that said, I don't have any principled objection to protest against it on stylistic grounds. I just think we should try and be clear about what's going on. (And I recognize that I'm disagreeing, here, with at least one dictionary - I believe they got it wrong.)
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      Right a figurative use of "literally". Hopefully you'll understand the meaning. Next let's debate what "hopefully" means.
- lmm 6y ago
  The whole point of "literally" is to mean "this is not hyperbole or exaggeration, I mean the thing that I am saying". So using it to exaggerate can be confusing. Of course in most cases you can figure out what the person meant with a bit of effort, but that's true of any mistake.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    ‘Literally’ is just going through the same transformation ‘really’ did a couple of centuries ago. Literally. I’m more curious what word will come up to take on the old role of ‘literally’ when ‘literally’ becomes purely an intensifier.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      "and I am totally not making this up" which unfortunately is also lost. The problem is Godelesque. There's no way to form a consistent language that includes lies.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    People are just using the word "literally" ironically.
taneq 6y ago
> Obviously this begs the question Let me guess, you literally did that unironically? I always thought that the perfect example of irony would be to write a song about irony in which you use a bunch of examples that aren't ironic... but that's just me.
- jjgreen 6y ago
  Like rain on your wedding day ...

cortesoft 6y ago

I don't understand why people get upset at people using 'literal' incorrectly.... it is almost always used as a form of hyperbole, which seems like a totally valid linguistic use. If I say "oh man, I literally die every time someone complains about people using literally wrong", I am clearly using hyperbole... no one is being confused, and I am not changing the meaning of a word. Do people think we are going to ruin accurate measurements when I say something like, "this thing weighs a ton!" when the item clearly weighs a lot less than 2000 pounds?

waterhouse 6y ago
I was visiting a friend at college, staying in his room. I once told him that I would be literally sleeping with someone, and he at first didn't realize that this meant I wouldn't be sleeping in his room that night. So the corruption of "literally" has indeed interfered with my communication.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Huh? Do you mean the corruption of "sleeping with"? Or did you mean "someone else"?
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    It's the corruption of "literally" in "literally sleeping with". My friend didn't realize that this meant sleeping in that person's bed with them, until I explained it.
rendall 6y ago
While I agree that it's a valid example of hyperbole, to me, using literally to mean figuratively is the sonic equivalent to writing many exclamation points!!!!!!! You can do it, but it's bad form, and doesn't make the point the speaker wants to make
- dllthomas 6y ago
  > using literally to mean figuratively I contend that this isn't a thing. It's absolutely the case that "literally" is often used when the sentence is figurative, but for it to mean "figuratively" it would have to be the intent of the speaker that the inclusion of "literally" makes the utterance more likely to be understood as figurative. I think it is instead used as an intensifier. All of that said, I don't have any principled objection to protest against it on stylistic grounds. I just think we should try and be clear about what's going on. (And I recognize that I'm disagreeing, here, with at least one dictionary - I believe they got it wrong.)
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Right a figurative use of "literally". Hopefully you'll understand the meaning. Next let's debate what "hopefully" means.
lmm 6y ago
The whole point of "literally" is to mean "this is not hyperbole or exaggeration, I mean the thing that I am saying". So using it to exaggerate can be confusing. Of course in most cases you can figure out what the person meant with a bit of effort, but that's true of any mistake.
- JackFr 6y ago
  ‘Literally’ is just going through the same transformation ‘really’ did a couple of centuries ago. Literally. I’m more curious what word will come up to take on the old role of ‘literally’ when ‘literally’ becomes purely an intensifier.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    "and I am totally not making this up" which unfortunately is also lost. The problem is Godelesque. There's no way to form a consistent language that includes lies.
- philwelch 6y ago
  People are just using the word "literally" ironically.

taneq 6y ago

> Obviously this begs the question Let me guess, you literally did that unironically? I always thought that the perfect example of irony would be to write a song about irony in which you use a bunch of examples that aren't ironic... but that's just me.

jjgreen 6y ago
Like rain on your wedding day ...