Language dilution, language pollution: pick your term. For
too long this practice has gone on unchecked, unabated, laying waste to our
precious words, our finest finite natural resource. It has many learned
defenders who cry ‘language drift!’ arm-in-arm with the less learned who cry in turn, ‘who
gives a shit!’. Fools.[i]
No, it is not language drift, it is laziness.
As well as the obvious meaning, Google gives a definition of ‘literally’ as a word that can
be “used to acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for
emphasis or to express strong feeling.”[ii]
I weep. Google, the arbiter of knowledge, has metaphorically caved in, figuratively
given up the fight, and literally offended me.
But it isn't Mr. Google’s fault, nor is it the OED’s or any
other organisation like that. Nope, it is your fault, dear reader, if you have
ever used literally when you don’t literally mean it. Dictionaries do not set
language, they document it: Fiona MacPherson of the OED says, “If enough people
use a word in a particular way […] it will find its way into the dictionary.”
Using literally when you don’t literally mean literally is language
abuse, not language drift. Wikipedia lists the reasons for language change as:
a)
Economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient
and effective as possible to reach communicative goals. Purposeful speaking
therefore involves a trade-off of costs and benefits.
a.
the principle of least
effort: Speakers especially use economy in their articulation,
which tends to result in phonetic reduction of speech forms (going to >
gonna)
d)
Cultural
environment: Groups of speakers will reflect new places, situations,
and objects in their language, whether they encounter different people there or
not.
e)
Migration/Movement: Speakers will change and create
languages, such as pidgins and creoles
I
am fine, for instance, with the way my generation uses the word ‘like’ all the time as
a way of introducing reported speech because it is a shorter and more fluid way
of saying ‘he/she said’ and makes it clear you are paraphrasing, or giving the gist of what somebody else said. ‘Like’ is also
used as a filler word, and that’s fine too. In general, it’s best to try and
remove fillers from your speech, because they make you sound less intelligent
and confident, but that’s super-difficult so it’s fine, really. I am also fine
with people saying ‘PIN number,’ even though technically speaking you are
saying ‘personal identification number number’, because I feel PIN itself has
come to mean the combination you put into the thing to validate your cashcard.
I am
not fine with people diluting ‘literally’
(and ‘genuinely’, to a lesser extent) because we only have one word for
literally, and if literally no longer means literally then we've lost a word,
and a useful one at that. If there was a replacement – and I know a lot of former
literally-abusers that have moved onto ‘genuinely’, ruining that, too – I possibly
would be okay with it. It falls into none of the above categories, and in fact
reduces economy. If you use literally when you don’t mean literally, for
instance in, ‘omg I literally love Mary Berry,’ you are not only adding an extraneous
word, you are also devaluing it, so when the time comes for ‘literally’ to be
used in its proper meaning it is no longer up to the task. (I've seen the
tragicomedy of ‘literally literally’
before. Again, I weep.) It also raises the issue for serial literally and
genuinely abusers that if they make a statement without using one of the two, it could give the impression that they
are being insincere.
Parroting a word over and over again in inappropriate
contexts robs a word of its power. Take swearing for instance. People that eff
and blind as part of their regular speech patterns devalue swearing, so when
they’re really angry, they haven’t got the vocabulary to express themselves.
When/if I’m a parent, I imagine I would tell my children not to swear
unnecessarily, but if they’re really, really angry about something it would be
okay. It’s important that we can be rude to each other. It seems strange to me,
for instance, that in Australia (and other parts of the world, too), people
call each other ‘cunt’ in the same way that I would use the word ‘mate.’ If you
really want to call someone a ‘cunt,’ which is just about the worst word we
have, what do you do?
So please, put some thought into the words you use because words
are vulnerable and synonyms are exhaustible.
[i] http://www.buzzfeed.com/billypeltzer/10-crutch-words-you-literally-need-to-stop-saying-ecuv
This ‘listicle’ is mostly on the money, and the comments illustrate typical
moronic defences perfectly.
[ii]
In between starting and finishing this article, Google has CHANGED IT BACK!!
Yes!
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