A Pet Peeve

Just a quick little post, mainly to convince me (and readers, if those exist) that this is not totally dead.

One huge pet peeve of mine I was reminded about in class yesterday (er...the 2nd, that is) is when people over- and misuse the word "literally."

I don't know why this happens, but I think people like to say it to sound smarter or something. But let's all take a step back and look at what it means. Well, it's mainly just me spouting out what I think it means. But you're all free to disagree of course.

Anyway, when I think of "literal," I take it to mean the opposite of figurative. Something that is figurative is something that doesn't actually exist or isn't actually happening in the sense that it is metaphorical, an analogy to something, or something like that.

For example. If I said ASU's last second loss to Washington State on Sunday was a heartbreaker (it was), I mean that figuratively. And I don't have to say that I meant that figuratively because it is obvious.

Now let's look at that if I had said "was literally a heartbreaker." Well now having (very) roughly stated what something that is figurative is and having said that something literal is the opposite of that, saying "literally" would imply that it is actually happening. In this case, my heart is actually breaking. And not the way Natalie Portman meant when she said it to Hayden Christensen at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Breaking as in physically falling into pieces. Or something like that.

You wouldn't use "literally" if it's obvious you meant it to be literal and there's no way it could have been figurative speech. You also wouldn't use "literally" if that's not what you mean. Surprisingly, to some people, that's not as obvious as it sounds like it should be.

So it's 2 AM and I realize this is rambling and probably doesn't make much sense. So let's just review.

If you wanted to talk about a performance by a stuntman, you might say, "He was on fire, literally!"
Since the term "on fire" can be used figuratively to describe someone who is performing well, "literally" works in that case.

But if you wanted to talk about what happened to him, you would not say, "He was set on fire, literally." How could you be figuratively set on fire? You can't.
I know already someone will be thinking of a case where someone is described as "on fire" (The Machine draining 3s for example) and being "set on fire" would be the point at which he became "on fire." Of course then this is just using the wrong idiom since "caught fire" would suffice.

And of course the worst is not when "literally" is used redundantly, but inappropriately. So let's use the example that I heard in my class which drove me nuts. From a discussion of "Danton's Death" by Georg Buchner.

"Danton has been literally cancelled to zero."

What? I wanted to stop the discussion and point out how little that made sense. I can't even begin to describe how little sense it makes because there is not even enough sense in that statement to start (or as I might say, less than a penny of sense. read it out loud). Now unless Danton has been crossed out and become a big, round shape with a whole in the middle, I'm pretty sure he's still a man and not "cancelled to zero" or whatever the heck that would entail.

Good grief.