Speaking ‘Literally’
“People got killed last week, literally killed”
- A financial analyst, August 2007.
At first look it seems that the word ‘literally’ was misused in this sentence, but further consideration will show that it was used correctly and that the resulting confusion is due to a fundamental weakness in the English language.
To get ‘killed’ in the financial sphere is to loose all financial stake and cease to be an active actor, mirroring the finality of death in the biological sphere. This figurative use is then extended by exaggeration to all large loses. So the word ‘literally’ refers to the literal sense in the financial sphere and not the literal sense of the word itself.
Despite the above example the word ‘literally’ is a word regularly misused, thus joining the majority words in the English language; to be more correct the language spoken in England, with roots in Saxon, Danish, German, Greek, Latin (medieval, late, etc.) and all Latin-based languages, this mangled core is then extended with words from all over the world (Arabic, Hindu, etc.).
To add to the confusion most words are not used in their original sense or in a modified sense, or are used in a figurative sense, or adopted from special usage (Maritime, etc.) or used (and misused) differently by different generations. The result of all this is that most people don’t say what they mean or actually mean what they say.
The least suitable language has become the world’s lingua franca; the confusion of life is reflected and multiplied in the language.
