I have occasionally been told that I am literal-minded. This happens, on average, about 1.6 seconds after I deliberately ignore one of Grice's maxims for what I vainly imagine to be comic effect. But although I am not nearly so literal-minded as I pretend to be, I am literal-minded enough to giggle when I hear or read sentences like these:

1. Mr. Chamberlain literally bubbled over with gratitude.
2. In 1957, the Liberals literally hurled themselves from office.
3. I saw journalists become animals, literally.¹

I read these, and in my mind's eye I see Mr. Chamberlain boiling merrily away like a teakettle; I see M. St.-Laurent and his cabinet defenestrating themselves; I see lyncanthropes with press passes, barking. If the authors of these sentences (who are, respectively, the Westminster Gazette, Dalton Camp, and Gary Hart) thought that the insertion of the word literally would somehow make their metaphors more vivid, then, by gum, they were right.

On the other hand, I don't think they meant to amuse me quite as much as they ended up doing, and this use of literally with figurative expressions is widely deplored. The first example above I got from the OED, which uses it to illustrate the observation that the word literally is "now often improperly used to indicate that some conventional metaphorical or hyperbolical phrase is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense." (The OED's earliest clear example of this particular use of the word dates from 1863.) Examples two and three are quoted in a column by Robert Fulford, who fulminates (no, he does not literally thunder and lighten) against this usage. Fulford attributes his antipathy to a trauma suffered in his youth:

Many years ago I suffered under a boss who liked to summarize a tough business situation by saying, "I was literally caught with my pants down." This left an indelible image in my mind, and perhaps made me more than normally sensitive to the abuse of "literally."

Fulford quotes H. W. Fowler as saying that "such false coin makes honest traffic in words impossible." (And then he falsely accuses Fowler of mixing metaphors; did he forget the non-vehicular meaning of the word traffic?) As for me, I find this use of literally more amusing than deplorable. My prescriptivist streak and deep-seated linguistic conservatism lead me to think of it as an error, but since there are so many people out there decrying it already, let me at least temporarily take up the brief for the defence.

The prosecution is fond of saying that in sentences such as 1-3 above, the word literally is being used as if it meant 'figuratively,' which is precisely the opposite of what it does mean, and thus ludicrously incorrect. However, we might want to note that simply leaving out the word literally (which would, I think, satisfy the prescriptivists) would not change the meanings of the sentences in any way. If I say, "In 1957 the Liberals hurled themselves out of office," then I am uttering an untruth; it is up to the listener to figure out that I am flouting Grice's first maxim of quality so as to convey some idea other than what I am actually asserting. The addition of the word literally does not materially change this situation. It adds an explicit assertion that what I am saying is true, which is false, but it is just as obviously false as the rest of the statement.

Secondly, I would like to invite the prosecution to consider a few precedents that may bear on the case of literally. Go and get yourself a dictionary that provides etymologies, and look up the following words:

• truly
• really
• very

There's a pattern here, no? It seems that English has a long tradition of turning words that mean 'in truth' into general-purpose intensifiers. And while you can certainly find people who insist on restricting truly and really to their original senses, I expect you would have a great deal of trouble finding anyone who will seriously insist that the English word very can only be used synonymously with the French word vrai. The path of semantic change that literally seems to be following is well-worn, and time, I think, is on the side of those who use literally non-literally.

The other day, though, I saw literally used in a rather different way:

Here, the words literally and figuratively are being used to distinguish what a semanticist would call the de re and de dicto (or specific and non-specific) readings of the sentence "I'm looking for a tall blonde woman in a spandex bustier." In the de re reading, the noun phrase "a tall blonde woman in a spandex bustier" refers to a specific individual meeting that description (viz., Lightning Lady, in case you're interested), and Lightning Lady would still be who the speaker (the Unholy Mackerel, in case you're really interested) was looking for even if she dyed her hair jet-black and changed into a tweed suit. In the de dicto reading, the speaker would like to encounter just about anybody matching the description "a tall blonde woman in a spandex bustier." The two readings are equally literal, so I find it a bit odd to use the terms literally and figuratively to distinguish them, although of course it seems to be necessary to set up the gag in the fourth panel. I mean, I think that "Trust me, from the sounds of this babe, you'll be looking at her de dicto" is a pretty funny line, but then that's why I'm a linguist and not a cartoonist: I'm too damn literal-minded.

1. Not vice versa?