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alt text: A two panel comic. In the first panel there are two buttons labeled “I don’t believe in prescriptivism” and “‘Literally’ cannot mean ‘figuratively’”. A finger hovers between the buttons. In the second panel, the finger’s owner is sweating and wiping his brow, unable to decide.
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Take the utilitarian position: the word “literally” is more useful if it is distinct from the word “figuratively”, but in most other cases descriptivist definitions are more useful.
“Literally” has been used to mean “figuratively” since at least the 18 th century. Descriptivists (and actual linguists) have no problem with this. It’s a hang up of people who don’t actually study language but just want to tell other people what to do to make themselves feel superior. It was used in the figurative sense by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among many others.
