Literally speaking
نویسنده
چکیده
Modern uses of the word literally are surveyed, and the solecistic misuse of this word as an expression of speaker commitment is shown to be a natural semantic extension of its basic metalinguistic meaning. The development appears to be typical of a large class of intensifiers, though it is argued that literally itself is only in the early stages of such an evolution. Aspects of this development are observed to run counter to well-known tendencies for meaning change to involve subjectification, and it is suggested that subjectification itself may be a special case of the ways in which originally pragmatic meanings can become conventionalized properties of a form’s lexical semantics. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
منابع مشابه
in Foundations of Speech Act Theory
Like Humpty Dumpty, many philosophers take pride in saying what they mean and meaning what they say. Literalism does have its virtues, like when you're drawing up a contract or programming a computer, but generally we prefer to speak loosely and leave a lot to inference. Language works far more efficiently that way. Two Kinds of Looseness It helps if you can rely on people not to take you too l...
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