Literally holding back the tide (albeit in an ironic way)

The other day I found myself on a train refilling my fountain pen in order to underline a point in a book about English grammar. This was the moment when I ruefully reflected I was now middle aged, middle class and possibly a bit dull. In contrast to my younger self, phraseology now matters more to me than pop music, grammar is more important than going out and, in particular, the correct use of the word 'literally' now worries me far more than my adolescent crush on Lyndsey Thorpe. 

To the bemusement of my colleagues I have long fought a lonely and futile war against the incorrect use of the word literally. This was once a great word. It described those unusual occasions when a metaphorical thing actually happened. So if you walked out of your office and a cat followed shortly by a small dog fell on your head, you could legitimately exclaim “it is literally raining cats and dogs”. This would have been briefly humorous to you and your colleagues and compensated somewhat for having a no doubt fairly heavy animal fall on you from a great height. Metaphors happening literally are quite rare so you could go home to your wife armed with an amusing anecdote that ended “and then I said it is "literally raining cats and dogs". Oh how they laughed”.

This meaning has now gone from day to day use and the word doesn’t seem to mean anything at all now. My colleagues say” I am literally writing an e mail” or” I am literally ringing him right now” and the word has no obvious sense or value. At best it means actually or maybe just but we already have words for that sense so why bother changing the meaning of another one? To my mind the English language is slightly poorer as a result and I waste quite a lot of my time pointlessly correcting other people's usage. You can imagine I am not the most fun passenger on long train journeys but hey to some of us these things matter.

I am also aware that other morose middle aged men are fighting similar futile battles over the use of the word like instead of said as in “so I’m like and she’s like” or the incorrect use of the word wicked which has now inverted its meaning so that wicked things are good when they used to be bad. 

One of my friends has a particular obsession with the phrase "by definition" as most times things aren't at all and the occasions in normal speech where you can legitimately say "by definition" are pretty rare. For example, all professional footballers are by definition sportsmen. They are not by definition rich or stupid although apparently most are. Another friend is regularly driven to the point of tearful frustration by the widespread misuse of the word irony for things that aren't. In defence of the rest of us, the precise meaning of irony is not widely known and it is commonly used incorrectly.  As has been endlessly discussed elsewhere, all of the situations described in the famous Alanis Morrisette's song about irony are actually only coincidences at best.

Some countries care about preserving their language in a steady state more than the English do and the French try to preserve the purity of their language with the snappily titled Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), generally known as the Francophonie. This no doubt august body has the ambitious but seemingly contradictory objectives of "promoting French language and cultural and linguistic diversity". Presumably "linguistic diversity" means within the narrow confines of speaking nothing but classical French.

There is a more extreme version of this so called linguistic purism in Icelandic where there is an active and apparently popular movement that insists that nasty Jonny foreigner loan words are substituted with the creation of new words from presumably superior Old Icelandic and Old Norse roots. A sort of anti immigration party but for words not people. So in Icelandic a computer is called a t?lva. This is a conjunction of two words, tala and v?lva. Tala means number and v?lva is a witch or female fortune teller. So a computer is "a female number witch" which to your average Icelander at least is obviously a much better choice of phrase. 

Ironically (I think it's ironic but like Alanis I'm not sure if it really is) this advocacy of "Hyper-Icelandic" was started by Jozef Braekmans who surprisingly in this context was born in Belgium. No I don’t know why he bothers either but he does and Wikipedia tells me his efforts are "fully supported by the Icelandic government through various means including the Ã¡rni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, the Icelandic Language Council, the Icelandic Language Fund and even an Icelandic Language Day". Which sounds like a fun day out. Maybe bring some sandwiches. And a pie.

This whole movement of linguistic conservatism of course begs the bigger question of why anybody cares about the evolution of words and new foreign words entering their national vocabulary. Language is a living breathing thing and constantly changes. According to the Authors of the Oxford English Dictionary about 2,000 new words or senses are added each year so no doubt one day my grandchildren will be bemoaning how people are now using textspeak the wrong way or nobody says emoji in the right context anymore.

Maybe this yearning to preserve the language in aspic is a symptom of something more profound that affects (note it's affects not effects) middle aged men like me and our cheerful but possibly somewhat misguided Belgium friend Jozef. Maybe we care about the correct use of words because their evolution is a symptom of time going past us. Maybe I cling to the old meaning of the word literally because I am increasingly aware of my own mortality and want time to slow down. My teenage daughter doesn’t because she isn’t so she doesn’t.

However irrespective of whether this is just dreary pedantry or a symptom of something more profound, the correct use of words does still seem to matter in corporate life. We judge people not by what they say but also by how well they say it. For example, only last week when President Donald Trump said to an audience of senior CIA officials "Am I an intellectual? trust me, I’m like a smart person.”, his inappropriate use of the word “like" as a filler word signaled to pretty much everybody in the room that he probably wasn’t.

As well as public speaking, this stuff matters even more in written communication. So much of the initial contact between parties in business life happens via e mail and social media that spelling mistakes, sloppy use of language and age inappropriate adaptation of teen speak looks at best particularly amateurish and at worst implies you are maybe not the best qualified person to be the US president.

So in conclusion, like an Old Japanese soldier on a small deserted Pacific island I am going to keep on fighting my lonely war against the modern use of the word literally even though the tide in this war has long since turned. In the same vein, my friends will keep going on their own little islands with their own singular campaigns against the incorrect use of irony, like and by definition. We know its futile but we think it matters, maybe for deeper reasons than we care to admit and in corporate life it probably does.