Nobody has ever used “literally” to mean “figuratively”. That’s a common misconception and/or a strawman from people who want to stick to the original meaning of “literally”.

If that were the meaning, you would be able to say things like “I stubbed my toe and it hurts so bad I’m figuratively dying”, mirroring the colloquial meaning of “literally”. But nobody says this.

The actual new and non-traditional meaning of “literally” is as a generic intensifier, see e.g. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally

Oh, and by the way, the “traditional” meaning isn’t even the first one. According to my OED second edition, “literal” meaning “Of a translation, version, transcript, etc.: Representing the very words of the original; verbally exact.” is only attested since 1599.

The actual original meaning of “literal”: “of or pertaining to letters of the alphabet; of the nature of letters, alphabetical” is attested since 1475.

>> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.

Can we have also declare war on using "exponentially" in place of "significantly"?

> If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct.

In their dialect, sure. In any given dialect, who knows?

Any speaker of a dialect that isn't West Coast American has likely watched actors who live in Los Angeles try, and fail, to speak their dialect.

> If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct.

What if two non-native speakers say something and understand each other?

Although it is a little odd and I'm not certain I've seen it in writing, I have definitely heard constructions like "John will both try and kill mosquitos." to mean, "John will both attempt to and succeed in kill[ing] mosquitos."

"John will both try and like sushi" makes perfect sense, although there's an implied "to eat" verb separate from the "to like" verb in there that isn't present in the constructions the article is talking about.

Likewise, "I tried and finished the assignment," means "I tried (to do) the assignment and I finished it." Again, maybe not in writing, but with a certain inflection on 'tried' (where in writing maybe you'd put a comma or semi-colon to indicate a pause) this is something people actually say; although they may emphasis it with "I finally tried and actually finished the assignment." (Whereas maybe previously they weren't confident they could even do it and maybe didn't try.)

Included for no real reason: "They tried and failed, all of them?" "Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."

> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.

https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7

>Try always and tell the truth

I think the article is incorrect on this though, try always and tell the truth is a perfectly fine albeit slightly anachronistic usage that would mean

Whatever you do you must always try (that is to say not give up), and tell the truth.

One might also assume that you should tell the truth about trying always is the meaning, but at any rate it is not a phrasing that would be out of order a few hundred years ago.

> What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct.

By your own logic, "literally" meaning "figuratively" is grammatically correct. Which just goes to show that your logic is wrong. Something can in fact be grammatically incorrect even when said by native speakers.

Dr Dre is a professional poet and a very successful one by any standard. His whole stock-in-trade was American urban colloquialisms most of which can be traced back to English rural and working class and predate the colonization of the Americas. The early development of English "prestige grammar" and word usage dates back to the court of William the Conqueror and the reintroduction of romance linguistic influence on Anglo-Saxon English that lead to the development of Middle English by the 13th Century. What you understand as English "prestige grammar" today is a moving target, consistently evolving but still full of contradictions and single-case rules. Many popular European languages today have been modified to exclude these linguistic anomalies, making them more consistent, less error prone and easier to learn. I expect the same thing will be done to the English language over the next century.

Irregardless of this, what's your take on irregardless?

Although it doesn't work for mosquitos, it does work for "bandits":

John will both try and kill bandits.

... meaning that John will serve as judge and executioner, if not jury.

In that context, 'literally' as figuratively makes the same sense as inflammable and flammable.

It's just one more errata in a language that's filled with horrible hacks from centuries of iterative development.

My hill to die on would be exactly one way (NOT the funky dictionary way!) of spelling words exactly as they should be pronounced and writing them back similarly.

The hill to die on part of that is they need to start with children, teach them ONLY the correct way of spelling words as use in school and stick to it. While we're at it, FFS, do metric measures conversion the same way. Cold turkey force it, and bleed in dual measures and spelling with a cutover plan that starts to make the new correct way required to be larger text by the time the grade -2 kids graduate. (So about a 14-15 year plan.) That's to give all us adults time to bash into our heads the new spellings for old words too.

Why can't it be dictionary spelling? Offhand, 1) those phonetics aren't used quite like that anywhere else. 2) those phonetics are more strongly based on the other languages in Europe so the structure isn't as expected. I'd sooner force everyone to learn how to write TUNIC's shapes... though there's some coverage issues for that.

Effectively I want different shapes for the chart ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe... ) that DO NOT MATCH EXISTING ENGLISH LETTERS so that when I look at a 'new spelling' my old pronunciation programmed brain doesn't index the wrong lookup table.

> Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".

Many of those languages have mutually unintelligible dialects. The reference implementation exists to patch communication when you run into trouble with people who aren’t from your village.

Even American English has this. People from Appalachia register switch to more standard English when they’re not home, for example. Or a high schooler will tamper their slang when talking to grandma.

You could also argue international business English is a contrived dialect used primarily by ESL speakers. It definitely has many differences from any English spoken natively at home.

I don't think all correction is merely class signaling. Sometimes it's teaching others how to properly class signal, which is slightly less cynical. We all judge others based on the grammatical or spelling errors that others make. At least being aware of them gives you a chance to choose which ones you care about.

>But in 99% of situations no such context exists

Only the ones where your manner of speaking doesn't influence how the recipient thinks of you.

Good luck.

> In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling.

Same is true in the US, though ethnicity is in the mix too. White and black Americans are historically distinct cultural groups which speak different dialects (though obviously, since the end of slavery and segregation the groups are mixing more and more). It is no coincidence that varieties spoken by white people ended up as the “standard”.

I fail to imagine how one could use "try and" in a resume, without actively trying to.

> Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.

Ellipses are properly written as three dots.

Think what you will, but language does not require your permission to change. Modern English will be as alien to our descendants as Shakespearian English is to us.

>when draw speech from a a collection of words, idioms, and grammatical constructions

And who will be the keepers (or should I say gate-keepers) of this glorious collection? And will they prevent Tolkien from spelling plural of dwarf as dwarves? Will they force Cormac McCarthy to use quotation marks?

Well said. Linguistic descriptivism is completely incoherent because it can't actually tell you anything. All a descriptivist can do is say "yep, you sure are using the word that way" which isn't remotely useful or interesting.

> "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster ~when we out speech draws from a a collection of words~, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit.

It’s okay. I still understood you.

Sorry, but you are completely misunderstanding what “descriptivism” means, why it’s the viewpoint taken in serious linguistics, and how common it is there (i.e. absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies language scientifically).