Analysis Of Have We Literally Broken The English Language By Martha Gill
In the article, “Have we literally broken the English Language? ”, the author Martha Gill depicts a fact that the word “literally” has changed its semantic meaning from literally to figuratively. Gill’s perspective that people need to “avoid [the word “literally”] completely” indicates her prescriptive attitude towards the word’s meaning change since she focuses on correcting the rules how people should use a word.
At first sight, prescriptivism emphasizes that people should follow rules learnt consciously in school to speak and write a language. At the beginning of the article, Gill provides the definition of the word “literally” based on Google to show that many words have developed their original meanings in recent days. At the same time, she also shows a negative manner towards this change and believes that “[people] did not prove that the English language is a beautiful
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Gill presences a pessimistic attitude that the language will be slowly and eventually changed into the one that is no longer beautiful than previous. Indeed, only a prescriptive grammarian would say people should confirms a set of rules to achieve certain grammatical style. On the other hand, the misused word “literally” can be traced back to 1827. “Literally” is used to mean actually or really, whereas it has become “figuratively”, which the statement does not actually happen, from 1800s. Gill states the word “literally” has been “playfully abused since the time of Walter Scott”. The word “abused” she used directly shows her dissatisfaction towards how Walter Scott described the house was electrified using “literally” instead of “figuratively”. Not only Walter Scott misused “literally” but also Abigail and Samuel Whittelsey did. The word “literally” and
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