Literally

They do it to upset you.

Because it contains fewer syllables than 'legitimately'

All the people assuming it's a recent thing in this thread are dumb. Joyce uses it in exactly the same way at the beginning of The Dead. It's been used that way for at least a century.

>be shitfuck millenial generation
>scan through the entire lexicon for a word to use incorrectly because haha fuck culture
>choose THE ONE word that if you made it mean its opposite it completely loses its meaning as a word and propels language the furthest along into hyperbolic meaninglessness

yeah thanks you fucking imbecilic 'sit down with a friend at starbucks and both be texting instead of talking to each other' shitty children. Also how self-awereness must you lack to not hear how many times you insert "like" into your sentences? How is that not obviously understood as annoying to the listener? What if i just smacked my lips every three words?

how much*

>propels language the furthest along into hyperbolic meaninglessness
Do you really think that we're on the path to a grunt and hoot based society? I'm pretty sure linguistic regression is a meme

>lit
>bet
>senpai
>on god

The shit I hear on a daily basis makes my skin crawl.

You should try going out of your basement and talking to actual people IRL.

You sound like one of them grumpy people from the Middle Ages complaining how language is degenerating. I wish I could find that snippet

I get nostalgic from the entire "wrong" and "next" type of replies. It reminds me of 06-08 internet atheism.

not who you responded to, but young people talk like they've just been hit in the head with a shovel a minute ago and are still trying regain their mental balance, at least 90% that I overhear/encounter.

>language changes

woah

two different posters

>cannot conceive that certain cultural trends can have negative effects

Cuz all change is just neutral amirite?

Ok, my bad, same shit however.

Are you a Whorfian?

>Whorfian
Had to look that up: "our perception of reality is determined by our thought processes, which are influenced by the language we use."

It seems I am

Well no linguist takes that theory serious. Why not stick with being a language purist?

90% of everyone in the history of humanity has sounded like (and likely have been) idiots

Why should I care if a linguist takes that seriously or not? The notion that thought influences our perception of reality is a fairly standard concept among eastern thinking/religion/mysticism, one of which I happen to agree with. Maybe those linguists need to broaden their fields of interest and learn a thing or two.

Hm. Fair enough.

Ok fair enough desu senpai

IMO, whorfianism is discredited because people try to make dumb superficial claims based on the principle (like genderless languages should be more sexually egalitarian) and then those superficial claims are easily disproved. I haven't found any research/theory about it on a more fundamental level

Awesome
Radical
Terrific
Amazing

We tend toward hyperbole in our common speech as a way of spicing our expressions, making them more flavorful, and of ironizing our attitudes and emotional states, which is necessary in navigating uneven social terrain.

*societies using genderless labguages

If I remember correctly being a soft Whorfian as opposed to being a hard Whorfian is fine

I'd say rather that The tendency toward hyperbole is a product of modern life and its hyper-stimulation of the senses, the desensitization of the senses, and the need for ever more and more 'intense' forms of description to compensate for our growing lack of sensitivity to our environment.

>Wrong
woosh

literally posting in a literally thread

I agree to an extent, but I think this idea fits too easily into a ready-made, monolithic narrative of 'modern consciousness', and I'm very skeptical that it's a particularly recent trend in usage.

also literally a retard

>monolithic narrative
There are many different ways to describe what is happening, obviously, that is just one way of putting it. I don't claim any monolithic narrative. If you're worried about generalizations, then we shouldn't be talking about general ideas like "society" or "humanity" or "modern" to begin with.

Because it is easy to exaggerate with a word that allows for intense exaggeration.

>not putting "figuratively" in all literal stories
>He was figuratively killed.

>He was figuratively killed
wew
>"But mommy, where is daddy?"
>"We figuratively buried him 20 ft beneath the surface in the garden behind out house last night"

I think a lot of those people who use "like" "literally "anyways" (its anyway, its already plural) lack any self-awareness and just like to hear themselves speak.

I've got a friend who has a degree in ((communications)) but can't go a sentence without "uhm, uhh and like" to describe basic concepts/things.

I hate people like you.
Autists with no idea what the differences are between vernacular and formal language, with a massive misplaced superiority complex, and with a le-wrong-generation blindness to the entirety of human history.

I have no qualms with vernacular and colloquial speech, nor even ebonics. I mean the literal sound, as in the intonation, as well as the content. Roller coaster intonation, heaps of unnecessary words. I get it I'm being judgemental. It's annoying to have to hear it anytime I leave the house though. I'd prefer to hear people talk with some degree of awareness and integrity. I am despairing of our condition more than I am getting some kind of kick out of feeling superior.

Wrong

Listen, people like talking but generally have nothing to talk about. Its been that way for a while now. This has nothing to do with recent history.

See, I don't believe you. I don't think people had as little to say about life as they do now. I think we're especially vapid, thanks to the movement of life away from participation in vital physical community into the real of the passive consumption of non-participative entertainment.

People have always been gossipy and talk about whatever but there is an especially empty quality about modern speech that miraculously manages to be that much more vacant.

* in vital physical community into the unreality of

...

what is this from? and fug you for making me tilt my head for 2 minutes

Because 'literally' is the strongest exaggeration of something figurative you can get.

TC Lethbridge, huh? Thanks, user, very relevant to my interests

This thread is literally retarded

why do most people use "really" for emphasis and not for real situations?

The Magic Mountain, translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter.

>Lethbridge

Never heard of him. What a name. Has to be an affectation, given his interests. Also relevant to mine, so thank you for mentioning him.