I tend to live more on the creative-direction and art-direction side of things, but I do my fair share of copy-writing as well. In writing, I have developed a love/hate relationship with the rate at which the English language evolves. Being that English at its core is just a conglomerate of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and just about anything else you can throw on the table, American English is one of the most mishmashed and fastest evolving languages in the world. We have gone as far as to believe that our current speech and common usage transcends all historical usage. Instead of understanding words referenced in our history (understanding what they mean and using them correctly) we function on a vague notion of the meaning and expect people to understand and adapt to our usage. I could easily use the whole world of meaningless marketing jargon is a testament to this.
In many ways this can be a good thing—allowing words to bend but not break, and providing a greater gamut of self-expression within common language. Other times, it just goes too far. I have heard individuals misuse the word "literally" for some time now. I am pretty sure all (or a least the vast majority) of those people know the
literal definition of the word, but instead use it as a filler word or to sound smarter. I believe this stems from a lack of confidence in our lingual abilities. As writers and speakers we feel that hyperbole is necessary to communicate a strong point. "Literally" is one of the best examples of this trend that I have seen on the last few years. It is becoming a word that loses all meaning because of misuse—not unlike a loud pre-teen's use of "like," "such-as," "hashtag," and "totally."
In very informal friendly speech this does not bother most people (myself included) It is when our laziness and need for exaggerated conversation actually changes our vocabulary and dictionary that we should reflect. Recently, Google, Mirriam-Webster, and Cambridge dictionaries have all changed their definitions of the word "literally" to include something along the lines of "not actually true, but used for emotional expression or exaggeration." With this definition, we have created the first English word that can be used as its own antonym. We are creating words that can effectively have no meaning. Our use of these worlds is for drama alone—coloring our message, but not actually contributing to our communication. This reminds me of the old "form-versus-function" debate common in architecture and design. I am a believer that both form and function can and should be utilized for effective communication, both visual and lingual. If you feel a need to include a "flavor" word that doesn't actually have a relevant meaning, then try to avoid it.
Below is the link to the CNN story about the dictionary change and the new adapted use of the word "literally." Please comment on my page and let me know if you think this is as crazy as I do.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/living/literally-definition
