{"id":34804,"date":"2015-07-24T09:32:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T08:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=34804"},"modified":"2015-08-11T08:43:51","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T07:43:51","slug":"neville-goodman-literally-a-metaphor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/07\/24\/neville-goodman-literally-a-metaphor\/","title":{"rendered":"Neville Goodman&#8217;s metaphor watch: Literally a metaphor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/02\/neville_goodman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-33270\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2015\/02\/neville_goodman-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"neville_goodman\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We use metaphor, a figure of speech, to explain or enliven: in doing so we write metaphorically, or figuratively. The opposite of <em>metaphorically<\/em> is <em>literally<\/em>. We don\u2019t need to add <em>metaphorically<\/em> to a metaphorical statement; we rely on readers to recognise the metaphor: \u201cDoctors\u2019 morale has hit rock bottom,\u201d not, \u201cMetaphorically, doctors\u2019 morale has hit rock bottom.\u201d But oddly, we sometimes feel the need to add <em>literally<\/em> to bolster metaphorical statements: \u201cDoctors\u2019 morale has literally hit rock bottom.\u201d This use of <em>literally<\/em> has long been discouraged in style guides\u2014for good reason. Long before Michael Gove MP issued <a href=\"http:\/\/uk.businessinsider.com\/british-ministry-of-justice-michael-gove-strict-grammar-rules-2015-6?op=1?r=US\">his advice<\/a> to civil servants, the Treasury invited Sir Ernest Gowers to help them to improve official English. The result was <em>The Complete Plain Words<\/em> (which combined two of Gowers\u2019 earlier works), published in 1954 and recently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/books\/plain-words\/9780241960349\/\">revised and updated<\/a> by his great-granddaughter. Parts of Gowers\u2019 original works are on the internet, where you can read his examples of this \u201cfoolish use\u201d of <em>literally<\/em>: \u201cMiss X literally wiped the floor with her opponent,\u201d and, \u201cM. Clemenceau literally exploded during the argument.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.penguin.co.uk\/books\/troublesome-words\/9780241974544\/\">Bill Bryson<\/a> advises that <em>literally<\/em> be used only when something expected to be metaphorical is actually true: his example is, \u201cHe literally died laughing.\u201d If he really did.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>There are a fair number of <em>literallys<\/em> in PubMed, and most of them are not needed. It is enough to write that recognising type I diabetes in children can be life-saving, that there are hundreds of fungicidal polypeptides, and that the purpose of a shortening osteotomy is to shorten the bone: <em>literally<\/em> has no place in any of those statements.<\/p>\n<p><em>Literally<\/em> is appropriate in describing autophagy (which allows the recycling of cellular components) as \u201cliterally self-eating,\u201d and almost correct in describing interviews as being \u201ctranscribed literally:\u201d\u00a0<em>word-for-word<\/em> or <em>verbatim<\/em> is better. It is certainly correct\u2014in the Bryson sense\u2014in an obituary of a man who \u201cpenned\u2014literally, since he never used a keyboard\u2014and edited more than 30 books\u2026\u201d I can\u2019t think what <em>literally<\/em> means in \u201crandomly selected, literally healthy subjects, of similar age\u2026,\u201d but suspect it is the common problem of words subtly changing their meanings because of incorrect use by writers for whom English is an additional language.<\/p>\n<p><em>Literally<\/em> is most appropriate in the considerable body of research into the comprehension of metaphors. Anyone can have problems interpreting metaphors in another language, but patients suffering from some psychiatric or neurological illnesses have difficulties in their own language. There are studies of how the normal brain responds to different figures of speech and to the implied meaning of the speaker. To give a flavour of cognitive pragmatics, as the field of study is known, participants in one study, using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/21333979\">functional MRI<\/a>, were presented with four pairs of target sentences that were metaphor versus literally coherent, metaphor versus literally incoherent, sarcasm versus literally coherent, and sarcasm versus literally incoherent.<\/p>\n<p>We have known for decades that there are cells in the occipital cortex that detect edges moving in a particular direction. Perhaps there are also cells that detect inappropriate metaphor used sarcastically in a literally incoherent sentence.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong> I have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that my only competing interest is my co-authorship of a book about medical English.<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n<em><strong>Neville Goodman<\/strong> is a retired consultant anaesthetist and a writer, and co-author of a book on medical English.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We use metaphor, a figure of speech, to explain or enliven: in doing so we write metaphorically, or figuratively. The opposite of metaphorically is literally. We don\u2019t need to add [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/07\/24\/neville-goodman-literally-a-metaphor\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5763],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphor-watch"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Neville Goodman&#039;s metaphor watch: Literally a metaphor - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2015\/07\/24\/neville-goodman-literally-a-metaphor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Neville Goodman&#039;s metaphor watch: Literally a metaphor - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We use metaphor, a figure of speech, to explain or enliven: in doing so we write metaphorically, or figuratively. 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