Literally (or not)? A corpus-based diachronic study of the usualisation of non-literal employments of literally in American English

Abstract

The adverb literally was originally used to express “literal, exact, or actual sense,” yet it also acquired figurative meaning, resulting in uses that appear to reverse its original sense (Oxford English Dictionary s.v. literally, adv.). In previous research (Aijmer 2023; Calhoun 2015; Israel 2002; Park 2016), this development has primarily been analysed as an example of grammaticalisation with a focus on the outcome of the change (i.e. literally adopting an intensifying function). As a result, the underlying usage-based dynamics of literally’s development have received less attention. This paper examines the extent to which Schmid’s (2015, 2020, 2023) Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (EC-Model) can be used to conceptualise these dynamics. Drawing on the model’s notion of usualisation, this study maps the development of literally along the subprocesses of symbolisation, contextualisation, and syntagmaticalisation based on data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings indicate increasing absolute and relative frequencies of non-literal uses of literally, genre-specific variation and changing syntagmatic environments. These developments reflect the three subprocesses of the EC-Model and emphasise its capability to conceptualise grammaticalisation within a multidimensional and coherent theoretical framework.