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You see, I would argue that the facetious use of "literally" is not changing the definition of the word. When someone is saying "Ohh my God, my head literally exploded!" the use of "literally" is not meant to be taken literally. It's intended to add on an additional layer of exaggeration atop a ludicrous situation. The reason people say it is to make a joke. People aren't literally going out and using literally to mean figuratively. If literally meant figuratively, it wouldn't be used to express exaggeration in a joking manner.

>Allowing "begs the question" doesn't degrade the expressiveness and utility of the language, it improves it. This is unlike, for example, the misuse of "literally" (which results in there being no easy way to indicate that a statement should not be interpreted figuratively).

Then it's kinda strange that the very same people who are promoting this non-prescriptivism are also rolling their eyes at the "literally-misuse-objectors" and dismissing their complains as baseless for the same reason.

I basically agree with you, except I don't think there are many cases where the usage of "literally" makes the meaning ambiguous. It should be clear whether someone's head literally exploded (are we having a conversation about an industrial accident, or is a person simply becoming angry?). I treat "literally" and "literally" as two words that are spelled the same but have different meanings.

Yes, usually you can tell. But the times you can't are very annoying. As a writer, you can be forced into awkward circumlocutions to avoid ambiguity.

Her head literally exploded at the idea his head actually exploded.

It does degrade the expressiveness and utility of the language, because when someone says "begs the question" you have to guess at what they find objectionable about the argument. And you can't use the term yourself without the risk of ambiguity (which is sad, because it's a short pithy phrase that refers to a concept that requires a lot more words to describe).

The colloquial usage doesn't erase the technical usage. They can coexist. I dare you to construct a normal sentence in which the particular usage of "begs the question" is not entirely clear from context.

(This, by the way, is my personal test for whether a language rule is useful or not.)

> I dare you to construct a normal sentence in which the particular usage of "begs the question" is not completely clear from context.

I'd say that in every case that it is used in its classical sense when heard by person who uses it to mean "raises the question." Using "begs the question" that way is an actual mistake. One can have only heard "begs the question" used properly, but if you weren't familiar with the phrase, easily and understandably take it to mean "a question is begging to be asked", then go on to use it incorrectly.

Using the phrase "begs the question" incorrectly is probably only an hour younger than the phrase itself. Correcting someone about it without completely explaining its actual meaning (because you'd have to, at the least, explain the difference between formal and informal fallacies) is about a minute younger than that.

It's hard to make a case for it being language evolution if the incorrect usage is as old as the correct usage, and isn't growing any more than proportionally with it.

People being upset about being corrected about it isn't new either. People who use it correctly will continue to use it correctly, and people who use it incorrectly will use it correctly after they learn formal fallacies and can't think of a better, pithier way to describe that particular one.

Using it incorrectly, of course, is a sin akin to using an eggcorn (http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/) : everybody has misheard or misunderstood many things, and then misuses them. The problem with finding them is that one has to use them in a conversation with someone nice enough or brave enough to correct one.

>One can have only heard "begs the question" used properly, but if you weren't familiar with the phrase, easily and understandably take it to mean "a question is begging to be asked", then go on to use it incorrectly.

I'm not saying this is impossible, but I don't find it convincing. The formal usage is something that a person does, and is usually the end of a statement. ("You're begging the question.") The colloquial (not "incorrect") usage is something that a situation does. It is nearly always rendered in the third-person present tense and directly followed by the question it is introducing. ("Well, that begs the question: what do we do about it?").

I don't see how somebody could hear only the first version, and end up saying only the second version. I can see how someone could be confused the first time they hear the first version (i.e., "Wait, what question is he referring to?") and would need to have the term defined for them. But that's pretty much the definition of "jargon".

That's the problem--you have to look to the context (the other person's argument) to figure out what "begs the question" means. That may be burdensome if, e.g., you're writing to someone about the flaws in a third person's argument.

I recently encountered a sentence where "begs the question" was accurate in both interpretations...

Well, generally, "begs the question" is prepended with an exact expression of what they find objectionable, so that seems like a moot point. There are, however, two ways the term is used, one of which is a reasonable stretching, and the other which is "wrong" (in the sense of being an unrelated meaning):

- "Assuming something big enough to obviate the question": e.g. "They said the searches were legal because they were limited to what was absolutely, but that just begs the question: what are they counting as necessary?"

- "Raises the question": this can be an case of the previous, but it can also be something like "They said the searches were legal, which begs the question of how often law enforcement is conducting searches under those criteria."

I think a better example of the point you're making is what the GP said about "literally" -- it's extremely useful to have a context-free indicator (just like e.g. specialized legal, military, or EMS jargon) that allows the listener not to have to guess. Using it as a generic intensifier then forces listener to guess when the whole point of such a word is to avoid that.

Even if "literally" is a lost cause, people should still coordinate on some word, but that doesn't work if they keep pushing each one down the intensifier treadmill.

You're grasping. Let's be honest, nobody is actually confused about what meaning is intended. If it was really as ambiguous a phrase as you're claiming, it wouldn't have gained as much traction as it has.

"literally, not figuratively" might do the trick

Sure, until people start saying "My eyeballs were literally, not figuratively on fire" as an intensifier, and then insist that anyone who doesn't like that is just a fuddy-duddy who doesn't "get" linguistics.