{"id":460,"date":"2013-11-14T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T10:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=460"},"modified":"2013-11-14T11:09:07","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T10:09:07","slug":"the-impossibility-of-being-literal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=460","title":{"rendered":"The impossibility of being literal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>It is literally impossible to be literal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>I know what you\u2019re thinking. <\/span><span>Literal<\/span><span> is the word we use when we mean exactly what we say, and <\/span><span>metaphorical <\/span><span>or <\/span><span>figurative<\/span><span> is what we say when we\u2019re playing around. When we\u2019re being figurative, we say \u201cit was a million miles away\u201d, meaning \u201cI walked for hours.\u201d When we\u2019re being literal, a million miles away is somewhere between the moon and Mars.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>Now Johnson is on the record as supporting the traditional distinction between literal and metaphorical. When Joe Biden, the vice-president of the United States, says that Republicans \u201cran the economy and the middle class literally into the ground\u201d, or Lindsey Graham, an American senator, talks of \u201cliterally turning nuclear swords into ploughshares\u201d, it grates on the ears. <\/span><span>Even though great authors have been \u201cmisusing\u201d literally for centuries (watch this <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ai_VHZq_7eU&amp;noredirect=1\"><span>short video<\/span><\/a><span>), Johnson still prefers its \u201cI really mean it\u201d meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span>But as it turns out, it is not so easy to distinguish between literal and metaphorical. To start with the easy one:&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/prospero\/2013\/11\/metaphors?fsrc=rss\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<p>from Prospero http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/prospero\/2013\/11\/metaphors?fsrc=rss<br \/>\nvia <a href=\"https:\/\/ifttt.com\/?ref=da&#038;site=wordpress\">IFTTT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is literally impossible to be literal. I know what you\u2019re thinking. Literal is the word we use when we mean exactly what we say, and metaphorical or figurative is what we say when we\u2019re playing around. When we\u2019re being figurative, we say \u201cit was a million miles away\u201d, meaning \u201cI walked for hours.\u201d When [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,56],"tags":[84],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}