When antonyms are, literally, synonyms

I normally do not post two entries on one day. Well, for that matter, I normally do not post -- if that means publishing more than 182.62 submissions per year. But today is a Friday, and so I make an exception.

Gene Weingarten has a playful but pointed column in The Washington Post about the, to his sense and mine, dangerous demise of the English language, or the culture in which it is employed: "Weighing in on 'literally,' but figuratively, of course." (And if you want background, try this article last month from the UK's Daily Mail.)

Now Weingarten thinks that it is absurd when words are redefined to mean the same thing as their opposites. I am the one who thinks it dangerous when literal means figurative.

Whether words refer to reality (so Augustine), or whether they have meaning in connection with the real activities, or forms of life, into which they are woven (so Wittgenstein), or whether it is some combination of the two, this much is clear. The plasticity that allows a word meaning X simultaneously to mean not-X reflects something significant -- and troubling -- from an Augustinian or Wittgensteinian perspective. Why? Because it signals how confused and confusing is the reality in which we live (Augustine), or the activities and forms of life that contemporary culture takes (Wittgenstein), or both.

Maybe the closest approximation I can think of to this plasticity is the explanation of "fuhgeddaboudit" in Donnie Brasco. In fact, this scene is not merely amusing but actually illustrates the point. Donnie's world, living simultaneously as a law enforcer and as a mobster, was psychologically confusing and his life confused. Ultimately, Donnie could not handle the tension, his personality was changing, his marriage was dissolving, and he could no longer play the part of both at the same time. This example of semantic confusion (and contradiction) could be broadly instructive -- for words, people, and social institutions.