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From a descriptive point of view, literally is seen as 'a case of semantic change in progress' (Israel, 2002: 424), exemplified through the shift from uses such as This word literally means 'water' to This book literally blew my mind. This process of change has been noticed and commented on by language commentators and usage guide writers. In other words, apart from being a case of change in progress, literally is also a usage problem. Usage problems are 'features of divided usage', or 'instances of usage that have attracted sociolinguistic controversy' (Tieken–Boon van Ostade, 2015: 57; cf. Kostadinova, 2018). The case of the word literally , then, lends itself to an investigation of the relationship between prescriptive approaches to language use typically found in usage guides, and processes of language variation and change, as I will do in this paper. As a crucial aspect to this discussion, I will also address some of the attitudes speakers hold towards the newer uses of literally , as attitudes of speakers can help us better understand why prescriptivism may or may not influence language variation and change. In what follows, I will first discuss the variant uses of literally found in present-day English, and then consider findings on three perspectives on the variation in the use of literally , viz. the 'usage guide' perspective, the 'actual use' perspective and the 'speakers' attitudes' perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having studied attitudes towards usage problems such as the notorious split infinitive or the ubiquitous literally in British English as part of my doctoral thesis, I was intrigued by the sheer lack of scientific studies investigating such attitudes. What was even more intriguing was to discover that the same field and the same usage problems seem to have received a different treatment in the United States of America. While my search for previously conducted usage attitude studies in Great Britain has largely remained fruitless, besides two notable exceptions which I will discuss in detail below (see Section 3), a similar search for American usage attitude studies resulted in a different picture. Considerably more such studies seem to have been conducted in the US than in Great Britain. On top of cultural and linguistic differences between these two nations, it seems as if they also hold different attitudes towards studying attitudes towards usage problems. Now the following question arises: why do we find such contradictory scientific traditions in these two countries? In this paper, I will provide an overview of a selection of American and British usage attitude studies. Taking into account differences between the American and British studies with regard to the number of usage problems studied, the populations surveyed and the methods applied, I will attempt to capture manifestations of two seemingly diverging attitudes towards the study of usage problems. By doing so, I will provide a possible explanation for the lack of attention being paid to usage attitudes in Great Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 'English Usage (Guides) Symposium', Cambridge 2014, I was invited to account for my revision of Plain Words (Gowers, 2014), the style guide originally written by my great-grandfather, Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966). And because, by the time I gave that talk (see Gowers, 2018), I was already writing my own book on the English language, intended as a sort of adjunct to Plain Words , the arguments aired at that Cambridge gathering were particularly interesting to me. That said, they also left me more daunted than ever by my own project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes to English Usage is the title of a book published in 1970 by W. H. Mittins, Mary Salu, Mary Edminson and Sheila Coyne from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne that reported on an enquiry held among some 450 informants concerning the acceptability of 55 usage items. These items had been selected because they were at the time ‘subject to variation in practice and dispute in theory’ (Mittins et al., 1970: 4), and they include sentences like He refused to even think about it, It looked like it will rain and Everyone has their off-days. In each case the offensive feature had been highlighted so that informants would know what they had to comment on: to even think (a split infinitive), the use of like for as if, and of their with a singular antecedent (everyone). For fifty sentences the informants had to indicate acceptability in informal speech, informal writing, formal speech and formal writing, and for the remaining five only for informal and formal writing, since usage of these items was believed to be restricted to writing (1970: 4). The sentences were subsequently ranged from highest general acceptability (did not do as well as) to lowest (veryunique), and correlations were calculated with the occupation of the informants (students, teachers, lecturers, examiners and non-educationists), while the items were also classified as colloquial (pretty reliable), etymological (data is), grammatical (did it quicker) and lexical/semantic (inferred/implied), or as language myths, ‘where the censorious tend to invoke a prescription of dubious authority’ (dangling participles) (1970: 15). The main part of the book dealt with the individual constructions, analysing the reasons for their status as debated usage items and providing further historical context in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If you look through a modern guide to English usage, you will probably find that it has something to say about phrasal verbs. It might be a warning not to use certain phrasal verbs in certain contexts. For example, Allen (2005: 181–90) offers a table of ‘more formal alternatives to those phrasal verbs that can sometimes be too informal for writing’, with suggestions for replacing sum up with conclude and step down with resign, among others. In many cases, it will be a warning about phrasal verbs where the adverbial particle adds little semantic content to the verb: The Chicago Manual of Style advises writers to ‘avoid the phrasal verb if the verb alone conveys essentially the same meaning – e.g. rest up is equivalent to rest’ (2003: 174). It might attribute such usages to American English, as in Evans' (2000: 54–5) comment that phrasal verbs such as win out, stop off and check up on, which ‘grow like toadstools’, are ‘American parasites’. It might be a positive comment, such as Bryson's note that phrasal verbs are ‘one of the most versatile features of English’, but if so, it will probably be qualified: Bryson adds that in many cases the added particles ‘are merely a sign of careless writing’ (Bryson, 2002: 156–7). What is it about phrasal verbs that provokes such comments? By examining grammars, usage books, dictionaries and other materials since the eighteenth century, I will discuss changing attitudes towards phrasal verbs and how they fit into the context of broader opinions about language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the previous issue of English Today, Lukač (2016) discusses the increasingly important role of online language authorities for users of the internet who are looking for usage advice. However, prescriptivism also reaches these users when they are not actively looking for it. They encounter advice in newsfeeds in different social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, and some of them join online groups to discuss usage problems. The standard language ideology seems to have established itself firmly on these new platforms, adapting itself in the process. Articles on usage shared on social media are almost without exception in the form of lists with eye-catching ‘clickbaity’ titles (e.g. ‘7 Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Dumb’), and their most important topics differ strongly from those of traditional prescriptivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]