Sink your head underwater

On a summer's day in the empty pool
Swing your arms and legs and all
Wonder at the sea of sparkling ripples
beneath and above

Sink your head underwater
Cast aside those goggles
Close your eyes, your eyelids little dams of tears,
Hear the whispers of the waves beckoning:
Come, flow with us

Hoist your head up
Look at the sky

Sink your head in the blue expanse
below, above;
in the blue expanse that is
yourself.

Uncountability

"I don't have much friends," a friend remarked sometime ago on Facebook. The grammar Nazi in me almost jumped at the incorrect quantifier, but I held back and pondered a little.

When you think about it, his quantifier there makes very much sense. Friends are uncountable. You value some like treasures; some are just plain bad company.  

And this is especially true in the context of social networking. It doesn't matter how many Facebook friends you have; it does matter how much.

Toxic

If you think the only people who care about metaphorical-to-literal transcendence are pedantic linguists like yours truly, then you are mistaken.

It is important to be aware that metaphors are woven to the very fabric of language itself, and affect its dynamism.

Take toxin, a relatively modern concept due to the advance in medicine. If you trace the etymology, it comes from Ancient Greek word toxikos (τοξικός), which "[pertains] to arrows or archery". The concept of toxin being deadly and fast-acting is then borrowed from arrows: toxin is a metaphor.

Consider how toxin now has transcended its metaphorical husk, flapping wings, gliding gracefully on the literal plane, landing on the minds unaware that it is a denizen of the otherworld.

Literally

There has been some commotion regarding the use 'literally' a general intensifier, basically just a substitute of 'very'. Language Log has a post with links to older posts and xkcd, here.

My initial reaction was, you guess it, lamenting of the disrepaired state of ignorance concerning semantics nowadays, and left it at that. 

Recently when I came across another usage, I reconsidered my stand. Perhaps 'literally' here could just be another case of metaphorical-to-literal transcendence. The purpose of this device is, I repeat, to confuse the literal and metaphorical planes; one is transcended to the other, so as to deliver impact. Very similar to the effect of hyperbole: we know it's just an exaggeration, yet the impact is still there.

Put in another way, 'literally' here is to be interpreted metaphorically, so that the act of transcending the metaphorical plane to the literal plane, the act itself exists on another metaphorical plane altogether.

So there you have it. You may employ 'literally' as a general intensifier. It's just, if you don't think about why you may, that is pure ignorance.