Figuratively Literal

I've written before about biblical literalism and the confusion surrounding it, so I was pleased to read Dennis Baron's essay, "A Literal Paradox", in his collection Declining Grammar (Urbana, 1989). He begins with the text from a New Yorker cartoon of February 28, 1977:Confound it, Hawkins, when I said I meant that literally, that was just a figure of speech!I'd already noticed that many people