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It's called hyperbole. Everyone knows what those words literally mean, which is why using them figuratively creates emphasis. It's not a lack of verbal skills, in fact it takes verbal skills to be able to encode and decode the hyperbole.
It may be called hyperbole, but it isn't. Look at how it works
Contrast the example from up thread
with this alternative
It doesn't work as emphasis because "annoyed" is not itself hyperbole so asserting the literal truth of it falls flat. Had one written hyperbolically
then one can add shock value with literally, until your listener realizes that you are piling hyperbole on top of hyperbole, literally double hyperbole. Eventually listeners identify the figurative use of the word "literally" as a double hyperbole. Then they think the figurative use is like telling a joke, and then when nobody laughs, repeating it, but louder.
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The problem is that hyperbole can eat a word. It ate "very", "truly" and "really". All of those words originally meant "this is not hyperbole; this happened in reality" - look at the etymology. Rampant hyperbole destroyed that meaning, and now the hyperbolic meaning is considered the normal one. Now we have to use three syllables if we want to indicate a lack of hyperbole - "actually" or "literally". If we lose those, we'll have to use more than three.
We need a word of reasonable length to signify "I am on simulacrum level 1; this is truth"; this is a very-important concept. Hyperbole, ironically, has a strong tendency to eat such words. The only viable solution seems to be exactly the kind of opprobrium that you're decrying; shame people for using these words as hyperbole.
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