it gets used in an information-free way sufficiently often that I’m tempted to just always shelve it there, and that in turn leads me to discount or even ignore the entire thought which contained it.
This seems like a broader concern, and one worth addressing. People drop content-free words into their speech/writing all the time, either as filler or as “leftovers” from precursor sentences.
What happens if you treat it as an empty modifier, like “really” or “totally”?
Leaving aside the fact that, by default, I don’t consider “totally” to be content-free (I’m aware a lot of people use it that way, but I still often need to consciously discard the word when I encounter it), that still seems like at best it only works when used as a modifier. It doesn’t help if somebody is actually talking about metaphysics. I’ll keep it in mind as a backup option, though; “if I can’t process that sentence when I include all the words they said, and one of them is ‘metaphysical’, what happens if I drop that word?”
This seems like a broader concern, and one worth addressing. People drop content-free words into their speech/writing all the time, either as filler or as “leftovers” from precursor sentences.
What happens if you treat it as an empty modifier, like “really” or “totally”?
Leaving aside the fact that, by default, I don’t consider “totally” to be content-free (I’m aware a lot of people use it that way, but I still often need to consciously discard the word when I encounter it), that still seems like at best it only works when used as a modifier. It doesn’t help if somebody is actually talking about metaphysics. I’ll keep it in mind as a backup option, though; “if I can’t process that sentence when I include all the words they said, and one of them is ‘metaphysical’, what happens if I drop that word?”