They activate different neural pathways? Might not apply to you but it probably applies to others. At least that's what GP believes, and I find it plausible too.
That may be true for people seeing the censored for the first time. But then it just becomes a double speak theater.
Sort of like illegal vs undocumented migrants. First time you hear, it may pass in different ways. But once you realize what’s the topic, people on both sides will read both words the same way. And both in their own ways. It just becomes a kind of virtue signaling after few uses.
> Sort of like illegal vs undocumented migrants. First time you hear, it may pass in different ways. But once you realize what’s the topic, people on both sides will read both words the same way. And both in their own ways. It just becomes a kind of virtue signaling after few uses.
People who study these things, including persuasive public communication, have a very different opinion. So do writers of every stripe, from technical writers to poets. The words we use matter.
For example, the sides in the abortion debate call themselves 'pro choice' and 'pro life', and call their opponents negative things. Goverments have long called targets who challenge the status quo, especially voilently, 'terrorists', even though their tactics may have nothing to do with terrorism. Political actors invest lots of money and work in finding the most effective words.
There's a difference between 'slaves' or 'colleteral damage', creatures or objects that play a role in someone else's actions, and 'enslaved people' or 'enslaved men and women' or 'people who were killed by the bomb', who are real humans caught up on something awful.
People use pejoritives for the same reason - for example, 'wetbacks' or 'illegals' for undocumented people, all sorts of names for enemies in warfare, etc.
I’m yet to see someone who switched camps because of pro life or undocumented wording. On the other hand, all sides seem to make lots of fun of the other side wording and make jokes out of that. Or use exact wording as pejorative.
Wording may make difference in marketing for on-the-spot decisions. But in the long run, when people take a deeper look, wording seems to not make a difference.
You see people in one camp making fun of it - the reactionary camp, whose purpose is to destroy 'liberalism' in any form. Of course they attack it.
Should everyone else just quit because someone is attacking? If someone attacks everything you do and say, does it mean anything substantively, or is it just a signal to their comrades?
Sort of like illegal vs undocumented migrants. First time you hear, it may pass in different ways. But once you realize what’s the topic, people on both sides will read both words the same way. And both in their own ways. It just becomes a kind of virtue signaling after few uses.