All language can be weaponized, indeed. However, Postmodernism did add an effective tool to the arsenal, which is to insist that you get to redefine the terms your opponent is using to suit your whims, and (watch the "and" here, it's important) it smeared a patina of academic correctness over that process. (Yes, it has happened since time immemorial, I'm sure, but the intellectual traditions of the past several centuries would at least have rejected it.) Intellectuals now considered this not only legitimate, but a desirable method of argument. They put fancy terms around this process like "deconstruction", but "redefinition" is really at the core. And some really sophisticated "redefinition" it is, to, as befits "intellectuals", that includes the ability not only to redefine the things your opponent said, but also to redefine the things they didn't say.
Nobody's argument can survive a "deconstruction". I don't just mean, nobody can convince anyone in the presence of deconstruction, I mean, the argument itself can not survive.
True. But chipsy has a point too, because "post-structural theory"/feminism/"social justice" seems to go verbally nuclear more readily than other movements do.
I think it comes from post-structuralism. Words lose their meaning in post-structuralism. All discourse is about power, not truth, because truth is not possible to determine, even in principle. So these people are not interested in having a reasonable conversation. They don't think it's even possible to have one. They're interested in winning the battle of words, and only that, because they think that that's what all conversation is.
Nobody's argument can survive a "deconstruction". I don't just mean, nobody can convince anyone in the presence of deconstruction, I mean, the argument itself can not survive.