Examples
Politicians cultivate loaded language, and often study how to use it effectively: which words to use or avoid using to gain political advantage or disparage an opponent. Heller gives the example that it is common for a politician to advocate "investment in public services," because it has a more favorable connotation than "public spending".
One aspect of loaded language is that loaded words and phrases occur in pairs. Heller calls these "a Boo! version and a Hooray! version" to differentiate those with negative and positive emotional connotations. Examples include bureaucrat versus public servant, anti-choice versus pro-Life, regime versus government, and elitist versus expert.
When Kraft Foods invented processed cheese in the early 1900s, traditional cheese makers wanted the new cheese to be labeled "embalmed cheese" by law. The U.S. government considered that term to be disparaging, and required that the product be labeled "process cheese".
Loaded language is often used by news broadcasters as a propaganda technique. During the Falklands War, British reporters were pressured by politicians to use phrases such as "our troops" and "our fleet", but resisted, preferring "the British fleet" and "the Royal Navy task force". This was done because domestic broadcast television and radio channels were received by people in other countries; reporters deemed it important that their news reports were considered to be credible and trustworthy by this external audience. Hence they avoided such language.
Following the September 11 attacks, the word madrassa, (which means "school" in Arabic) was loaded with negative connotations by Westerners who did not speak Arabic and failed to make the distinction between strictly religious Islamic schools and schools that teach primary education subjects. The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization examined bias in U.S. newspaper coverage of Pakistan since the September 11 attacks. They found the term had acquired a loaded political meaning:
When articles mentioned "madrassas", readers were led to infer that all schools so-named are anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist centers having less to do with teaching basic literacy and more to do with political indoctrination.
Some U.S. public figures have used the word madrassa in a negative context, including Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell.
Read more about this topic: Loaded Language
Famous quotes containing the word examples:
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)