Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Totally out of topic, but I highly recommend it ... (Not technically a spoiler) I really liked the parallel betweens the bad guys' language, which was manipulative to the extreme, and the good guys' language, which was of course less extreme but still contained deceiving vocabulary (i.e. Babel 17 is critiqued because the good guys are called "who are invading", yet the bad guys are themselves called "invaders" in English ...)


People who go to live in other countries are called expats, people coming to live in your country are called immigrants


It's a shame about the downvotes, because that's a perfect example of loaded language which imposes a conceptual frame for both speaker and listener.

It's not an abstract point. It has very real consequences because it's supposed to - and does - trigger expected emotions and behaviours.

PR consultants, politicians, lawyers, ad copy writers, and others who use rhetoric professionally use this kind of loading very deliberately.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: