Can “neutral” words be positive or negative?
I’ve been wondering for a long time now if there is an existing term for a rhetorical phenomenon I’ve noticed? Why one word, instead of being used in its literal or etymological sense, is used only to refer to a particular (perhaps “a particular place”) or “good” manifestation of its sense? Are there any jargon involving those words? Let me start with a concrete example. What is a “classy”
or "classical" term, if you want
to be a class member in some way, or practically everything else? And yet, of course, that’s not what those words mean: they refer to things that belong to the “highest” or the superior class, not just any class. What does economic refer to the management of money? , being thrifty (cf. If a “humane” looks like it should refer to any behavior that’s typical of humans, and to people who have a lot of bullying behaviors, it refers only to nice behavior typical of humans (bullies are acting in a very typically human way, yet we don’t call them humane). What does “phenomenon” mean in practical sense, if you have the imagination, then with less, more or less, anything that appears to the senses. Many people say Venus and Serena are so famous, it remains to be seen whether we understand them?
On the “bad” side, a “predicament” used to mean (I quote Webster’s) “a particular state, condition, or situation”, derived from a philosophical term that described any class of things that could be ascribed or “predicated” to another class of things. On another linguistic perspective, it has come to mean only (again I quote) “an unpleasantly difficult, perplexing, or dangerous situation”. What is a “dilemma” or a choice between two things? If you need more context, you will often use one word to describe a difficulty or an unpleasant situation, or even more generally, an unpleasant situation or “predicament”.
There is a family meaning of this kind of semantic shift that seems to me to bear a family resemblance to synecdoche (in this case, using the whole to refer to a part), so my makeshift terms for these two phenomena have been “eusynecdoche” and “dysynecdoche” (i.e. the whole is referred to a part). When do I find a difference between the “good” synecdoche and “bad” synecdoche? What can these terms mean outside of being generally infelicitous? Every example of synecdoche I’ve ever seen (using the word “hand” to refer to a sailor for example) uses a word to replace a whole different word. And this is just taking one limited sense of a word and using it as the only or primary sense.
Where’s a thing called that actually happens, that makes sense? Why?
Much gratitude in advance.
What is semantic shift, for example, described in these examples? The hedging is because articles tend not to clarify whether the old senses have to be considered obsolete for the terms to apply.
The reference of that word in English words. Has it gone up or
down? What is called amelioration. (from Latin melior) Rising status is called amelioration. Consequently, it is called status (the rise of a person). To many people, the word “Knight” has risen in status, because they used to equate “boy” or “manservant” rather than ‘Go Up in
the World”. What are some examples? Note the social unacceptability, or near unacceptability, of poor and cripple, idiot… we have replaced then with underprivileged, disabled, mentally challenged…. ThoughtCo
has an article tracing the amelioration of the word ‘nice’.
What was the first thought when I came to mind for the answer I gave and I started searching for alternatives.
A technique for propaganda, in which words acquire emotional baggage that becomes reinforced with usage.
How can I get loadable examples for using Word in Excel? In
discussion of using loaded language
were mentioned in the books “Baby-Lady” and the “The word Fascism has now no meaning
except in so far as it signifies’something not desirable”. The words in these sentences democracy, socialism, freedom, & patriotic are always being used in other than the one we are using. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. Since everything is democratic, it’s almost universally felt that when we use the term democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is democratic, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it was tied down to any one meaning. What
are some examples of loaded words given by this source: ” “See More Nice Examples and feel good about the word
- “Other
- words”
on the list of loaded words given by this
- source:
- Bureaucrat
- Evolution
- Interesting
- Exploit
- Popular
- Historic
- Inferior
- Superior
- (a
number of examples)
I’ve often seen the following words being intentionally “loaded” with emotional baggage:
- Christian
- American
- Feminism
And many others with political or cultural associations. How can one start putting the example verbal examples to the test?
Is language dangerous? Some of it serves quite the opposite rhetorical purpose: using emotionally charged language to irrationally bestow certain political associations or cultural traits with a sort of exaggerated praise or glory.
So the key to creating the propaganda device of loaded language is in methodically attaching emotional baggage (whether positive or negative) to ordinary language in common usage, for the purpose of causing gradual or eventual social or political change, or even sometimes to instigate outright upheaval. Is it a power ploy?
Of course, loaded language can and often is used in attempts to change individuals as well (rather than groups or whole societies). What is “thepaganda”?
Demotative and Connotative Words Depend on their origins. Whether a term’s usage entails a positive, negative or neutral emotional charge depends upon its context wrap and whoever receives it and how it is interpreted by its recipients. How is semiotics matters said: signal, transmit, receive. Most every modifier word affords with emotional valence potentials, many verbs and nouns, too. The verb, is a powerful form of adjective.
Odd to note that many otherwise neutral phrases might imply sexual topics or allude to intoxication, for examples. Also, “dog whistles” appears superficially innocent and neutral, though are nefarious comments addressed through cognitively coded methods to specific factions of an audience. When the sound of a whistle is low it will become invisible to humans. However, dogs can hear it only with limited frequency. Speaking of valence charged innuendoes as derived from an otherwise neutral denotation. A dysphemism, as opposed to, say, a euphemism.
Synecdoche refers to a whole through one of its parts or of material or of a process. All hands On Deck, contains the synecdoche “hands” that refers to the crew, its laborer extremes. Compare to its congruent figure of speech metonymy: an attribute refers to a whole. Fiery heads take home the prize for a cakewalk in London. He is a nerd, with red head and fiery personality. Typically by way of humor, fiery is a condition most people don’t recognize; it is an addiction.
Are there any similar language groupings referred to as hypernyms and hyponyms, or some classification of words similar to them? Class, classy, classical, classify, classed, etc. , entail some classification similarities and other denotations and connotations thereof are of unrelated classes.
I believe the type of semantic shift involved in the examples given in the original post is subjectification. In this process, the meaning of the word shifts towards a subjective sense from an earlier neutral sense.
In historic (or diachronic) linguistics, subjectification (also known as objectivization or subjectivisation) is language change process in which a linguistic expression acquires meanings that
convey the speaker’s attitude or viewpoint. In this definition, the term subjectification occurs primarily in spoken and written form, but can also be useful in a conversational way, also, in any speech. • This is a pragmatic-semantic process, which means that inherent as well as contextual meaning of the given expression is considered. How is subjectification accomplished through syntax changes? It is also of interest to cognitive linguistics and pragmatics (cf. Ronald Langacker and Elizabeth Traugott. (2001).
Traugott proposes that the epistemic adverb evidently, which initially meant ‘from evidence, clearly’ and later developed as a subjective adverb, underwent subjectification: “1429
Will Braybroke in Ess. AST 5: 298 Yif thay finde euidently that i haue done extorcion
- ‘If they find from evidence that I have performed extortions’ (MED)
1443 Pecock Rule 56: More euydently fals an is is, er is no ing
- ‘There is nothing more clearly false than this’ (MED)
1690 Locke Hum. Und. As per their case, all other marks are evidently different from the one prior to 20th century. (OED)., is the issue n is void. Do we see
any continuity in the general theme of “N o Idea”? Wikimedia: “He is evidently right (in the meaning ‘I conclude that he is right’; strong subjective epistemic inviting the inference of some concession or doubt on speaker’s part)”
Source: Wikipedia/Subjectification(linguistics)
Here is another example of subjectification (of adjectives) from a paper of Traugott ( Pragmatics and Language Change, Stanford University): A modal domain
in which subjectification has recently been identified is that of modal adjectives like essential ( What originated as non-modal adjectives meaning ‘being such by its truth nature’ and ‘associated with life’; they both came to be used with dynamic modal meaning (necessity in the situation) and eventually deontic moral meaning. In the non-modal meaning the adjective is a classifier of the noun as in:
(10) Those essentiall parts of his (God) (1596 Spencer )
Van linden proposes that the key to the development of dynamic modal meanings was use with evaluative modification of the noun to which a particular feature is said to be essential:
(11) It is an essentiall property of man truly wise, not to open all the boxes of his bosome
(16
How can we prevent ourselves from misplacing our time and money in the wrong direction?
