Loaded Words

By Deane Barker •

Also known as: Russell Conjugation, Emotive Conjugation

Some words are loaded, meaning they imply some emotional or moral judgment that people are uniformly for or against, but which are subject to interpretation. “Justice,” for example, or “fairness.” Everyone wants justice or fairness, but people might disagree on what is just or fair. To use these words is to guarantee agreement on the superficial point, while ignoring disagreement on the underlying points. On the other, no one wants “exploitation,” but what does that mean, exactly?

Examples

Many anti-abortion advocates call abortion “murder.” No one wants murder, clearly, but the true disagreement is whether abortion is actually definable as “murder.” (It is not, in the strict sense that murder is technically the illegal taking of a life.)

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