Wouldn’t it be possible to minimize signaling given the same level of dispassionate discussion? That is, discourage use of highly emotionally charged/exosemantically heavy words/phrases if a less charged equivalent exists or can be coined and defined.
Say if you have a word X that means Y plus emotional connotation α and thede/memeplex/identity signaling effect β (not that emotional connotation is detached from the thedish/political/identity-wise context of the reader, of course), there’s really no reason to use X instead of Y in dispassionate discussion. To give a concrete example, there’s no reason to use ‘sluttiness’ (denotatively equivalent to ‘sexual promiscuity’ but carrying a generally negative connotational load, signaling against certain memeplexes/political positions/identities (though ideally readers here would read past the signaling load/repress the negative emotional response), and signaling identification with other positions/identities) instead of ‘sexual promiscuity’, which means the same thing but sheds all the emotional and thedish/tribal/whatever baggage.
(That shouldn’t be read as an endorsement of the reasoning toward the same conclusion in the post, of course.)
I don’t believe this is feasible. My impression is that emotional connotations inhere in things, not in words.
Over the decades, society has, over the decades, gone through a whole string of synonyms for “limited intelligence”—none of which are emotionally neutral. Changing terms from “imbecile”, to “retarded”, “developmentally disabled” to “special needs”, has just resulted in a steady turnover of playground insults. You can’t make an insulting concept emotionally neutral, I think.
The two aren’t contradictory: emotional connotations can inhere in things and words.
The euphemism treadmill is what you get when the emotional connotation inheres in a thing. But what emotional connotation inheres in ‘sexual promiscuity’? Even if it is there (and its recommendation by someone sensitive enough to emotional connotations that inhere in words [from the perspective of a specific thede/tribe] seems to suggest that it isn’t), certainly there’s less negative connotation there than in ‘sluttiness’.
Similarly, it’s possible to find loaded equivalents, or at least approximations, for most (all?) of Mencius Moldbug’s caste terms. (UR is a good place to mine for these sorts of pairs, since he coins emotionally neutral terms to replace, or at least approximate, emotionally loaded terms. Of course, if you use them, you’re signaling that you’ve read Moldbug, but...)
Wouldn’t it be possible to minimize signaling given the same level of dispassionate discussion? That is, discourage use of highly emotionally charged/exosemantically heavy words/phrases if a less charged equivalent exists or can be coined and defined.
Say if you have a word X that means Y plus emotional connotation α and thede/memeplex/identity signaling effect β (not that emotional connotation is detached from the thedish/political/identity-wise context of the reader, of course), there’s really no reason to use X instead of Y in dispassionate discussion. To give a concrete example, there’s no reason to use ‘sluttiness’ (denotatively equivalent to ‘sexual promiscuity’ but carrying a generally negative connotational load, signaling against certain memeplexes/political positions/identities (though ideally readers here would read past the signaling load/repress the negative emotional response), and signaling identification with other positions/identities) instead of ‘sexual promiscuity’, which means the same thing but sheds all the emotional and thedish/tribal/whatever baggage.
(That shouldn’t be read as an endorsement of the reasoning toward the same conclusion in the post, of course.)
I don’t believe this is feasible. My impression is that emotional connotations inhere in things, not in words.
Over the decades, society has, over the decades, gone through a whole string of synonyms for “limited intelligence”—none of which are emotionally neutral. Changing terms from “imbecile”, to “retarded”, “developmentally disabled” to “special needs”, has just resulted in a steady turnover of playground insults. You can’t make an insulting concept emotionally neutral, I think.
The two aren’t contradictory: emotional connotations can inhere in things and words.
The euphemism treadmill is what you get when the emotional connotation inheres in a thing. But what emotional connotation inheres in ‘sexual promiscuity’? Even if it is there (and its recommendation by someone sensitive enough to emotional connotations that inhere in words [from the perspective of a specific thede/tribe] seems to suggest that it isn’t), certainly there’s less negative connotation there than in ‘sluttiness’.
Similarly, it’s possible to find loaded equivalents, or at least approximations, for most (all?) of Mencius Moldbug’s caste terms. (UR is a good place to mine for these sorts of pairs, since he coins emotionally neutral terms to replace, or at least approximate, emotionally loaded terms. Of course, if you use them, you’re signaling that you’ve read Moldbug, but...)
I get the impression that we’re already pretty much mostly discusing issues in a “less emotionally laden” way, avoiding shocking words,etc., no?