Interstudia 27/2020 : "Framing the world through loaded language"
Alma Mater, Bacau, 2021. EAN13 : 2065–3204.
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Nowadays world, which seems to have lost its compasses - being tormented by unprecedented health, social, racial and political problems – and which is characterized by unprecedented liberty of thought and speech, seems to have become the fertile soil in which loaded language can plant its seeds. Dealing with and trying to solve problems such as racism, migration, war, violence, gender discrimination, getting power, getting supremacy, terrorism, children`s rights, poverty, prejudices, pandemics – and many others – calls for people`s emotions. Consequently, as topics of speech or written discourse, they need to be embedded within emotional messages.
It is a fact that our choice of words can influence others` way of thinking and acting by appealing to logical arguments and solid evidence or, by appealing to emotions.
Emotional appeal: what, when, why and how?
Aristotle considered it a mode of persuasion, meant to stir emotions in the listener/reader when the speaker/writer is aware of the fact that they cannot win the argument, as they have no factual evidence for their claim. Speaker/writers can accomplish their goal in multiple ways. One of these is their resorting to loaded language in order to frame reality according to the goals they had in mind when they entered the respective interactional context. Success depends on a good understanding of the audience, as well as on knowledge of the emotion triggers.
According to Garber (Loaded Words, 2012:1), the term “loaded tells a story of abundance, excess, danger and desire.” The term, with reference to words, has been into use since mid-twenties. Anderson (1996:128) insisted that “language is not free of values…[ and that] the words used are loaded with emotions and attitudes, some of which are positive (plus words), while others are negative (minus words).”
Loaded language/emotive language/high-inference language (Jackson & Jackson, 2018) exploits the positive and negative emotional value/emotional charge (Macagno & Walten, 2014) /emotional valence (Frijda & Mesquita, 2000) that words have in addition to their literal meaning; it is used by speakers/writers in an attempt to create a favourable or unfavourable impression on the listeners`s/reader`s mind and to influence the latter`s attitude, either positively or negatively.
Loaded/emotive language functions as a persuasive technique, as well as a manipulative one. Loaded words reflect the speaker`s/writer`s deliberate and purposeful choice of vocabulary with which they want to persuade an audience or to manipulate the audience`s action towards their goal. It is an already established fact that the pragmatic function of manipulation is linked to the use of language. Manipulative communication is an object of study in rhetoric, argumentation theory, politics, law, media and marketing and it achieves pragmatic goals. Emotional manipulation asks for an emotion from the listener (Baron, 2003) – an emotion which will be later exploited by the speaker.
Discourse studies allow research on loaded language, as “Some words are loaded with connotative associations that make them highly sensitive elements in public discourse, especially political and legal discourse” (Meijs &Blackwell, 2011). Emotionally-loaded words are distinguished from value-loaded words (Anderson & Furberg, 1996); while the first group includes the words that express the speaker`s feelings and the listener can easily deduce whose feelings they express, in the case of the second group, the feelings and attitudes appear as justified, but they do not really exist.
Loaded words are strategically used by journalists, public figures, politicians and ordinary citizens. They can enter argumentation and include metaphorical phrases, idioms, euphemisms, name-calling, even foreign words and doublespeak, as some loaded language is used in ways that are deliberately ambiguous or even contradictory.
In literature, the writer`s choice of vocabulary helps to persuade a reader to his point of view (Rog & Propp, 2006) and to generate emotions. Poetic language is considered, for example, the best example of over-loaded/stuffed language, meant to arouse emotions to the highest degree. Media comes up with loaded words especially in headlines and in articles on social and cultural trends. Advertising exploits loaded language to its fullest potential; an emotional advertising appeal depends on feelings and perceptions when promoting people, places or products and trying to provoke action.
Research on loaded language may be useful for understanding political discourse, too. Political rhetoric makes use of both persuasion and manipulation. Politicians, in their attempt of gaining political advantage, operate with either empty or (over)loaded words (charged with meanings and implications); they can even become experts in the use of loaded language.
The volume (having three sections: Emotional overtones in literature; Emotional and manipulative language; Emotioanal and manipulative media appeals) investigates the potentialities offered by language in the speaker`s/writer`s attempt of framing the world in such a way as to correspond to their communicative goals.
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CONTENTS
Foreword
I. EMOTIONAL OVERTONES IN LITERATURE
Nina Sirković
Literature and propaganda in George Orwell's Essays
Selçuk Yazıcı
Ideological discourse in D.H. Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer from Bakhtinian perspective
Elena Ciobanu
Ambiguities of Shakespearean poetics
Melissa Cicchetti
Close literary reading: a gypsy feministqueer methodology
Geçikli Kubilay
Towards a humanistic everyday of the postmodern: J.M.Coetzee’s Slow Man and Jack’s reappearance on the stage
Antoanela Marta Mardar & Richard R.E Kania
On Carolyn Heilbrun’s quest for androgyny in American language and literature
Mihaela Culea & Andreia-Irina Suciu
From Defoe to Coetzee and back. Foe through the (meta)language of fiction
Sennur Bakirtas
Trapped in the Firdaws, the garden of Eden, of Aziz in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise
Cătălina Bălinișteanu-Furdu
The body’s exaggeration and minimization through changes and metamorphoses
Meryem Odabaşı
Inherited traumatic memory: the representation of the atomic bomb as transgenerational trauma
Ali Tilbe & Mathilde Coloane
Une etude autofictionnelle sur le premier roman du genre d’autofiction: Fils de Serge Doubrovsky
II. EMOTIONAL AND MANIPULATIVE LANGUAGE
Anca Daniela Frumușelu
Bringing humour and emotive language from sitcoms into the EFL classroom
Antoanela Marta Mardar & Iulian Mardar
Linguistic traces of communist-socialist manipulation in Povestiri istorice by Dumitru Almaș
Elena Bonta & Raluca Galița
Scrolling the internet: fear in disguise. A corpus-based analysis of the new langdemic
Gabriela Andrioai & Alexandra Moraru
Conceptual metaphors of Covid-19 on BBC future: a way of ‘loading’ language with meaning and emotion
Sergio Piraro
Le lexique a l’epoque de la covid-19
III. EMOTIONAL AND MANIPULATIVE MEDIA
APPEALS
Andrea Roxana Bellot
Gendering acts of war remembrance and
appeal to emotions in the media
Nadia-Nicoleta Morărașu & Luminița Drugă
Loaded language and representations behind numbers and percentages in Romanian advertising texts
BOOK REVIEW
Nadia-Nicoleta Morărașu, 2020, English-Romanian Dictionary of Name-related Terms – Dicționar englez-român de termeni referitori la nume, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 229 pagini (review by Raluca Galița)