Loaded Words
Alias:
- Loaded Language
- Question-Begging Epithets1
Taxonomy: Logical Fallacy > Informal Fallacy > Begging the Question2 > Loaded Words
Subfallacy: Appeal to Nature
Example:
The Supreme Court has just flinched from its responsibility to stop the unjust jailing of two journalists―not charged with any wrongdoing―by a runaway prosecutor who will go to any lengths to use the government's contempt power to force them to betray their confidential sources.3
Exposition:
A word or phrase is "loaded" when it has a secondary, evaluative meaning in addition to its primary, descriptive meaning. When language is "loaded", it is loaded with its evaluative meaning. A loaded word is like a loaded gun, and its evaluative meaning is the bullet.
| Loaded | Unloaded |
|---|---|
| Weed | Plant |
| Beast | Animal |
| Varmint | Wild animal |
| Pest | Insect |
While few words have no evaluative overtones, "plant" is a primarily descriptive term. "Weed", in contrast, has essentially the same descriptive meaning as "plant", but a negative evaluative meaning, as well. A weed is a plant of which we disapprove.
Loaded language is not inherently fallacious, otherwise most poetry would commit this fallacy. However, it is often a logical boobytrap, which may cause one to leap to an unwarranted evaluative conclusion. The fallacy is committed either when an arguer attempts to use loaded words in place of an argument, or when the audience reaches a conclusion based on the colorful language in which an argument is clothed, rather than on the merits of the argument itself.
Exposure:
Loaded language is often emotive language, but not all emotive language is loaded. For instance, words such as "mother", "love", "rape", and "war" all arouse strong emotions, but are not thereby loaded. Thus, it is not fallacious to call someone's female parent a "mother" because the word is emotive; rather, it is an accurate description.
Emotively-neutral words used in place of emotive ones are called "euphemisms". "Euphemism" is an English word of Greek origin from the prefix "eu-", meaning "good"―also found in the word "euphoria", a "good feeling"―and a root that means "speech"4. There's certainly nothing wrong with using euphemisms simply to spare someone's feelings―for instance, when we say that someone "passed away" rather than "died"―but using euphemistic language to conceal the truth is a type of doublespeak5. For instance, the phrase "sex worker" is a euphemism for "prostitute" used to cover up the realities of prostitution6.
Honest language occupies a middle ground between euphemistic and loaded language, using words that do not conceal reality while avoiding emotional manipulation.
Analysis of the Example:
What are the loaded words in this sentence?
- "Flinched": A negatively-loaded word, suggesting that the court acted from fear, or with a thoughtless reflex, rather than on principle; a less loaded term is "refused".
- "Responsibility": While the court had the power to stop the jailings, this word implies that the court was obligated to do so.
- "Unjust": This is not a loaded term, and that the jailing would be an injustice may be true, but Safire at this point is simply asserting that it is without providing any evidence.
- "Runaway": A negative term: a runaway prosecutor is one who is out of control and unpredictable; or, more neutrally, an independent one.
- "Go to any lengths": Saying that the prosecutor will do this suggests a disregard for others' rights, whereas a less loaded charge would be of aggressiveness.
- "Betray": Though this word can mean "reveal", it is related to "betrayal", thus suggesting treachery and disloyalty.
A useful exercise is to take a passage containing loaded language and replace the evaluative words with more neutral words to see what remains. Here is the result of replacing the above loaded words in the list above taken from Safire's column with the more descriptive alternatives suggested:
The Supreme Court has just refused to exercise its power to stop the jailing of two journalists―not charged with any wrongdoing―by an independent prosecutor who will use the government's contempt power aggressively to force them to reveal their confidential sources.
The rewritten sentence no longer packs the same punch as the original; it might be what Safire would have written if he were just reporting what happened, and not trying to sway the reader into being outraged at the court's decision.
Now, Safire was not committing a fallacy in his sentence, rather, he was setting up a loaded logical boobytrap. The critical reader needs to be wary not to be tricked by Safire's powerful language into accepting, without evidence, his judgments. Safire has a right to express his opinions, but his readers also have a right―and even a duty as citizens of a democracy―to form their own opinions based on the evidence. So, I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether Safire sufficiently supported his emotive language with evidence in the rest of his column.
Notes:
- Jeremy Bentham, Bentham's Handbook of Political Fallacies, revised, edited & with a preface by Harold A. Larrabee (1971), pp. 139-144. See, also: S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (Sixth Edition, 2000), pp. 164-167.
- Loaded Words is a subfallacy of Begging the Question, because to use loaded language fallaciously is to assume an evaluation that has not been proved, thereby failing to fulfill the burden of proof. For this reason, Jeremy Bentham dubbed this fallacy "Question-Begging Epithets".
- William Safire, "The Jailing of Judith Miller", The New York Times, 6/29/2005.
- John Ayto, Dictionary of Word Origins (1991).
- William Lutz, Doublespeak (1989), pp. 2-3. Lutz classifies doublespeak into four kinds, of which euphemism is the first.
- Pamela Paul, "What It Means to Call Prostitution ‘Sex Work’", The New York Times, 7/17/2023.
Updated: 11/1/2023