Critical Thinking about Language

Let's look at an examples from liberal and conservative social media posts to practice critical thinking about language. The images on this page show a liberal post on the left and a conservative one on the right, both about immigration.

  1. First, let's think about language and word choice. When a writer wants to persuade their readers, they often change the language or words they use in order to affect how the readers feel about a topic. They may use manipulative language (sometimes called loaded language), which is language meant to cause an emotional response in the reader. If we haven't done this type of critical thinking about language before, it will help to find examples of manipulative language by searching the web for pages like this RationalWiki site Links to an external site.. To see some examples of manipulative language, we can scroll down on that RationalWiki page to see lists of snarl words (derogatory labels) and glittering generalities (generalized terms meant to appeal to patriotism, decency, etc.).
  2. Now, let's look at the sample social media posts to see how the language is intended to influence the readers. The highlighted words in the images below show some examples of manipulative language, which is detailed below the posts.

 

Image of immigrant father and daughter drowned trying to enter the U.S. Image of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Left side = Liberal

For context, Bernie Sanders (a liberal, Social Democrat U.S. Senator who ran for President in 2016 and 2020) made this post in which he said we have "a cruel and broken immigration system." Both the words cruel and broken appeal directly to liberal points-of-view about how they saw then President Trump's policy toward immigration.

  • Sanders also stated that immigrants aren't "criminals" and shouldn't be demonized.
    • Note the use of the quotation marks around the word criminals in the post above. That's because Sanders was quoting President Trump who claimed that many of the Mexican immigrants were criminals, and Sanders was directly contradicting what the President claimed. Again, this was an appeal to liberals because they wanted to see liberals challenging the President.
    • The word demonized is definitely manipulative. It implies that conservatives were treating immigrants like demons, or evil beings. This statement would probably make liberals think "Yes, that's right!" while conservatives reading this same post might think this was an insult to the President and it might have reinforced for them that Mexican immigrants were criminals and evil.

 

Right side = Conservative

Again, let's give some context to this post. It's from The Conservative Tribune, a conservative political opinion website, and it was about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (often referred to as AOC, a liberal, Democratic Socialist U.S. Representative from New York). Conservatives are often opposed to Socialist ideas, often comparing Socialism Links to an external site. to Communism Links to an external site..

  • The use of the phrase "blind hatred" was meant to appeal to conservatives' feelings about Ocasio-Cortez. Blind hatred implies that someone hates something without really knowing anything about it, and hatred is seen as a negative emotion.
  • The use of the phrase "her self-proclaimed concern" was meant to be sarcastic, implying that she said she was concerned, but she wasn't really.
    • This was meant to imply that she was lying or manufacturing a concern that she didn't really have to appeal to her liberal supporters. In effect, the Tribune writer was pointing out an emotional appeal while also making an emotional appeal to his own audience. Making an emotional appeal is a technique often used by both liberal and conservative writers when trying to persuade their readers.
  • The clickbait headline is meant to get the reader to click on the article in this post that leads to The Conservative Tribune website. The full title from the website is AOC Wants to Deprive Immigrant Children of Beds So She Can Stick it to Trump.
    • The phrase "stick it to Trump" means to treat someone harshly or severely, and it would appeal to conservatives who felt that the President was doing a great job and that liberals were out to get him no matter what he did.
    • The writer knew that the headline would appeal to conservatives, but it also might have gotten some liberals to click on it because it went against what liberals believe about Ocasio-Cortez - that she is sympathetic to the immigrants, not against them.
    • The clickbait title is misleading, which we can see if we read the article. Ocasio-Cortez didn't really want to keep the immigrant children from having beds. She was commenting on how employees at the Wayfair company were walking out of work to protest the fact that they were making beds that were being used for the immigrant children being held in detention centers.