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>>>(The kind of language engineering seems to be more of a right than left thing, but the right does like to coin phrases like "luxury belief" and if you want t

>>>(The kind of language engineering seems to be more of a right than left thing, but the right does like to coin phrases like "luxury belief" and if you want to believe the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis the phrase "illegal alien" is a singular case of a phrase "going viral" and having a powerful political impact, much more than things like "latinx") Did you say this backwards? And luxury belief and illegal alien aren't euphemisms, they are specific terms with a set meaning. Illegal alien is a technical legal term with a precise meaning, even. Part of the language engineering dynamic, also, is to try and replace terms that have a precise meaning (illegal alien) with fluffier less precise words (undocumented, migrant) so that the idea that is being referred to (someone in the country without the legal right) doesn't even have language that can refer to it. Another example, what is the currently polite term that means "a woman that is not a transwoman"?

throwup238 2y ago
> And luxury belief and illegal alien aren't euphemisms, they are specific terms with a set meaning. Illegal alien is a technical legal term with a precise meaning, even. Undocumented or unauthorized alien/immigrant is a technical legal term [1], "illegal alien" is loaded language used for propaganda. [1] https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/unauthorized-immigrants https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/unauthorized-immigra...
- amiga386 2y ago
  > Undocumented or unauthorized alien/immigrant is a technical legal term, "illegal alien" is loaded language used for propaganda. You'd best tell your country that their main legal document contains "loaded language used for propaganda". Title 8 of the US Code contains multiple references to illegal aliens; just as one example, 8 USC § 1366 requires the Attorney General to report annually on how many "illegal aliens" are in US prisons: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1366 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1366 A person can also be an "alien terrorist" (8 USC § 1531), a "criminal alien" (8 USC § 1231) and an "illegal entrant" (8 USC § 1182). Your government is free to stop using these terms and has not done so. It has repealed, replaced, moved sections of Title 8 before, and will keep doing that. The current law is defined using the term "illegal alien" in several places. Also, the Democrats attempted to introduce a bill to change government terminology, that bill did not go forward: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3776 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3776 - as they are currently in control of the executive, they can use whatever terminology they like, but they also can't bind their opponent's terminology should they get back into power.
PaulHoule 2y ago
The mother of all of these is the word "capitalism". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Definition What I'd noticed is that people who want to defend "capitalism" won't accept any reasonable definition of what it is: for instance you might follow many historians who will trace it back to the Dutch East India Company and they'd say, no they were a bunch of statist jerks like Lenin and Stalin. Ultimately they won't accept anything unless it keeps all the good things and loses all the bad things. The word was coined around the time of Marx and essentially reflects a Marxist viewpoint which posited a split between a large population of "workers" and a smaller population of "capitalists". Actual advocates of the status quo would rather the system go unnamed because their best defense of the system is Margaret Thatcher's "There is no Alternative" and any naming or description of the system, particularly drawing a circle around it and saying "this is the system" and "this is exterior to the system" helps in the conception of alternatives. The strength and resilience of the current system is precisely that it doesn't have a single center, instead it is like a Hydra with a tremendous number of heads. This is why "colonialism" and "mercantilism" have been replaced by a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-system Even if the United States was wiped out overnight by a solar flare as happens to the Soviet Union in Larry Niven's story Inconstant Moon it might make less change in the direction of said system because the primary complaint people have over our chief competitor, which claims to be Communist, is that it seems to practice Capitalism better than us. If your ideology is anti-Marxist, however, you might be tricked into adopting Marxist terminology such as Forbes magazine calling itself a "Capitalist Tool". It's why you don't ever want your ideology to be anti-something.
- njarboe 2y ago
  I have come to think of "capitalism" as the private ownership of things and the primacy of markets and "socialism" as the collective ownership by the state and the primacy of a state command economy. From history is seems that societies swing too far in one direction, have serious problems, and then (over) corrects or dies.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
> Part of the language engineering dynamic, also, is to try and replace terms that have a precise meaning (illegal alien) with fluffier less precise words (undocumented, migrant) so that the idea that is being referred to (someone in the country without the legal right) I always thought the switch from "illegal immigrant" to "undocumented immigrant" actually worked against people on the left trying to fight in favor of immigrants. "Undocumented", IMO, feeds into the false notion that most unauthorized immigrants simply hopped over the border without documentation, so we don't know who they are, when the reality is that most unauthorized immigrants are simply overstaying their visa. "Unauthorized immigrant/migrant" is the best term, IMO, but "illegal" was fine. The argument that "HoW cAn A pErSoN bE iLlEgAl" was always dumb to me, because it insinuated that the "illegal" applied to the person, and not their presence, and nobody believed the person was illegal. > Another example, what is the currently polite term that means "a woman that is not a transwoman"? The full term is "cisgender woman", or abbreviated as "cis". It is not a slur, no matter how much the nut jobs like Elon Musk want to say it is.

throwup238 2y ago

> And luxury belief and illegal alien aren't euphemisms, they are specific terms with a set meaning. Illegal alien is a technical legal term with a precise meaning, even. Undocumented or unauthorized alien/immigrant is a technical legal term [1], "illegal alien" is loaded language used for propaganda. [1] https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/unauthorized-immigrants https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/unauthorized-immigra...

amiga386 2y ago
> Undocumented or unauthorized alien/immigrant is a technical legal term, "illegal alien" is loaded language used for propaganda. You'd best tell your country that their main legal document contains "loaded language used for propaganda". Title 8 of the US Code contains multiple references to illegal aliens; just as one example, 8 USC § 1366 requires the Attorney General to report annually on how many "illegal aliens" are in US prisons: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1366 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1366 A person can also be an "alien terrorist" (8 USC § 1531), a "criminal alien" (8 USC § 1231) and an "illegal entrant" (8 USC § 1182). Your government is free to stop using these terms and has not done so. It has repealed, replaced, moved sections of Title 8 before, and will keep doing that. The current law is defined using the term "illegal alien" in several places. Also, the Democrats attempted to introduce a bill to change government terminology, that bill did not go forward: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3776 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3776 - as they are currently in control of the executive, they can use whatever terminology they like, but they also can't bind their opponent's terminology should they get back into power.

PaulHoule 2y ago

The mother of all of these is the word "capitalism". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Definition What I'd noticed is that people who want to defend "capitalism" won't accept any reasonable definition of what it is: for instance you might follow many historians who will trace it back to the Dutch East India Company and they'd say, no they were a bunch of statist jerks like Lenin and Stalin. Ultimately they won't accept anything unless it keeps all the good things and loses all the bad things. The word was coined around the time of Marx and essentially reflects a Marxist viewpoint which posited a split between a large population of "workers" and a smaller population of "capitalists". Actual advocates of the status quo would rather the system go unnamed because their best defense of the system is Margaret Thatcher's "There is no Alternative" and any naming or description of the system, particularly drawing a circle around it and saying "this is the system" and "this is exterior to the system" helps in the conception of alternatives. The strength and resilience of the current system is precisely that it doesn't have a single center, instead it is like a Hydra with a tremendous number of heads. This is why "colonialism" and "mercantilism" have been replaced by a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-system Even if the United States was wiped out overnight by a solar flare as happens to the Soviet Union in Larry Niven's story Inconstant Moon it might make less change in the direction of said system because the primary complaint people have over our chief competitor, which claims to be Communist, is that it seems to practice Capitalism better than us. If your ideology is anti-Marxist, however, you might be tricked into adopting Marxist terminology such as Forbes magazine calling itself a "Capitalist Tool". It's why you don't ever want your ideology to be anti-something.

njarboe 2y ago
I have come to think of "capitalism" as the private ownership of things and the primacy of markets and "socialism" as the collective ownership by the state and the primacy of a state command economy. From history is seems that societies swing too far in one direction, have serious problems, and then (over) corrects or dies.
- PaulHoule 2y ago

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago

> Part of the language engineering dynamic, also, is to try and replace terms that have a precise meaning (illegal alien) with fluffier less precise words (undocumented, migrant) so that the idea that is being referred to (someone in the country without the legal right) I always thought the switch from "illegal immigrant" to "undocumented immigrant" actually worked against people on the left trying to fight in favor of immigrants. "Undocumented", IMO, feeds into the false notion that most unauthorized immigrants simply hopped over the border without documentation, so we don't know who they are, when the reality is that most unauthorized immigrants are simply overstaying their visa. "Unauthorized immigrant/migrant" is the best term, IMO, but "illegal" was fine. The argument that "HoW cAn A pErSoN bE iLlEgAl" was always dumb to me, because it insinuated that the "illegal" applied to the person, and not their presence, and nobody believed the person was illegal. > Another example, what is the currently polite term that means "a woman that is not a transwoman"? The full term is "cisgender woman", or abbreviated as "cis". It is not a slur, no matter how much the nut jobs like Elon Musk want to say it is.