"Loaded" diction

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:52 PM -0400 5/4/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 5/4/2010 11:18 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>You probably need more than word for the level of precision required.
>>
>>"Slanted/biased toward the likelihood of guilt," "loaded diction that
>>suggests wrongdoing without a basis in observation," etc.
>>
>>BTW, in the freshman comp days of the mid '70s or earlier (I tested out of
>>comp personally), "loaded diction" was accepted terminology - not slangy at
>>all. Likewise, in an extended argument, "loading the dice."
>
>I didn't mean that "loaded diction" was slangy -surely no one but an
>academic says "diction"! :-)  -- but rather "loaded" by itself, or in
>"loaded language".

There's also Dwight Bolinger's more literal rendering of the metaphor
in the title of his classic 1980 book _Language--the loaded weapon_.

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org