Emotive conjugation

History and research

Emotional conjugation was originally defined by Bertrand Russell in 1948 on the BBC Radio program, The Brains Trust. During an interview, he gave multiple examples of emotive conjugation, one of them being the following:

I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.

While firm, obstinate, and pig-headed are all synonymous with stubbornness, the emotive connotations of these words are different. Firm carries a positive connotation, obstinate carries a neutral (or slightly negative) connotation, and pig-headed fool carries a negative connotation. Thus, most individuals have a positive reaction toward the speaker, and a negative reaction toward the pig-headed fool. Russell notes that no additional information is given on each individual, yet a strong opinion on each individual forms nonetheless. Russell explains this phenomenon by defining humans as social creatures. He claims that the mind is always asking "What is the social consequence of accepting the facts as they are?" which causes the audience to mimic the emotions presented by the speaker.

Russell's claims are supported by Frank Luntz' study on changes in authoritative language conducted in the 1990s. Luntz found that the majority of opinions were reached based on the emotive conjugation that was used without consideration of any underlying facts. Luntz noted consistency in these results, even in situations where participants would contradict themselves. For example, an individual would oppose the idea of a "death tax" while supporting an "estate tax" despite the fact that the descriptions were the same. Luntz also notes that these contradictions would still appear if the definitions were given in close proximity to one another. An example Luntz mentioned was the emotive conjugation of "illegal aliens" being used in place of "undocumented immigrants." While these phrases refer to the same group of people, the former was met with a negative reaction in comparison to the latter.