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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 4, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It seems to me that the word “spew” is very left-coded in online discourse. “You’re just looking for an excuse to spew your hatred”, “he was spewing his racism and homophobia everywhere”, etc.

This is interesting because, in contrast to an overtly political term like “privilege”, or even a set phrase like “there’s a lot to unpack here”, the word “spew” is a longstanding and perfectly innocuous non-political term from ordinary language. And yet to my ears it has still taken on a political valence. I rarely hear a rightist say something like “and then he started spewing his politically correct nonsense”, if ever.

Can you think of any initially non-political words or patterns of speech that have become right-coded? (Or just more leftist examples - I know there are more besides just “spew” but I’m drawing a blank at the moment).

"Screed".

I think that’s another good leftist example, yeah (assuming you meant it as leftist and not rightist).

The reason I asked this question was because this feels like a specifically leftist phenomenon to me - these speech patterns and tics that aren’t inherently political themselves, but still end up getting used repeatedly by leftists. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed any similar words associated with the right, but that could just be my own bias that I can’t see through. The right certainly has many memes like “based” but I don’t think it’s the same thing.

speech patterns and tics

Would you also include vocal fry and upspeak as examples of this?