It's appropriate since they believe that words are magic and as long as they say the right words, the "spell" will be cast and they will become immune to laws.
For the simple minded its understandable how anyone with psychological knowledge could be confused with magicians.
Just look at fortune tellers and the likes.
Its a perversion of the truth that any sufficiently advanced enough science can only be interpreted as magic. For some, common knowledge seems sufficient enough.
different words with identical meaning can effect us differently
Other than puzzling us when a different word is not known because it stopped being used in that sense in the twelfth century?
I am not sure that there are studies that found anything statistically significant. It's like saying that there are 'selling slogans' when in fact no matter how selling you slogan is, no one will buy if the product is bullshit
Crippled -> handicaped -> disabled -> person with disability.
They all essentially mean exactly the same
Thing. They all where the proper terminology at some point in time. But the emotional effect is different.
Also some political examples:
Global-warming and climate-change.
Pro-life and anti-abortion
I assume most people are smart enough not to let
Terminology cloud judgement but we are talking about the kind of people who read and believe the stuff like in the book above.
I mean, anyone who's ever taken Prof. George Lakoff's classes at UC Berkeley is familiar with his famous "Don't think of an elephant" lecture. He tells his students not to think about an elephant, then goes on to describe an elephant in agonizing detail, but under no circumstances are you permitted to picture that elephant in your mind.
Lakoff also wrote a book based on this lecture, titled "Don't Think of an Elephant!" where he tells us that
Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world. As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions. In politics our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies.
Every word we have is defined relative to a conceptual frame, even trying to negate the frame activates the frame. So, if I tell you "Don't think of an elephant" you will immediately think of an elephant!