Conjuring up terror and tears: the evocative and persuasive power of loaded words in the political discourse on drug reform

Abstract

The last few years have seen the emergence of the term “post-truth” to characterize the political scene. This concept refers to a situation where the objective facts have far less importance and impact than appeals to emotion and personal belief in order to influence public opinion. In this so-called post-truth era, to what extent can this prevalence of emotions be observed in recent political speeches? More precisely, is lexicon prone to arouse emotions? Through the study of a corpus on the topic of drug reform in the United States, the author examines the participation of loaded words to fearmongering strategies and appeals to pity.