Sorry, I know this is very minor and beside the point (ironic, given what you just said about relevance), but isn't that exactly what connotation means?
>a : the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes⁰
Or is this perhaps even more meta than that - the choice itself can convey something apart from the semantics of a word, and this isn't something that the word connotation covers?
My apologies for sidetracking, you just got me wondering. I'm neither a native speaker nor a linguist, so it's tricky for me to think about these things sometimes. I agree with what you're saying, by the way.
The word connotation is typically used to describe inferences that you'd make about a statement given the word used which are widely available to native speakers of that language. Thin, skinny, and gaunt all mean the same thing; only "gaunt" has the connotation that the person described necessarily has a problem.
The other poster is describing something a bit more meta than what the word connotation typically covers. They are describing something akin to a shibboleth, a great linguistics word. One's use of a shibboleth is an (often very quiet) signal of membership in an in-group. (c.f. usage #2 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shibboleth )
An example: if someone steals your credit card, and you call your bank to report that, you could describe your requested action as either "opening a dispute" or "filing a chargeback." These are functionally equivalent but saying "chargeback" suggests that you're likely rather sophisticated about the mechanics of credit cards relative to most well-educated people.
Isn't this what semiotics[1] is all about? The difference between connotations and denotations?
My parents were really into that sort of thing "Words have power" - So during my 'bratty teenager' phase, I standardized on the word with the most negative denotation that had the correct connotation in my speech. I still do it sometimes, as a joke, but it's... funny, because while I have the feeling that the connotation is somehow less important than the denotation, and when I do the above, I'm attempting to point that out, nobody else seems to see it that way. To 'hire someone profitably' is a dramatically different thing, in most minds, than to 'exploit someone', even though the two words have an identical denotation.
I used to see my lack of understanding here as a sign of how most people cannot see past their own emotions; I now see my lack of understanding as a sign of how I am not in touch with emotions in a fully human sort of way.
>a : the suggesting of a meaning by a word apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes⁰
Or is this perhaps even more meta than that - the choice itself can convey something apart from the semantics of a word, and this isn't something that the word connotation covers?
My apologies for sidetracking, you just got me wondering. I'm neither a native speaker nor a linguist, so it's tricky for me to think about these things sometimes. I agree with what you're saying, by the way.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/connotation