Submission #7: How important is language when facing a controversial issue/ situation?

I first introduced this question in my mock IA, but I wanted to explore this topic a little more and add some more of my personal opinion. First, let me start by reiterating what I said before. I looked into the use of the words ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’ in regards to the Syrian Crisis. The denotations of these words are completely different. However people with different views on the Syrian Crisis would use these words specifically to give them a certain connotation, one that would help instill a certain feeling towards the situation in their audience. For example, the people who are in favor of open borders refer to the Syrian immigrants as ‘refugees’. The dictionary definition of a ‘refugee’ is someone who is forced to leave their country. While those who are against Syrian immigrants coming into their country use the word ‘migrant’- someone who chooses to leave their country. To the general public, these two words- although different by definition- mean similar things to them. I also digged a little deeper into the reasons why people would use a certain word, and I found examples that show this mixing of words for specifically the Syrian situation. For those who preferred to use the word ‘migrant’, I deduced were using that specific word because it takes away the emotion from the crisis. It makes it seem like the people had the choice of staying but they didn’t want to. It makes it seem like these people were taking advantage of this situation by leaving their country the first chance they got because they wanted to leave anyway and now they had a chance because everyone wants to help them because everyone feels bad for them. Hilariously and not at all surprisingly, I found a nicely applicable quote from Mr. Donald Trump; he said ‘I’m putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they’re going back’. He uses the word ‘migration’ which refers to ‘migrants’ because he doesn’t want his supporters to want to help the Syrians, he wants to do the exact opposite and let them defend themselves. On to the reasoning for ‘refugee’, those who use the word ‘refugee’ want to get more people to pity the situation and be more willing to help out. If someone didn’t know what ‘refugee’ meant and they looked up the definition, they would see- “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster”, when people see that this word has ‘forced’ and ‘escape’ in its definition they will feel more compassion and sympathy towards the situation. This is exactly what people who use the word ‘refugee’ want you to feel. As an example, I found a quote from President Obama, he tweeted “Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That’s not who we are. And it’s not what we're going to do.” Again with the use of ‘refugee’ but he also does something different here and uses the word ‘we’ and ‘we’re’ to create a sense of unity and pride within Americans. He also uses the phrase ‘our deepest values’, he doesn’t say whose deepest values but we all assume it’s what we believe in as Americans. Doing this would make anyone who is unsupportive think twice, because they would feel like they are betraying their country. Words can seem very small but they have a huge impact on language and our ability to express ourselves. However, they can also be dangerous, you can see how a few words, or even a single word has the ability to make us think and in turn act a certain way.