The Impact of Words

Language is used in many ways and many forms, but one way is through media.  This is one aspect of language that is used very often but never really noticed by the people who read posts or articles.  Writers use different words because of specific connotations that they may have because they want to make a certain impact on the reader, however, the way that this impact is made is something that the reader, often times, is not aware of.  I chose to examine two articles on the same subject, but from different news sources.  The articles both talk about how a baker/cake artist in Colorado refused to make and decorate a cake for a gay couple because he said that it went against his religious beliefs.  The articles were called: "A cake is food, not speech.  But why bully the baker?" and: "Is the right to discriminate in the constitution? The answer's a piece of cake.".  From the titles of the articles, we can tell that they have opposing viewpoints, the reason we can do so is because of the choice of words and phrases used, the same thing can be said about the words in the article. The first article: "A cake is food, not speech.  But why bully the baker?", talks about how the gay couple will most likely win the lawsuit, but how they took things too far in the way they dealt with the situation.  Although this article does not support the baker's discrimination, it disagrees with how high the gay couple escalated the situation.  The use of words like "abominably" and "nasty", in the opinionated description of the gay couple's conduct, both have a negative connotation that affected me a certain way.  However, these words were used on purpose because of this negative connotation.  If the writer wanted to take a more neutral position, he could have used synonymous words like repulsive or unpleasant to provide a different impact on the reader.  The second article: "Is the right to discriminate in the constitution?  The answer's a piece of cake.", argues in favor of the gay couple's rights to not be discriminated against, but focuses more on the importance of maintaining a reputation in the United States of acceptance.  The writer uses words like "obvious" and "well-established" to impact the reader in a way where they would think that discriminating is against the constitution and that it's a no-brainer to know so.  This gives the impression that the baker isn't very intelligent and because of this, he should lose the case due to the fact that everyone else knows that discrimination is bad and that discriminating due to religious beliefs is unacceptable.