Words, and how they're used as weapons and too control, is THE question, really.
Orwell, ''Politics and the English Language"[1]:
>"Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."
And cat-v.org[2]:
>"While freedom of expression should always be sacrosanct, it is important to recognize some words are harmful.
>"But the reason words can be harmful is not their meaning, but their lack of meaning. Words are a communication tool, a symbolic system to represent complex ideas in a concise and clear way, words that for whatever reason do not have a minimally clear and well defined meaning become harmful as everyone (the speaker and the listener or anyone else for that matter) can attach whatever semantics they find convenient at any given time."
There are two modes of human communication, in one we convey facts about the world or the contents of our minds, in the other we convey information about ourselves: our values and group identity.
Wesley Morganston expands on the idea in his Introduction to group dynamics[3]:
>"It is commonly known that words carry meaning on two levels: denotation, or strict, dictionary-level meaning, and connotation, or emotional association; but there is a third, exosemantic level. The word “eldritch”, for example, denotes otherworldliness and connotes a feeling of cosmic horror toward its referent; but it also exosemantically implies that its user has read Lovecraft. The word “liberty” is no different from the word “freedom’, The word “praxis” is no different from a certain definition of the word “practice” except in its exosemantic layer: “praxis” is heavy; “praxis” implies familiarity with—association with—the academic tradition that uses the word “praxis”."
I view the connotation of a word as part of the spectrum between the two modes of communication, emotional responses are "thedish", as he puts it, they depend a great deal on the culture of the speaker.
In another post expanded on by Scott Alexander of slatestarcodex[4], Wesley stripped the informational content from a news article leaving only the emotionally charged language, which is a fun method to apply yourself, it's a great illustration of how people actually think about politics instead of how we think and say we think about politics (And everything else.).
[1] http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
[2] http://harmful.cat-v.org/words/
[3] https://nydwracu.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/why-anarcho-fascism-an-introduction-to-group-dynamics/
[4]http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/24/nydwracus-fnords/