Be Brave: Let's Explore Political Science

A

As language speakers, the example text could say anything and we could decode, but as social beings, the inflection matters greatly to the meaning.

Ex/

Whatever!
Whatever?
Whatever.
whatever

Expression of anything is not just funneled through punctuation. There is a reason the punctuation changes the way you say the word out loud or in your head, and the reason is not that grammar rules made you— grammar rules, rather, made you to do it because of the political science to this nuanced function of language. Social politics dictate that ways we say things will undercut the meaning of our words, and children learn this at various stages of development. I won't bore you with the statistics of developmental norms, you're probably just as capable of reading a textbook as I, but I will posit my conclusions based on all this.

Inflecting a word or grouping of words, as to alter the explicit meaning in favor of an implicit message, is accomplished in a number of ways, i.e. those grammatical functions. Factoring why the information is presented as any such way highly influences the ultimate efficacy of a political spin. Emphasis on motive is— to me— the biggest and easiest factor to monitor. Just in case that's unclear, say Johnny told me to go buy a new video game and try it out. I might stop and think to myself about why Johnny would have asked me to do that, although I wouldn't put too much thought into something as harmless as a game, right?

But I might consider a number of possible motives. If he phrased the request as a question or plea, perhaps he's just a geek wanting someone else with which to talk to about it, or he's lazy and doesn't want to buy it so he can mooch off of me. If it were phrased a little more smoothly and charismatically, I might wonder or even ask what he gets out of my purchase. Maybe he's the creator, or even he's a video game lobbyist and he is trying to persuade me to invest my money into his benefactor and megacorporation. Possible motive, judging off of what I know or don't know yet about Johnny based on social interactions, may then influence my decision.

*note the added political finesse of (x) money in my bank account and/or (y) degree of paranoia that my money will be squandered. Economics will probably be discussed as it's own beast later.