Russell Conjugation
Emotive Conjugation
A construction from linguistics, psychology and rhetoric which demonstrates how our minds downplay the role of empathy in our formation of opinions of others. Typically demonstrated with three statements of increasing distance from oneself and their declining empathy, such as, "I am firm (positive empathy); you are obstinate (neutral empathy); they are dumb (negative empathy)."
Origin
Bertrand Russell coined the technique in 1948 during an appearance on The Brains Trust, a popular BBC radio programme. Asked to illustrate how language smuggles in bias, he offered his now-famous trio: "I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool." The term emotive conjugation — mimicking the grammatical form of an irregular verb — was later applied by linguists and philosophers to capture the pattern Russell demonstrated. It is also widely known as "Russell conjugation" in his honour.