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Words matter. To quote Frank Chimero:

"I think words are abstractions, and abstractions become expressions that frame our understanding of our experiences, expectations, culture—everything. Language is an interface, and if an interface can mold behavior and perception, than language does that to your life."

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While I think the grandparent is focussed on a non-issue (the two phrases offered are obviously metonymic, not literal), I have to note that this is a much stronger claim than you might gather from a glib programming analogy made by an armchair philosopher. Linguistic relativity is a thing [1], but statements like this widely overstate the extent to which language molds cognition. More importantly, though, I don't think the notion is relevant to the discussion at hand. We're not talking about alternative phrasings of the same idea, but different ideas entirely: yes and no. That different ideas expressed differently carry different semantic payloads is hardly a controversial assertion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

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