In my study of the Linguistic Turn in Historiography last semester, I began to recognize more fully how much hidden freight there can be in word selection. The tired example is "revolutionary" or "terrorist," but it has become so cliche that its power is greatly diminished. The more topical case that I confronted was the label to apply to the events in Los Angeles in 1992 following the announcement of the verdict in the Rodney King case. After an embarrassing amount of thought, I concluded that the use of "riot" generally implies a critical, holistically negative judgment, "civil unrest" is neutral, and "violent protest" conveys sympathy with those who expressed outrage at the verdict in the streets*.
One of the categories where this is the most perpetually-fraught is demonyms, e.g., Indians, Native Americans, Natives, Amerindians, Indigenous Americans, etc... A lengthy linguistics paper would probably be required to treat this topic comprehensively, so with a humble hat tip to Montaigne I will content myself with some general observations on the matter.
First, there is a fluid periodization of the most popularly-accepted term for a group. The people English colonists encountered were generally "Savages" at least through 1776 (the Declaration of Independence used the term), but by 1787, the Constitution was excluding "Indians not taxed" from representative apportionment. By the second half of the 20th century, the preferred term changed quite rapidly more than once with a lot of discord on the subject.
Second, there is a strong correlation between politics and terminology, and a common power play is to explain what the Other means in their use of a new term, often with a certain conspiratorial distrust ('They say it is about respecting x, but really it is an insult to y'.)
Third, in light of the first two, it is important for a historian to demonstrate knowledge of the periodizations and politics of words, and to show a certain measure of humility on that score. The natural starting position is one of ignorance, and so this can take a lot of work, a lot of reading and analysis, but that is the essence of historical scholarship. To be blunt, there is no way around the fact that if you betray a lack of awareness of the freight in a certain term's use, you have to admit that you missed something important.
Fourth and finally, because people start out unaware of terms' baggage, inferring anything absolutely is foolish. If a person uses a word that as a general rule would put them in a certain political camp, a scholar (or conversationalist) should ask a clarifying question and/or look for further evidence before concluding that they are part of the camp. The argument that "he should know the history of that word" only goes so far--we all should know more.
*I emphasize "generally," because of the simple truism that we often do not say what we mean. So, a participant defending his actions might have told the television cameras, "THIS is why we're rioting"--certainly not implying an unconscious negative assessment of his conduct.
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