"Pseudo-addiction." "Personalized experience." "Collection occurs when a human analyst views the data." The word changes. The regulation cannot catch what it cannot name.
Before capture operates through institutions, it operates through language. Every major institutional deception in the documentary record operates through a linguistic phase before it operates through a structural one. Purdue Pharma did not first build shell companies — it first built a word: "pseudo-addiction." The NSA did not first build PRISM — it first built a definition: "collection only occurs when a human analyst views the data." The structural cover follows the semantic cover. Control the meaning of the word; the regulatory framework cannot catch what it cannot name.
This series documents three mechanisms of semantic capture — the Euphemism Treadmill, Tripwire Relocation, and Gravity Dilution — through two primary case studies (Purdue Pharma and the NSA surveillance glossary), and proposes the evidentiary standard for distinguishing legitimate linguistic evolution from strategic semantic capture. The REBUS model (Phase 14) explains why semantic capture is so durable: the substituted term becomes the prior, and the prior suppresses the bottom-up signal that would have corrected it.