It occurs to me that not only might this seem different to people who are more verbal thinkers vs other types (visual thinkers or conceptual thinkers), but it might actually be different.

If the language centers of your brain have an outsized impact on the flow of your cognition, it seems plausible that changing your pattern of language use would also have an outsized impact on your attitudes.

So I'll have to ponder this more also. The idiot/retarded/special/divergent thing is a pretty good counterexample, but the existence of a counterexamples doesn't necessarily negate the entirety of a phenomenon.