When the red shirts camped out at Rajamangala Stadium last December to support PM Yingluck Shinawatra, a popular quip among the anti-Thaksin camp was that the football field needed a proper re-turf as those "kwai daeng", or red buffalo, had eaten all the grass.
And while Yingluck is rigorously denounced as "e-ngo" (stupid bitch) along with quite a few other sexist monikers, former PM Abhisit Vejjajiva is stamped and proclaimed a murderer as a result of the deadly 2010 crackdown with equal certainty and aggression by the opposite camp.
In this troubled time, innocuous words such as "the rich", "ammart" (the elite) and "kon dee" (the good people), have now attained different connotations, a darker suggestion of those who don't see the poor as equal human beings. Meanwhile, the all-time favourite "kwai" is dished out left, right and centre to inflict mental wounds to those on the other side.
At this point in our history, rude remarks are not met with self-censorship or scold - they are often met with cheers. When the line has been crossed, speakers are urged to go even further. It is a time when hate speech, deregatory name-calling, dubious innuendo, outrageous accusations and lies - from all sides in the conflict - dance a risky tango with "freedom of expression" and "political bravery".
Even though the essence of the fight itself is the opposing ideologies, the violence of language plays a potent role in worsening the divide and hatred among people. Charnchai Chaisukkosol, lecturer of Mahidol University's Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, agrees with the dictionary definition of hate speech as "speech which attacks a person or a group of a basis of race, religion, gender and sexuality", but he believes that hate speech is still within the bounds of freedom of speech.
"Hate speech is an expression of hatred in whatever way, whether it's words, writing, symbols, and every other medium of communication," says Charnchai. "To me, hate speech is still a subset of freedom of expression as long as it doesn't incite people to do harm to each other, leading to danger and violence."
Charnchai has been conducting research on political hate speech for the last three years, and he says that people are now more politically inclined and have the courage to express their opinions more, and things are getting out of line.
''There's a calling to the people to go hurt other people. And there's an indirect way of chastising someone for days and suggesting to people that they should go and 'welcome' him or her. It's a slow poisoning process like that in Chinese dramas,'' he said.
From his research, Charnchai says that there are a few factors that will extend the impact of hate speech into what he terms ''speech act'' - the kind of speech that will lead to violence.
''When influential and rhetorical speakers who have the willingness to make things turn violent couple with the understanding and convinced audience who have the capacity to bring about violence, that's when the situation can turn worse. The speaker doesn't have to be a politician, it can be anyone like a celebrity who has a strong influence over the people. As for the audience, it may not turn violent if they are just the elderly, women and children.''
Meanwhile, Assoc Prof Pirongrong Ramasoota from Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Communication Arts considers the issue a little differently to Charnchai. Assoc Prof Pirongrong says that while remarks attacking a person is defamation, ''hate speech'' is discrimination and insult against a group of people with a shared identity.
''With defamation, it's usually false remarks that can be proved otherwise,'' says Assoc Prof Pirongrong when asked about words like ''e-ngo'' and ''murderer''.
''For hate speech, there's a whole different level of intensity to it, from devaluing other human beings to the point of denial of co-existence with the others, labelling them as an undesirable member of the society.''
The academic says that the emergence of political media such as Asia Update and BlueSky have a lot to be blamed in promoting and reinforcing hate speech among both camps of the political schism.
''In our country, there's no law against hate speech,'' she says. ''And this reflects that our mindset has never given much importance to the issue. These channels with political agendas promote hate speech against each other because they need it to hook the audience's interest.''
Assoc Prof Pirongrong says that the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC) needs to adopt some regulatory tools against it.
''The NBTC needs to monitor these channels and warn if there are abuses in this issue and prevent imminent danger.'' But the long-term and more efficient solution to this, Pirongrong says, is creating a norm through social learning.
''In the online world, there's no way of regulating content. We have to have a media literacy programmes as formal education, starting from kids at a very young age. Look at Japan - they have rather explicit content like pornography on the television at night, but there's no problem because the Japanese people have been learning about media literacy since they were in kindergarten,'' he said.
Red Sunday group leader Sombat Boonngamanong
''Hate speech is words that promote hatred and aims to create the justification for violence in the end. It's something that reduces the level of reason. For example, if we are to discuss something and we are called kwai daeng or 'Thaksin's servants', then we can't discuss it with reason anymore. It's just a waste of time. On protest stages, it's a show _ not an academic seminar. There's the light, the microphone and the people and it's a place that can create you or destroy you. It's hate speech when the speakers start to get personal [using something] like someone's gender, family and children and giving out the address or phone number of the person. Hate speech is an important tool, otherwise how could people come out and sleep on the street? It's building up the emotions in people. I have to say that this is true on both the yellow-shirt and the red-shirt stages and that is natural. But even though it's an important tool, I really think it can be replaced with the art of rhetoric.''
Mass communication academic and anti-Thaksin protest leader Seri Wongmontha
''Hate speech is something that creates hatred, but on the stage we're not trying to do that because the hatred is already there. There are words like gu or meung [informal and impolite Thai pronouns] and some people might say that it's rude, but we just can't use words like pom or khun to people like Yingluck and Chalerm. People who stand down there listening might criticise, but if you were to play our roles you would realise that you can't talk about bad people [using] respectable terms.
''About the saying that Yingluck is stupid and a liar, it's not to create hate speech _ we want people who criticise us to think that we're simply sharing attitudes and truth. People say that this is creating the divide, but the fact is the divide is already there. We talk about the truth that may sometimes be verbally aggressive, but hate speech is bringing up something that's false to make people hate each other.''
