Why are ¨loyalty¨ and ¨allegiance¨ and ¨obedience¨ just words?

This infers that actions are louder than words. Mother saw no reason for her (their) behavior) to be question. Saying the words meant nothing.... they'd been living them for more than twenty years,

She’d been in America for almost twenty years now. But she did not want to cause any trouble—“The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”—or be labeled disloyal. She did not want to be sent back to Japan. “There’s no future for us there. We’re here. Your father’s here. The most important thing is that we stay together.”…
Loyalty. Disloyalty. Allegiance. Obedience.
“Words,” she said, “it’s all just words.”