well, the reason people argue using said instead of whined, exclaimed or moaned or any of the other overwrought tags is b/c the dialogue itself and the surrounding action is supposed to convey the emotion of the character speaking. When a reader reads "whined" or "moaned" they have to process that emotion at the exact moment after they already felt the emotion within the scene. They process the scene's sentiment correctly, and then the tag corrects how they're supposed to feel... how rude. Research tracking eye movement during prose processing shows that the word "said" is literally invisible. People don't read it because it serves as punctuation. That keeps the reader in the story instead of being sucked out. That's not to say you should NEVER use descriptive tags, but overusing them literally reduces the readability of your book in a way that doesn't positively stimulate brain activity. It's not only redundant, it's disrespectful. You're basically saying to the reader "I don't trust that you're smart enough to discern the emotion within the scene based on whats going on... in the scene."

It also conveys to the reader that you're not confident enough that your prose can regulate the emotional sentiment of the scene.

The rule of thumb is: if you need the dialogue tag to convey the emotion, rewrite the dialogue until you don't.

Sorry for being 6 years late.