George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at the
University of California Berkeley, is a specialist in the technique of
"framing," a communication tool that creates a "frame" for a message
that defines the terms of the debate. He explains in the article below
how conservatives use this "tool" to dominate language in politics.
It's not exactly what you are looking for, but pretty darn close.
You can find lots of useful stuff like this on my web site, thoughtmechanics.com.
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Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how
conservatives use language to dominate politics
By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 27 October 2003
BERKELEY ? With Republicans controlling the Senate, the House, and the
White House and enjoying a large margin of victory for California
Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's clear that the Democratic
Party is in crisis. George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of
linguistics and cognitive science, thinks he knows why. Conservatives
have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the
language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to
communicate them, says Lakoff.
The work has paid off: by dictating the terms of national debate,
conservatives have put progressives firmly on the defensive.
George LakoffGeorge Lakoff dissects "war on terror" and other
conservative catchphrases
Read the August 26, 2004, follow-up interview
In 2000 Lakoff and seven other faculty members from Berkeley and UC
Davis joined together to found the Rockridge Institute, one of the few
progressive think tanks in existence in the U.S. The institute offers
its expertise and research on a nonpartisan basis to help progressives
understand how best to get their messages across. The Richard & Rhoda
Goldman Distinguished Professor in the College of Letters & Science,
Lakoff is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and
Conservatives Think," first published in 1997 and reissued in 2002, as
well as several other books on how language affects our lives. He is
taking a sabbatical this year to write three books ? none about
politics ? and to work on several Rockridge Institute research
projects.
In a long conversation over coffee at the Free Speech Movement Café,
he told the NewsCenter's Bonnie Azab Powell why the Democrats "just
don't get it," why Schwarzenegger won the recall election, and why
conservatives will continue to define the issues up for debate for the
foreseeable future.
Why was the Rockridge Institute created, and how do you define its purpose?
I got tired of cursing the newspaper every morning. I got tired of
seeing what was going wrong and not being able to do anything about
it.
The background for Rockridge is that conservatives, especially
conservative think tanks, have framed virtually every issue from their
perspective. They have put a huge amount of money into creating the
language for their worldview and getting it out there. Progressives
have done virtually nothing. Even the new Center for American
Progress, the think tank that John Podesta [former chief of staff for
the Clinton administration] is setting up, is not dedicated to this at
all. I asked Podesta who was going to do the Center's framing. He got
a blank look, thought for a second and then said, "You!" Which meant
they haven't thought about it at all. And that's the problem. Liberals
don't get it. They don't understand what it is they have to be doing.
Rockridge's job is to reframe public debate, to create balance from a
progressive perspective. It's one thing to analyze language and
thought, it's another thing to create it. That's what we're about.
It's a matter of asking 'What are the central ideas of progressive
thought from a moral perspective?'
How does language influence the terms of political debate?
Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is
defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like
"revolt," that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or
assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off
their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.
'Conservatives understand what unites them, and they understand how to
talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how
best to express their ideas.'
-George Lakoff
If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a
metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people,
the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and
this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up
when you see a headline like "voter revolt" ? something that most
people read and never notice. But these things can be affected by
reporters and very often, by the campaign people themselves.
Here's another example of how powerful framing is. In Arnold
Schwarzenegger's acceptance speech, he said, "When the people win,
politics as usual loses." What's that about? Well, he knows that he's
going to face a Democratic legislature, so what he has done is frame
himself and also Republican politicians as the people, while framing
Democratic politicians as politics as usual ? in advance. The
Democratic legislators won't know what hit them. They're automatically
framed as enemies of the people.
Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing?
Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30
years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in
language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a
fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of
our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam
War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda
included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships,
setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would
write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up
think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the
Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.
[There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute
and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.]
And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who
started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio
talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they
understand their own moral system. They understand what unites
conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are
constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.
Why haven't progressives done the same thing?
There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that
conservative foundations and progressive foundations work.
Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to
their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what
you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build
TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books
to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for
their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them
on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral
system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value
preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that
means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do
this very well.
Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has
as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The
progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of
grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but
don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't
use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career
development.' So there's actually a structural reason built into the
worldviews that explains why conservatives have done better.
Back up for a second and explain what you mean by the strict father
and nurturant parent frameworks.
Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent
family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can
be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born
good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and
the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are
responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as
governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government
regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness),
civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom),
accountability (derived from trust), public service (from
responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the
promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote
these values, which are traditional progressive values in American
politics.
The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the
world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and
must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who
supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and
teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through
painful discipline ? physical punishment that by adulthood will become
internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once
grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those
children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or
recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut
free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.
George Lakoff
'Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized
society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's
an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers.'
-George Lakoff
So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the right wing,
the good citizens are the disciplined ones ? those who have already
become wealthy or at least self-reliant ? and those who are on the
way. Social programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things
they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The government is
there only to protect the nation, maintain order, administer justice
(punishment), and to provide for the promotion and orderly conduct of
business. In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth
is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such
government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that
they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.
From that framework, I can see why Schwarzenegger appealed to conservatives.
Exactly. In the strict father model, the big thing is discipline and
moral authority, and punishment for those who do something wrong. That
comes out very clearly in the Bush administration's foreign and
domestic policy. With Schwarzenegger, it's in his movies: most of the
characters that he plays exemplify that moral system. He didn't have
to say a word! He just had to stand up there, and he represents Mr.
Discipline. He knows what's right and wrong, and he's going to take it
to the people. He's not going to ask permission, or have a discussion,
he's going to do what needs to be done, using force and authority. His
very persona represents what conservatives are about.
You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How does it work?
The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting
on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the
newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you
have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be
an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the
relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The
reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad
guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief"
and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody
against relieving this affliction is a villain.
"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by
the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I
told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were
on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax
relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting
themselves in the foot.
So what should they be calling it?
It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same "it." There's
actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay
to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic
and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has
been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure.
The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education
system, the power grid, the system for training scientists ? vast
amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained
and paid for. Taxes are your dues ? you pay your dues to be an
American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that
infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that
other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is
nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange
Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly
used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.
So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.
It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you
trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's
about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country
club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course.
But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and
paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing
with our country ? the country as country club, being a member of a
remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about
that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every
candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There
would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named
Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue
by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican
side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what
language to use.
What are some other examples of issues that progressives should try to reframe?
There are too many examples, that's the problem. The so-called energy
crisis in California should have been called Grand Theft. It was
theft, it was the result of deregulation by Pete Wilson, and Davis
should have said so from the beginning.
Or take gay marriage, which the right has made a rallying topic.
Surveys have been done that say Americans are overwhelmingly against
gay marriage. Well, the same surveys show that they also
overwhelmingly object to discrimination against gays. These seem to be
opposite facts, but they're not. "Marriage" is about sex. When you say
"gay marriage," it becomes about gay sex, and approving of gay
marriage becomes implicitly about approving of gay sex. And while a
lot of Americans don't approve of gay sex, that doesn't mean they want
to discriminate against gay people. Perfectly rational position.
Framed in that way, the issue of gay marriage will get a lot of
negative reaction. But what if you make the issue "freedom to marry,"
or even better, "the right to marry"? That's a whole different story.
Very few people would say they did not support the right to marry who
you choose. But the polls don't ask that question, because the right
wing has framed that issue.
Do any of the Democratic Presidential candidates grasp the importance of framing?
None. They don't get it at all. But they're in a funny position. The
framing changes that have to be made are long-term changes. The
conservatives understood this in 1973. By 1980 they had a candidate,
Ronald Reagan, who could take all this stuff and run with it. The
progressives don't have a candidate now who understands these things
and can talk about them. And in order for a candidate to be able to
talk about them, the ideas have to be out there. You have to be able
to reference them in a sound bite. Other people have to put these
ideas into the public domain, not politicians. The question is, How do
you get these ideas out there? There are all kinds of ways, and one of
the things the Rockridge Institute is looking at is talking to
advocacy groups, which could do this very well. They have more of a
budget, they're spread all over the place, and they have access to the
media.
Right now the Democratic Party is into marketing. They pick a number
of issues like prescription drugs and Social Security and ask which
ones sell best across the spectrum, and they run on those issues. They
have no moral perspective, no general values, no identity. People vote
their identity, they don't just vote on the issues, and Democrats
don't understand that. Look at Schwarzenegger, who says nothing about
the issues. The Democrats ask, How could anyone vote for this guy?
They did because he put forth an identity. Voters knew who he is. |
