A
a.saccus
Guest
Listening to the radio this morning, the DJ referred to an article in the current issue of Chronogram, a local arts / culture/alternative politics magazine, entitled "Framed: The Politics of Language, An Interview with George Lakoff." You can find the article here:
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2006/07/news/index.php
Although a quick glance at amazon shows Lakoff has written dozens of books, I've never read anything by him before. But this article makes me want to read his most recent book, "Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea," published in June.
Having spent the past few days on the amazing discernment development threads, I realize that a proper analysis of this article is way over my head. But the Lakoff article should interface with Lobaczewski somehow, because Lakoff talks about the mental mechanisms- "framing"- by which moral values are inculcated and by which the perception of truth is molded. But-as I haven't been able to read "Ponerology" yet although I have ordered it-my conclusion is based only on the portions of "Ponerology" that Laura has published on the web.
But this much I can see: that Lakoff is dealing with:
1) truth versus lies.
2) PNAC as a NeoCon agenda for an "unquestionably wrong war."
3) the distinction that, when it comes to deciding whether a person is a terrorist or a freedom fighter, "It is the framing that gives meaning to the fact."
Craig S
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2006/07/news/index.php
Although a quick glance at amazon shows Lakoff has written dozens of books, I've never read anything by him before. But this article makes me want to read his most recent book, "Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea," published in June.
Having spent the past few days on the amazing discernment development threads, I realize that a proper analysis of this article is way over my head. But the Lakoff article should interface with Lobaczewski somehow, because Lakoff talks about the mental mechanisms- "framing"- by which moral values are inculcated and by which the perception of truth is molded. But-as I haven't been able to read "Ponerology" yet although I have ordered it-my conclusion is based only on the portions of "Ponerology" that Laura has published on the web.
But this much I can see: that Lakoff is dealing with:
1) truth versus lies.
2) PNAC as a NeoCon agenda for an "unquestionably wrong war."
3) the distinction that, when it comes to deciding whether a person is a terrorist or a freedom fighter, "It is the framing that gives meaning to the fact."
Craig S
CHRONOGRAM said:Framed: The Politics of Language
An Interview With George Lakoff
by Lorna Tychostup
As a cognitive linguist, prolific author, challenger of Noam Chomsky, and professor of linguistics at Berkeley, George Lakoff looks at a single word and sees more than a simple grouping of letters assigned a specific meaning or meanings. Instead, he sees that word as a trigger, a neural pathway carved into the brain that immediately and automatically summons up a person's intrinsic values-the values which define identity and beliefs. All words are "frames," Lakoff says. String a few well-chosen words together, and a slogan is born. Similar to the way Pavlov's dogs reacted to his ringing a bell, when a person hears a frame in the form of a word or grouping of words, images, feelings, and definitions specific to that person and the nuances of his or her personal social upbringing are evoked. Having analyzed the differences between how "conservatives" and "progressives" view the world, Lakoff structures his discussion of those differences based on what he sees as the two widely varying sets of frames each group is raised under-the "strict father model" (conservative) vs. the "nurturant parent model" (progressive).
The definition behind any particular frame may or may not represent the actual truth, but after hearing or reading that frame enough times, the set of beliefs the frame evokes becomes the truth. The real truth dissipates as it is replaced by a false truth-or in some cases, more simply put, a lie. For example, what images and feelings does the phrase "War on Terror" conjure up for you? Do you see the "War on Terror" as an actual war, or do you see it as a slogan put together to direct public opinion? What stirs in your heart when you hear or read those three words? How would you define the "War on Terror?" Does your definition accurately represent the truth? Or is your definition merely representative of a bowl of food you've been fed over a period of time that stimulates the same reaction? If the bowl is emptied-for example, the frames associated with WWII that were used to stir the hearts and minds of Americans were no longer needed and were put to rest over time-can those same words be used again at some point in the future, say, in relation to the current "War on Terror," to conjure the nostalgic feelings associated with that time period?
I originally intended my conversation with George Lakoff to focus on the immigration debate, following the publication by the Rockridge Institute of a report by Lakoff and Sam Ferguson, "The Framing of Immigration," in late May. However, as Lakoff quickly proved, the focus and outcome of all debate rests in how one frames that debate. He believes that conservatives have sunk a lot of time and money into framing their issues. In the case of progressives, Lakoff says "a conceptual overhaul" and "reframing" of how to approach and define issues is in order if their message is to be understood. Lakoff's latest book, Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, published in June by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, discusses the competing rhetoric used by progressives and conservatives in shaping political discourse.
Lorna Tychostup: Please explain "framing."
George Lakoff: The idea is this: We think in terms of mental structures, and all words are defined by those structures. For example, take a word like "relief." For there to be "relief," there has to be an "affliction" and an "afflicted party" who is harmed by that affliction, and a "reliever" who takes that affliction away and is therefore a "hero." And if anybody tries to stop the hero they're a "bad guy." If you add "tax" to that, you get a metaphor that "taxation" is an affliction to be taken away. And if anybody tries to stop taking that affliction away, they are bad people. Any time you hear the words "tax relief" that "frame" comes up. Frames have certain semantic roles, which in this example include the affliction, the afflicted party, and the interloper. Then you also have "properties" of these things. The affliction is "bad"-an abstract thing. The afflicted party is a person. The reliever is a person. They have relations among them, which is "the affliction harms the afflicted party," "the reliever takes it away," etc. So there is a "scenario." And these parts show up in frame after frame-that is, frames have a structure and we reason in terms of these structures. And words are defined relative to these structures so that use of the word invokes the entire frame. In addition, if you learn the words, you learn the frame. And because you think with your brain you learn a frame. The frame is physically represented in the synapses of your brain.
LT: The pathway is carved.
GL: Exactly. I am co-director of the Neural Theory of Language program at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley, and this is part of what I have been doing for the past 15 years. What that means is that if the frame is established-if there are facts that do not fit the frame and you don't have any other frame to make sense of the facts, so the frame trumps the facts. The frame stays. The facts are ignored because the frame defines common sense. Common sense is the use of the frames you already have. Got it?
LT: Yes, I've got the sheep imagery down. You carve the synapse, you've got the path, all follow.
GL: It is more complicated than that. That is what is called a "surface frame." The interesting part consists of "deep frames." The deep frames include moral worldviews and fundamental principle.
LT: This frame gets to the heart of the matter? How a person feels about something deep inside of them?
GL: Yes, and not only that, the frame defines the person's identity. That's the big deal.
LT: So the frame I accept represents what I am as a person.
GL: Exactly. Let me give you the examples of that. Let me tell you how I came on these examples. In 1994 during the Newt Gingrich era, while that election was going on, I asked myself a question: Why should the same people who are against abortion be for the flat tax? What does taxation have to do with abortion? Why should those same people be against environmental regulation, and against gun control? Why should those people be against the death penalty, and for tort reform, and against environmental regulation? What do all these things have to do with one another? It made no sense to me. Then I noticed that I had the opposite views on all of these things. I couldn't answer the question. Very embarrassing. I recognized this was a problem in my field of cognitive science so I began to conduct research and I got the answer from conservatives: "Family values." We have the metaphor of the nation as a family: the founding fathers, Daughters of the American Revolution, Homeland Security, etc. That metaphor is a very natural one, and is there because your first experience with governance is with your family. So, basically, any governing institution can be seen as a family. The idea is that that metaphor-the nation as a family-has two versions, each representing two different types of families giving two different views of the nation, and two different views of what is moral: the strict father family, and the nurturing parent family.
The strict father family has a strict father who is a moral authority in charge of the family, and mommy is a subordinate to him. And a strict father is needed because there is evil in the world and he must protect the family; there are competitions in the world [and] he must deal with them to support the family; and kids are born bad, in the sense that they just do what they want to do because they don't know right from wrong-an absolute right and an absolute wrong-and it is the father's job to teach them via punishment when they do wrong. So if he disciplines them when they do wrong then they will develop internal disciplines to avoid the pain of the physical discipline and they will discipline themselves to do "right." And that is the only way they will become moral beings. And if they do "right" and get discipline, there is this wonderful secondary effect: They will use the discipline out in the world in the market to become prosperous.
LT: This is one model.
GL: Yes. And you can see its political effects. If you are not prosperous, you are not disciplined. Therefore you are not moral. So you deserve your poverty. The strict father is in charge. Morality is obedience. He is the decider in everything. Whether it's foreign policy or domestic policy, he is not to be questioned. All of this is part of the model.
The other model is the nurturing parent model, where the parents are equal if there are two of them (there may be only one). Their job is to nurture their children and most importantly, to raise their children to be nurturers of others. The nurturance has two parts: empathy and care, and responsibility to act on that care. That means you are responsible for yourself-you can't take care of anyone else if you are not taking care of yourself-and responsibility. You raise your kids to care about other people, to be responsible for themselves and socially responsible. And that is the opposite of indolence.
From that model you get all progressive principles. You raise your child[ren] and you have to protect them. From that you get worker protection, environmental protection, consumer protection, and safety nets. You care about your kid, you want them to be happy and fulfilled. In order to be fulfilled they have to be free. In order to be free they have to have opportunities. In order to have opportunities there has to be general prosperity. All of this is part of the liberal ideal. You are not alone. You live in community. What kind of community? A nurturing community with leaders who care, are responsible, and where people are responsible to each other. And that requires cooperation, which requires trust, which requires honesty. Those are the values.
So you have two versions of "family values." They're both part of the picture, and what is most interesting is that everybody knows both models.
LT: What bothers me about this view is that it is so polarizing. From a sociological viewpoint this is generalizing and stereotyping the whole population into two sides.
GL: The interesting thing is that some people, probably a good third of Americans, live by both of these models in both parts of their lives.
LT: So one family can experience each of these models at the same time?
GL: Yes. And each of these models is not necessarily what you experience in your family, but also what you experience in your culture-in the movies and on TV.
LT: As you were going through your examples I thought, "Well, my home was conservative, where did I come from?"
GL: Exactly. A lot of people are like that. Their culture, their peers, school experiences, nurturing teachers, etc.-some people can recognize them, and sometimes you rebel against one. Some people live entirely by one model, but they will recognize the other in the movies or on TV. When you watch a John Wayne movie, you don't leave and say, "What was that about?"
So that is a piece of this story. From this you get all of the ideological positions and you predict new ones.
LT: Predict new ones?
GL: If a new issue comes up, you know what to say about it. Stem cell research-you know what to say about it. There is more to say about all of this, but in general, these models give you an idea of where to come down on an issue. You get a set of principles, a model. And the model generates your position on the issue. A new issue comes up and the model will tell you how to think.
LT: These models are used politically. I think of the lead-up to and the beginning of the war on Iraq. The language coming from the American leadership seemed to be straight out of World War II and it was clear to see how people responded to it.
GL: Well, they took an unquestionably wrong war and said Saddam Hussein was Hitler-which they had tried to use before-and we have to go to war. The war was planned in advance and it was based on neo-conservatives' notions of the national interests that the Project for the New American Century laid out in 1996. It has been sitting there on the Internet-you can read it.
www.newamericancentury.org/publicat...egy, Forces, and Resources For a New Century.
LT: Yes. They had a blueprint with core principles: defend the American homeland; fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars; perform the "constabulary" duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions; transform US forces to exploit the "revolution in military affairs." It spoke about the need for an event mimicking the attack on Pearl Harbor to consolidate the US public's support for rebuilding a military that could dominate the world. The PNAC document goes so far as to warn: "Further, the process of transformation [of the US military], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor." And here we find ourselves. You speak of "reframing"-telling the truth as progressives see it.
GL: The first thing is that the brute facts are tough. Say someone dies-they got shot in the head. Is this person a terrorist or a freedom fighter? If they are still alive-were they shot defending the country, and therefore should be immediately sent to Walter Reed Hospital to [get patched up], or should we let them fester in Iraq or let them die? So the brute facts have to be framed. Unframed, they may mean nothing. It is the framing that gives meaning to the fact.
LT: It means nothing to whom?
GL: It means nothing to anybody without a frame. If you are suffering, that suffering provides a frame. If you empathize with somebody that means you're working in that frame model.
LT: Your example was: terrorist vs. freedom fighter. This is an example I use in my lectures. I say, "Freedom fighter, insurgent, terrorist, whatever you decide you want to call them is based on your beliefs. It is the same person."
GL: What you are doing is writing them another frame. You are trying to say, "These are just people. And these people are being framed by other people. But they are just folks." It is a different frame and a choice to step out of the ideologies, a humanist frame that says, "These are just folks."
LT: Well, I am also trying to point out the frames that are present. I say, "You might call them a terrorist but the person next to you might call them a freedom fighter. And we have to define terms before we can begin the discussion."
GL: It is not just about defining terms. They fit into the structure, and not just the structure where there is a word "terrorist" but terrorist as it fits into the "strict father" or "nurturing parent" models.
LT: And this is where the reframing comes in. How does one reframe?
GL: Yes. We are trying to make people aware of their frames. It ain't so easy. First of all, you have to know what you are doing. The other guys-the conservatives-know what they are doing because they have all these "think tanks" that have formed in the last 35 years and have been doing research. They have spent about $4 billion over the last 35 years. They spend $400 million per year now. The source of these figures is Rob Stein of the Democracy Alliance. The conservatives have research think tanks, training institutes; they spend about half of their money on media; they have a booking agency that books conservatives on radio and TV around the country so 80 percent of talking heads are conservative.
LT: They have a machine?
GL: Yes. It has become clearer over the past few years. Rob Stein made it very clear in 2003. The Democracy Alliance is attempting to get money to do something about this. Progressive think tanks are being formed-the only one really dedicated to reframing is the Rockridge Institute, which I am affiliated with, but [it] has very little money. The problem is that people think that framing is just words. But it is ideas-deep ideas within us.
LT: Ideas that cut to the heart of a person?
GL: Yes, ideas that define them as a person.
LT: So how do we reframe issues?
GL: We have to use the fact that a lot of people are bi-conceptual and you have to activate their nurturing model with words and with arguments. To do it you must repeat your argument over and over and over. You have to carefully construct these arguments so they undermine the other guy's arguments. The biggest advantage we have is that a majority of people already have a version of this nurturing model within them even if it is not very active. But it is there.
LT: I have seen this everywhere I go when giving lectures around the country. People are so concerned. The majority are concerned about the same things. Yet they just have no direction, no leadership. No one is directing traffic.
GL: That is exactly right. I have a new book coming out called Whose Freedom? which gets into this.
LT: What scares me about one thing you say is that if the truth doesn't fit the existing frame, the frame will stay in place and the truth will dissipate.
GL: You got it. That is scary.
LT: It's horrifying.
GL: It is horrifying, but it is true. You notice it, right?
LT: Yes.
GL: Everybody has understood this except Al Gore.
LT: Well, wouldn't we call him an idealist?
GL: I would call him a rationalist. He goes around giving talks that are rational. In his movie, which I think is very good, he actually does not just give the facts when he frames global warming. He frames global warming from a nurturing perspective.
LT: Well, he is an environmentalist at heart and the environmentalist view says, "Nurture the earth and it will nurture us back."
GL: That's the idea.
LT: You talk about the frames in today's immigration debate. There is the "they are illegal" frame, the security frame, the amnesty frame, the undocumented worker, the temporary worker, the guest worker, the humanitarian frame, the foreign policy frame.
GL: There are issue-defining frames. If you say, "the problem is that of illegal immigration," then who is to blame? The immigrants. If you say, "the problem is that of illegal employment," then the people to blame are the employers. So if you define the problem as one of illegal employers, it can't be illegal to make more money, it is a different problem than that of illegal immigrants. Or if [you say] the problem is illegal consumption-that the American consumers want cheap goods and a better lifestyle without having to pay for it. Or you can define it as a problem of our free trade policies, which have screwed up the Mexican economy. There are all kinds of ways to frame this problem. You could frame it as a cheap labor problem-that is, our corporations are structured to drive down the cost of labor. Labor is seen as a resource and you maximize profit by retaining responsible resources.
LT: There is also the frame that says, "This is work Americans won't do."
GL: Which is not necessarily true. Americans won't do it for pay that will cause them to live below the poverty line. If you say, "If you pick strawberries I'll pay you a million dollars a day," everybody is going to be out there picking strawberries. You get the general picture. So we went through all the frames that are being used and the frames that are not being used. The point is, conservatives naturally gravitate toward certain frames. And what is interesting about this is that the conservative and liberal models are complicated and this issue of immigration creates fissures in their accepted models. If you consider one part of the model more important, and the other person who believes in your model considers a different part more important, they might both be conservative but they will come down on different sides of the issue. Bush considers the market the most important thing. Right? Free trade policy. So he is for temporary workers. This involves letting those who are here or who have been here for five years or more get citizenship because they are ready and able to work. And we are going to need a big supply of temporary workers who are young and who aren't voting-because Republicans don't want them to vote because they would vote Democratic-and don't have rights to things like medical care, etc. So temporary workers are a way to bring in labor that is cheap and where the people have no rights. From my point of view, this is pathetic, but from Bush's point of view it is the practical and right thing to do because they make some money and he makes some money, the market recedes, and the corporations are more profitable.
LT: Where is the fissure?
GL: The fissure is this. We talked about models, and there is something I didn't tell you. There is a moral hierarchy which pairs morality and power. Moral people should be the people in power because they are good people. Good people are disciplined people. There is a hierarchy of power positions: God above man; man above nature; adults above children; men above women; white above non-whites; American and western culture above non-western culture; America above all other nations; straight above gays, right?
A lot of social conservatives have this hierarchy. To acquire this hierarchy-the first part is already built into all conservatives. They may or may not be bigots, but they all believe in America over other countries, western culture over non-Western culture, etc. What does that say? Inferior people are coming into the country speaking a language that is inferior to our language, and they are threatening our culture and our way of life. They are lesser beings and we need to boot them out, deport them, and not only that-according to our morality-if you do something bad you must be punished. It is a duty to punish people. And the immigrants are criminals because they committed the crime of crossing the border without papers. So they should be arrested and deported. And more of them shouldn't be let in.
LT: Except the ones who tend their yards. Social conservatives use this labor source as well.
GL: They sure do. And they are conflicted. They have to decide whether their profits are more important than their bigotry.
LT: This is interesting. I spoke recently with a financial advisor here in my incredibly green and progressive community. He told me that the greenest of the green people come and ask for green and/or sustainable investment prospects which he has plenty of to offer. As part of the job, he has to tell them that the green investments don't have as high a yield as the others and to a person-
GL: They go with the higher yield?
LT: Yes. He said this is true even of the greenest of the green who preach green in their daily lives and work. The bottom line is profit. Money.
GL: Paul Hawken did a study of socially responsible investment companies. He found that they had no rigid standards for identifying real socially responsible funds.
See "The Truth About Ethical Investing," www.alternet.org/story/21888.
LT: What do you suggest as a progressive solution to immigration in the US?
GL: I do not make any suggestions for the following reason. Immigration is the wrong issue. There is a set of issues-this is complex causation in action-there is a set of issues here: One is what I'll call a cheap labor trap. We have a corporate system and economic system that drives down the price of labor and insists on cheaper and cheaper labor to earn more and more profits. That creates the trap that everybody can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It also increases the demand for cheaper labor that we can't supply via the people in this country. Not only that, this creates a trap for Americans who are poor. Their wages aren't going to go up. Profits for American corporations have doubled since Bush came into office and wages have declined slightly.
LT: And according to a farmer in my community of disappearing farms, apples are the same price per pound that they were 15 years ago. So what is the answer?
GL: I am not going to give you an answer. I am saying you have to understand the questions before you can get an answer. The question is a huge question. This is about cheap labor. It is about US foreign policy and the way so-called free trade is screwing up other countries. You can't address this question without taking a serious look at the heart of the so-called free trade policies and so on.
LT: So it requires an extensive examination of all the issues?
GL: Yes. On this question and on other questions as well. What about American workers who are trapped? They are not separate. What you are doing is pitting them against the immigrants. So many of them are angry at the immigrants for political reasons. While their wages are going down other people are profiting. And then there is the question of who gets the profits? Well, the people who get the profits are wealthy investors. The top one percent of the country own 33 percent of the wealth. That's more than the bottom 90 percent. And that has doubled in the past 30 years. Now there are other people in between. So if you take the top 10 percent, they have 95 percent of the wealth.
LT: The bottom line, besides that it all needs close examination, is that economics of the situation is the crux.
GL: Right. The economics of the situation is the crux. And it involves the economics of the wealth distribution, the economics of: What does the balance sheet look like? Why is labor considered a resource? And laws that say that corporations must maximize profits to shareholders. It has to do with trade policies.
LT: So ultimately there is a deeper truth here. But the frame as far as immigration is what we spoke about earlier: The truth is dissipating and the existing frame is becoming accepted as fact.
GL: Yes.
