Framing the issues: how conservatives use language to dominate politics

This is a great interview with UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute.

"In 2000 Lakoff and seven other faculty members from Berkeley and UC Davis joined together to found the Rockridge Institute, one of the only progressive think tanks in existence in the U.S."
<snip>

"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?'
<snip>

"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."

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

An absolute must-read. We're more than 30 years behind the conservatives on this. We've got a lot of catching up to do. And we owe it to ourselves to learn to recognize framing every time it occurs, rather than flashing on it subliminally and moving on.

www.RockridgeInstitute.org

Or click through to the Rockridge Institute.

Lots and lots of excellent stuff over there

--bkl

I hadn't gotten that far yet.

and do check out the Rockridge Institute site.

Like a lightbulb going off above my head.

:kick:

Are we behind because we don't use sophic garbage like this? We all know that how words a phrased has a greater effect than what is actually said, and simply because Liberals haven't stooped to abusing this ideas is not a reason for regret; it means we have integrity. However, if you mean we should make a much greater effort to combat the opposition's exploitation of speech, pointing it out everywhere it's used, then I would definitely agree. However people like short snappy speeches, not long ones about how those sorts of speeches are misleading and prey on voter ignorance (which even if it's phrased better, that's essentially how it's going to sound), so it may not work too well.