In "don't think of an elephant!!" cognitive scientist George Lakoff (Links open in new windows) focuses on the political arena with this guidebook for progressives and independents. He provides a model of how conservatives think and an explanation of why they are able to consistently win political debates, even before the debates begin.
His objective is to show moderates and progressives how to take back control of public discourse. While this presentation is focused on politics, it can also be read as a broader introduction to critical thinking, useful wherever you might be on the political spectrum.
Lakoff has been a professor at the University of California since 1972. He is a recognized expert in linguistics and cognitive science, the study of the philosophy and psychology of the mind and intelligence.
He became interested in examining politics when Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract With America caught his attention. Asking himself: "What do the conservatives' positions on issues have to do with each other?" eventually led to his 1996 book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. His current book, don't think of an elephant!, is a very accessible continuation of his application of cognitive science to politics.
Lakoff's basic concept is "framing," the idea that by selecting the right language you can create a framework evoking a set of concepts supporting and "proving" your point of view.
Once this idea-based frame is established it will be held even in the face of facts to the contrary. In the real world, it has been found that "if a strongly held frame doesn't fit the facts, the facts will be ignored and the frame will be kept."
Lakoff uses the book title as his first example. Once you hear the directive to not think of an elephant, you can't help but think of an elephant. With that comes a complete frame of concepts and ideas. In my case, that includes a large gray animal with a trunk, the circus, men with shovels and brooms, Rudyard Kipling, an old Tarzan movie and more.
President Bush's tax cuts for the rich are a more relevant political example. Instead of being about tax cuts, this debate was framed as tax relief by conservatives. Lakoff explains why this worked:
"When the word tax is added to relief, the result is a metaphor: Taxation is an affliction. And the person who takes it away is a hero, and anyone who tries to stop him is a bad guy. This is a frame. It is made up of ideas, like affliction and hero. And if people try to stop the hero, those people are villains for trying to prevent relief. "
While the ideas in the framing are not necessarily explicitly stated, they are invoked and reinforced every time the framing is mentioned. Commonsense in the context of the framed worldview tells us that "healthy forests" and "clean air" are good things and that a "death tax," a tax on dead people, is a bad thing.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
So, this is a book about how to make liberal arguments effectively even when they are directly contravened by facts? Shouldn't that very concept be a clue that there's something horribly and fundamentally wrong here?
Dave
2 - Hal Pawluk
You shouldn't try doing things you can't do, Dave.
"Reading with compreshension" seems to be one of those things, as you have demonstrated yet again.
3 - margo baldwin
you have the author as Don Hazen but it's George Lakoff! ditto for Metaphors We Live By.
4 - Nick Jones
So, this is a book about how to make reactionary arguments effectively even when they are directly contravened by facts? Shouldn't that very concept be a clue that there's something horribly and fundamentally wrong here?
Nick
5 - Marc
"When the word tax is added to relief, the result is a metaphor: Taxation is an affliction. And the person who takes it away is a hero,
Sort of like when Ted Kennedy says "quagmire" in reference to Iraq.
When what he really is saying is the Dems are stuck in the decade long quagmire of minority status in the US Senate. And haven't had a viable presidential candidate since Clinton with none on the horizon.
6 - Hal Pawluk
The error with the authors is by Amazon or Blogcritics - I only specify the ISBN number and they do the rest.
I've sent a note to Eric about it.
7 - Hal Pawluk
No, Marc, not like.
The convservatives obviously have your mind right where they want it.
8 - Hal Pawluk
No, Nick, the book is about how conservatives used language to pull the wool over your eyes.
It shows how easy it was for the right to convince you of a completely false worldview, even though the facts plainly contradict the beliefs they have implanted.
Your statement indicates that if anyone should, you especially should read the book. It would really help you.
9 - SFC SKI
Those who don't see things the way you do are obviously ignorant, deluded, brainwashed, or stupid.
Getting them to see the truth is very hard when you are so obviously right but they are blind to your presentation of logic and fact.
10 - Hal Pawluk
In a few cases it's true, Ski.
11 - SFC SKI
Hal, you are inarguably correct.
It is only the presentation of this argument by many, for lack of a better term, Left-leaning folks, aginst their opponents that only makes those on the Right even less likely to bother trying to communicate with the Left.
Some on the Right do this too, obviously.
The whole point is that if a person does not see your (not you individually) point after you present your case, maybe your case is not clearly made, or based on faulty logic, what have you, maybe you need to assess your case and the facts and tools you use to present it to see if it could be done beeter, and more clearly, and the most important, more accurately.
It is a huge problem between us on this forum, in politics, etc.
12 - RJ
The Dems and the Left use these same linguistic tools to the same effect.
Campaign Finance REFORM, for example.
Al Gore's RISKY SCHEME, for another.
UNILATERAL INVASION, for yet another.
13 - RJ
Or UNILATERAL ATTACK.
Or REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.
Or BUSH IS HITLER.
You get the point..
14 - Hal Pawluk
Sure, Ski, but that’s not what the book is about and it wasn’t my interest. The issue isn’t clarity of presentation.
I was more interested in the book as bringing the idea that debates are being framed to the attention of you and others, of any political stripe.
As I mention in the post, I made a decades-long career of using language to influence people and have done quite a bit of study on semantics and linguistics, particularly in mass communications. Most of that had to do with “consumers” but it unavoidably spilled over into my observation of politics.
It has been obvious to me for decades that politicians are playing with voters’ minds. You can go back over the last 20 years and see how they name bills to sound like one thing when they accomplish another (probably should do a list of these, but it’s too much work). This is bipartisan, although it has been Republicans doing it for the last decade since they have control of Congress.
When I saw the book last month, it simply echoed what I had been saying during the entire run-up to this past election. In fact, the book is milder " the Democrats were so inept and oblivious to how language was killing them that I was running around calling them a “Republican front” and worse names than anything I’ve said on this forum about Bush and the neocons.
Anyhow, I was sincere in the recommendation that conservative voters read the book, even though I deliberately worded the ending to piss them off. Many are voting against their best interests because they have been manipulated and the book could help them see through what they are being told (and not told).
Really.
The other side doesn’t seem to have this problem so much, perhaps because their leadership strikes me as being so stupid and incompetent that Democratic voters have to make up their own minds, based on facts and the issues rather than manipulation.
Good talkin' to you, but gotta go for now. I'll be back.
15 - Dave Nalle
But Hal, do you see how you undercut your own position by falling back on the same old loaded rhetoric that has been used so much that people now recognize it as the pandering that it is? You wind up saying that conservatives have essentially been duped into 'voting against their own best interests'. Liberals say this again and again and again, never understanding that the problem isn't that conservatives are voting against their own best interests, it's that liberals don't understand what we actually believe our best interests to be.
Dave
16 - Hal Pawluk
You really should ask Nick for his copy of the book when he's done, Dave - you seem to need it even more than he does.
17 - Shark
Great review, Hal. The book sounds spot-on to me.
For years, the Right has framed the debate, especially in their choice of words. There are a couple of right-wing think tanks that come up with these euphemisms and distribute them to GOP politicians and their constituents. Within days, the entire herd is using the same terms and phrases. It's sorta Orwellian; they're scary, but consistent.
It's been incredibly effective, though, and I don't know that the Dems have any equivalent on their side.(?)
Thanks for the heads-up on what sounds like important reading.
18 - Shark
BTW: The latest craze:
"Ownership" -- which we're going to be hearing a lot of during the next four years.
Like, who's going to oppose "ownership"?!
The one that I wanna see 'em explain is "the sanctity of marriage". No one has yet been able to articulate how a gay couple saying their vows will 'corrupt' the 'sanctity' of an abstract 'institution'.
And what the hell does 'sanctity' mean, anyway?
Just keep yer eye on the swinging pocketwatch, America.
You're getting sleepy... sleepy...
19 - Dave Nalle
Shark: "Ownership" -- which we're going to be hearing a lot of during the next four years.
Ownership is good. I bet I could 'own' you in a set of Tennis.
Shark: Like, who's going to oppose "ownership"?!
Well, Communists are as are most Anarchists.
Shark: The one that I wanna see 'em explain is "the sanctity of marriage". No one has yet been able to articulate how a gay couple saying their vows will 'corrupt' the 'sanctity' of an abstract 'institution'.
And what the hell does 'sanctity' mean, anyway?
Because Marriage is a RELIGIOUS institution, not a legal one. That's why the word Sanctity is used. And that's exactly the problem with the whole gay Marriage issue. No Marriage of any kind should be recognized by the government because it is a religious institution. Legally recognizing marriage is a violation of the separation of Church and State.
The government should recognize civil unions regardless of the genders of the participants and leave the issue of Marriage entirely up to the churches. And there are plenty of churches willing to marry two men or two women.
Dave
20 - Hal Pawluk
Thanks, Shark.
For "ownership," you migh start with my "Scam Alert" then go to my list of The "Ownership" Scam posts.
Next in the series: health plans you "own."
21 - Dave Nalle
Wow Hal, never been to your site before. It's unique. Now I know exactly where to go for summaries of every leftist delusion I want to refute with a dose of reality.
Dave
22 - Hal Pawluk
"Unique," Dave?
23 - Dave Nalle
Hal: "Unique," Dave?
Just trying to be nice. I especially like the feature where the page reloads every 30 seconds.
Dave
24 - Hal Pawluk
Are you on dial-up rather than broadband, or hitting some really slow servers today?
That's the only way I can think that you'd get the impression of constant reloading.
The first link I gave does do one reload because I provided a direct link to a page that needs to be in a frame. It's coded so when it finds it's sitting out there naked, it goes and finds the frameset then positions itself where it belongs.
In this case, I should have provided a direct link since that particular page is the default for that frameset and doesn't require reloading, so here it is.
As to "nice," the word "unique" didn't communicate anything to me so I didn't see it one way or another.
25 - DrPat
For anyone puzzled by finding only a Lakoff book list when searching for Frank Lutz at Amazon.com, try putting his name in quotes: "Frank Lutz".
His book from 1988, Candidates, Consultants and Campaigns: The Style and Substance of American Electioneering, is probably the most inclusive in the sense of spelling out strategies, but more recent works are also of interest.
If your local librarians are not too blue, there is may be a copy of the '88 volume available to check out.