Tuesday, 4th of November, 2003

Here’s a fascinating interview with linguist George Lakoff, explaining how conservatives (he’s American, so this means Republicans, who are simultaneously seeming both more reactionary and more radical these days) have learnt to use language phenomenally effectively to “frame” an issue, and thus subtly control the way the public thinks about it.

That progressives/liberals (the political left/Green) are being left behind comes as no surprise to some of us on the left, and Lakoff’s call for progressives to use framing ourselves to challenge the right’s world-building should not be ignored as some kind of academic issue. Framing of particular concepts can entrench them as real in an insidiously misleading way. Consider:
“tax relief” - implying that there is an affliction, an afflicted party, and creating a metaphor of tax as that affliction, requiring relief, and
the “free market” - no market is free, and the progressive left should be stressing this. There are rules and regulations in place even in the futures market. Re-framing talk about economics in a consistent way will make alternative visions clearly graspable, and this contrast will make starkly clear the moral (or morally bankrupt) underpinnings of the right-wing framings.

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