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George Lakoff is a professor at U.C. Berkeley Linguistics Department. He’s written a book called Don’t Think of an Elephant His message in this interview concerns how Republicans appear to be good “framers” and Democrats are lousy ones. Here are two questions from the interview:

Question: 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.

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.

Question: 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.

This isn’t a political blog (not that my saying this is going to affect the comments but you already know that I believe in open commenting). My goal is to draw lessons from linguistics and apply them to business because it is a very useful marketing technique. For example,
“a music-listeners revolt” would imply that record companies are unfairly ruling people who listen to music. This beats the heck out of “piracy,” and the company who provides “relief” for this oppression is logically a hero.

If you play hockey and are within fifty miles of Colorado Springs, please send me an email because I’m looking for a game.