Have you read Lakoff?

[BurtWorm]

Poll question: Have you read Lakoff?

In particular, have you read "Don't Think of an Elephant?"

[Larkspur]

1. Yes, and I'm starting to read his "Moral Politics" book now

I also played the DVD to some of my progressive co-workers over lunch. We had a good discussion afterwards.

[BurtWorm]

2. kick

[Walt Starr]

3. Don't think of an Elephant, Moral Politics and

Metaphors We Live By.

also, every article on the Rockridge Institute web site.

[AP]

4. I've read Moral Politics, lots of stuff on the Rockridge Inst web page,

the interview that was in the UCB alumni magazine which was linked here a while ago, and heard a very long interview with him on my local NPR station in which he analyzed the election.

Haven't read any of his other books, and haven't seen the DVD.

[AP]

5. And here's what I feel qualified to say about Lakoff:

(this is from the other Lakoff-Digby thread floating around here)

AP  (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-03-05 08:08 AM
Response to Original message

31. Often, I don't recognize the Lakoff I've read in other people's interpretations.

Lakoff advocates reframing terminology in the few situations where Republicans know that people would never accept the policy application of their conservative value system. Nobody wants pollution, so they call their environmental policies "Clear Skies" initiatives, or whatever. Lakoff says that you can't let them get away with that.

But Lakoff's bigger argument is not about terminology. It's about competing value systems. And 90% of his argument is showing how and why people buy the conservative value system -- and when they do, there's no need for Orwellian terminology to hide what they're really trying to achieve. There's no need to cover up all the "survival of the fittest" terminology when so many people are content to have a survival of the fittest world. And there's no need to pretend you're not fear mongering when you're successfully scaring people into supporting conservative politicians and policies with your fear mongering.
Most of Lakoff's 800 page book Moral Politics is not about coming up with new terminology to counter the Republican's Orwellian language. Most of it is an argument about starting from a paradigm that articulates progressive values. He says Republicans are so successful because they start with the value system and then they plug in the policies to fit the value system. Democrats on the other hand have a laundry list of policy proposals which they justify with statistics and they never bother to try to show people how they all fit together within a values-based framework.

I agree that Lakoff is not a political scientist, and therefore some of his conclusions (for example, about the role Nader played in 2000) I think are way off. But in terms of identifying the cognitive frameworks and the use of language in politics, I think he's hit the target. And his argument about what all the disparate progressive policies have in common is very convincing (although another weak part of his book is when he practically applies his theories to real policy debates -- it's kind of like the movie Apollo 13, where the best part is how the NASA guys put the pieces together to fix the capsule, but they never show it; Lakoff is very lazy and glosses over the practical applications, and that could be the best part of the book).

I think it's definitely the case, as Lakoff argues, that conservatives believe that people are better off when the world is a harsh place that doesn't coddle the weak, and that progressives tend to think that we're all better off when we're all better off, and that there's a lot of power in collective action to make sure that we, as a society, can run on all cylinders.

In fact, I don't see how the example from Spitzer above doesn't fit within that paradigm.

In any event, when progressives talk about "framing the debate" whether they're criticizing like Digby above, or they think they're doing it like the DU "Frame the Debate" Group -- often I think they're confused.

When Lakoff is talking about framing, he means a values framework, and not counter Orwellian terminology framing. If you're just trying to come up with alternative terms, you're doing the smallest part of the argument. What Lakoff is really telling progressives to think about is articulating policies within a unified theory of liberalism that is anchored in a system of values.

People don't remember every policy and every statistic. But if they know what you believe, they can project out your behavior onto just about every policy position imaginable.

It's like the movie Star Wars. A big part of making a good movie is good characters. How do you tell an audience about a character? Do you do it by giving them a laundry list of actions that they'd engage in? No. You try to develop their character by implying their motivations and their beliefs through showing a few actions, by sharing their thoughts, by how they dress, by telling you where they came from, through a hair cut, how they walk, etc.

If it's done well then the viewer should be able to imagine what that character would do in situations that aren't even represented in the movie.
Think of Han Solo. I bet you could talk for hours about what Han Solo is like and what he'd do in various circumstances, and you can imagine what his childhood was like and what he's going to be like as a father and an old man. Where'd you get those ideas? Not because you saw them, but because of great characterization.

I think a lot of Americans don't have a clue what Democrats would do when confronted with various policies or dilemmas because the Democrats don't spend any time "characterizing" themselves -- ie, telling people what their values are. Oh, I take that back. Voters would presume that Democrats would act the way Republicans characterize them as acting because the vacuum that the Democrats leave in defining themselves is being filled by characterizations created by Republicans.