>Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff
>tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics
>
>By Bonnie Azab Powell,
>NewsCenter | 27 October 2003
>
>BERKELEY With Republicans controlling the Senate, the
>House, and the White House and enjoying a large margin of
>victory for California Governor-elect Arnold
>Schwarzenegger, it's clear that the Democratic Party is in
>crisis. George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of
>linguistics and cognitive science, thinks he knows why.
>Conservatives have spent decades defining their ideas,
>carefully choosing the language with which to present them,
>and building an infrastructure to communicate them, says
>Lakoff.
>
>The work has paid off: by dictating the terms of national
>debate, conservatives have put progressives firmly on the
>defensive.
>
>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. The institute offers its
>expertise and research on a nonpartisan basis to help
>progressives understand how best to get their messages
>across. The Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor
>in the College of Letters & Science, Lakoff is the author
>of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think,"
>first published in 1997 and reissued in 2002, as well as
>several other books on how language affects our lives. He
>is taking a sabbatical this year to write three books ?
>none about politics ? and to work on several Rockridge
>Institute research projects.
>
>In a long conversation over coffee at the Free Speech
>Movement Café, he told the NewsCenter's Bonnie Azab Powell
>why the Democrats "just don't get it," why Schwarzenegger
>won the recall election, and why conservatives will
>continue to define the issues up for debate for the
>foreseeable future.
>
>Why was the Rockridge Institute created, and how do you
>define its purpose?
>
>I got tired of cursing the newspaper every morning. I got
>tired of seeing what was going wrong and not being able to
>do anything about it.
>
>The background for Rockridge is that conservatives,
>especially conservative think tanks, have framed virtually
>every issue from their perspective. They have put a huge
>amount of money into creating the language for their
>worldview and getting it out there. Progressives have done
>virtually nothing. Even the new Center for American
>Progress, the think tank that John Podesta [former chief of
>staff for the Clinton administration] is setting up, is not
>dedicated to this at all. I asked Podesta who was going to
>do the Center's framing. He got a blank look, thought for a
>second and then said, "You!" Which meant they haven't
>thought about it at all. And that's the problem. Liberals
>don't get it. They don't understand what it is they have to
>be doing.
>
>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?'
>
>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.
>
>'Conservatives understand what unites them, and they
>understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly
>updating their research on how best to express their
>ideas.'
>-George Lakoff
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at
>framing?
>
>Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the
>last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy
>investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme
>Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the
>National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best
>students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam
>War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's
>agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up
>professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus
>where intellectuals would write books from a conservative
>business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He
>outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage
>Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.
>[There are many others, including the American Enterprise
>Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date
>from the 1940s.]
>
>And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul
>Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have
>1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge,
>very good operation, and they understand their own moral
>system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they
>understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly
>updating their research on how best to express their ideas.
>
>
>Why haven't progressives done the same thing?
>
>There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the
>way that conservative foundations and progressive
>foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block
>grants year after year to their think tanks. They say,
>'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.'
>And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV
>studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot
>of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire
>research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well
>on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of
>that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I
>analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value
>preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself.
>And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen,
>they know how to do this very well.
>
>Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant
>parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who
>need help. The progressive foundations and donors give
>their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They
>say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of
>it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for
>administration, communication, infrastructure, or career
>development.' So there's actually a structural reason built
>into the worldviews that explains why conservatives have
>done better.
>
>Back up for a second and explain what you mean by the
>strict father and nurturant parent frameworks.
>
>Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant
>parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is
>basically good and can be made better and that one must
>work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make
>them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the
>responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom
>we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies
>follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social
>safety net and government regulation, universal education
>(to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal
>treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived
>from trust), public service (from responsibility), open
>government (from open communication), and the promotion of
>an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these
>values, which are traditional progressive values in
>American politics.
>
>The conservative worldview, the strict father model,
>assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that
>children are born bad and must be made good. The strict
>father is the moral authority who supports and defends the
>family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids
>right from wrong. The only way to do that is through
>painful discipline ? physical punishment that by adulthood
>will become internal discipline. The good people are the
>disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant,
>disciplined children are on their own. Those children who
>remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or
>recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further
>discipline or be cut free with no support to face the
>discipline of the outside world.
>
>'Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a
>civilized society that is democratic and offers
>opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has
>been paid for by previous taxpayers.'
>-George Lakoff
>
>So, project this onto the nation and you see that to the
>right wing, the good citizens are the disciplined ones ?
>those who have already become wealthy or at least
>self-reliant ? and those who are on the way. Social
>programs, meanwhile, "spoil" people by giving them things
>they haven't earned and keeping them dependent. The
>government is there only to protect the nation, maintain
>order, administer justice (punishment), and to provide for
>the promotion and orderly conduct of business. In this way,
>disciplined people become self-reliant. Wealth is a measure
>of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such
>government take away from the good, disciplined people
>rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who
>have not earned it.
>
> From that framework, I can see why Schwarzenegger appealed
>to conservatives.
>
>Exactly. In the strict father model, the big thing is
>discipline and moral authority, and punishment for those
>who do something wrong. That comes out very clearly in the
>Bush administration's foreign and domestic policy. With
>Schwarzenegger, it's in his movies: most of the characters
>that he plays exemplify that moral system. He didn't have
>to say a word! He just had to stand up there, and he
>represents Mr. Discipline. He knows what's right and wrong,
>and he's going to take it to the people. He's not going to
>ask permission, or have a discussion, he's going to do what
>needs to be done, using force and authority. His very
>persona represents what conservatives are about.
>
>You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How
>does it work?
>
>The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House
>starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got
>picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term,
>which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief."
>For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an
>afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and
>an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The
>reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is
>the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add
>"tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is
>an affliction, and anybody against relieving this
>affliction is a villain.
>
>"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I
>was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to
>talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using
>tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after,
>Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press
>conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in
>the foot.
>
>So what should they be calling it?
>
>It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same
>"it." There's actually a whole other way to think about it.
>Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a
>civilized society that is democratic and offers
>opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has
>been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge
>infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV
>system, the public education system, the power grid, the
>system for training scientists ? vast amounts of
>infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained
>and paid for. Taxes are your dues ? you pay your dues to be
>an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that
>infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of
>it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for
>example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The
>Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of
>the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And
>we're all paying for it.
>
>So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.
>
>It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or
>are you trying to get something for free at the expense of
>your country? It's about being a member. People pay a
>membership fee to join a country club, for which they get
>to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they
>didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built
>and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's
>the same thing with our country ? the country as country
>club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would
>it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic
>senator and all of their aides and every candidate would
>have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would
>have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy
>named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every
>year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the
>position is from the Republican side, what the other guys'
>logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.
>
>What are some other examples of issues that progressives
>should try to reframe?
>
>There are too many examples, that's the problem. The
>so-called energy crisis in California should have been
>called Grand Theft. It was theft, it was the result of
>deregulation by Pete Wilson, and Davis should have said so
>from the beginning.
>
>Or take gay marriage, which the right has made a rallying
>topic. Surveys have been done that say Americans are
>overwhelmingly against gay marriage. Well, the same surveys
>show that they also overwhelmingly object to discrimination
>against gays. These seem to be opposite facts, but they're
>not. "Marriage" is about sex. When you say "gay marriage,"
>it becomes about gay sex, and approving of gay marriage
>becomes implicitly about approving of gay sex. And while a
>lot of Americans don't approve of gay sex, that doesn't
>mean they want to discriminate against gay people.
>Perfectly rational position. Framed in that way, the issue
>of gay marriage will get a lot of negative reaction. But
>what if you make the issue "freedom to marry," or even
>better, "the right to marry"? That's a whole different
>story. Very few people would say they did not support the
>right to marry who you choose. But the polls don't ask that
>question, because the right wing has framed that issue.
>
>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 Democrat 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.
>
>"The 'free market' doesn't exist":
>More on framing from George Lakoff
>
>27 October 2003
>
>The NewsCenter's conversation with George Lakoff, UC
>Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science,
>continues. Here, Lakoff dissects the hidden associations of
>everyday terms such as liberal, progressive and free
>market.
>
>Are "progressive" and "liberal" different, or is Rockridge
>trying to sidestep the conservatives' successfully having
>framed "liberal" as pejorative?
>
>Well, there is some of that, but both terms are kind of
>mushy and vague. After World War II and the Vietnam War,
>"liberal" came to mean someone who supports [Franklin
>Delano Roosevelt's] New Deal, and a strong military and
>foreign policy. The term "progressive" originated from
>people who were Democratic Socialists, but the socialism
>aspect has dropped away, and it's come to mean what I call
>"nurturant morality." It includes choosing peace whenever
>possible, environmentalism, civil liberties, minority
>rights, notions like social justice through living wages,
>et cetera. "Progressive" has been chosen, in part, to
>contrast in a forward-looking way with "conservative" ? for
>example, as when Podesta chose the name "The Center for
>American Progress" for his new think tank.
>
>'Conservatives have a word for people who are not pursuing
>their self interest. They're called "do-gooders," and they
>get in the way of people who are pursuing their
>self-interest.'
>-George Lakoff
>
>Also, within traditional liberalism you have a history of
>rational thought that was born out of the Enlightenment:
>all meanings should be literal, and everything should
>follow logically. So if you just tell people the facts,
>that should be enough ? the truth shall set you free. All
>people are fully rational, so if you tell them the truth,
>they should reach the right conclusions. That, of course,
>has been a disaster.
>
>Meaning, for example, that if you tell people that the tax
>cuts are overwhelmingly benefiting the richest 1 percent of
>Americans at the expense of a balanced budget, liberals
>think people will naturally revolt against the measure.
>
>Exactly. It never works. And liberals don't know why. They
>don't understand that there's another frame involved.
>Here's another example: I've been working with a lot of
>nongovernmental organizations and advocacy groups of
>various kinds, including an environmental health group
>researching what they called the "body burden."
>
>The what?
>
>The body burden ? you have to hear it twice, right? It
>refers to the amount of toxic chemicals you have in your
>body. This group did a study with the Centers for Disease
>Control and found that there are vast numbers of toxic
>chemicals in our bodies, and in the bodies of newborn
>babies, in mothers' milk, and so on. I asked them how they
>were going to frame this. They said, "What do you mean?
>We're just going to put out a report with all the
>statistics, and they'll be so shocking that everything will
>change." So they did: a few papers ran it on page 17, some
>papers ran it a little but more. The next day it was done.
>
>But is that a failure of framing, or a failure of
>infrastructure, as in no public relations team, no properly
>prepared talk-show guests on staff?
>
>It's a failure of the whole thing: not taking communication
>seriously and not taking conceptualization seriously.
>Anyway, they came back to me a couple of months later and
>asked how they should run a campaign on it. I said, "It's
>very simple. You call your campaign Be Poison-Free."
>
>Why use the word "poison"? Because the framing of poison
>has a poisoner. It makes you look at who is doing the
>poisoning. Everyone knows what poison is ? it kills you.
>Everybody knows that. Now of course you then have to run a
>serious campaign and have the money to do that and have the
>public relations support, which is harder, but the first
>step is understanding how to frame it.
>
>What about the phrase "free market"? Is that an example of
>framing?
>
>Yes, but one that's so deeply embedded that it's difficult
>at first to see how. You have to start with the metaphor
>that the market is a force of nature, which comes from [the
>economist] Adam Smith, who says that if everybody pursues
>their own profit, then the profit of all will be maximized
>by the "invisible hand" ? by which he means nature. There
>is also a metaphor that well-being is wealth. If I do you a
>favor, therefore making things better for you, then you
>say, "How can I ever repay you? I'm in your debt." It's as
>if I'd given you money. We understand our well-being as
>wealth.
>
>Combine them, and you get the conservatives' version that
>says if everybody pursues their own well-being, the
>well-being of all will be maximized by nature. They have
>the metaphorical notion of a free market even in their
>child-rearing system. It's not just an economic theory;
>it's a moral theory. When you discipline your children,
>they get internal discipline to become self-reliant, which
>means they can pursue their self-interest and get along in
>a difficult world. Conservatives even have a word for
>people who are not pursuing their self interest. They're
>called "do-gooders," and they get in the way of people who
>are pursuing their self-interest.
>
>OK, but how is that a frame, rather than a guiding
>ideology?
>
>Because the "free market" doesn't exist. There is no such
>thing. All markets are constructed. Think of the stock
>exchange. It has rules. The WTO [World Trade Organization]
>has 900 pages of regulations. The bond market has all kinds
>of regulations and commissions to make sure those
>regulations carried out. Every market has rules. For
>example, corporations have a legal obligation to maximize
>shareholder profit. That's a construction of the market.
>Now, it doesn't have to be that way. You could make that
>rule, "Corporations must maximize stakeholder value."
>Stakeholders ? as opposed to shareholders, the institutions
>who own the largest portions of stock ? would include
>employees, local communities, and the environment. That
>changes the whole notion of what a "market" is.
>
>Suppose we were to change the accounting rules, so that we
>not only had open accounting, which we really need, but we
>also had full accounting. Full accounting would include
>things like ecological accounting. You could no longer dump
>your stuff in the river or the air and not pay a fee. No
>more free dumping. If you had full accounting, that
>constructs the market in a different way. It's still a
>market, and it's still "free" within the rules. But the
>rules are always there. It's important for progressives to
>get that idea out there, that all markets are constructed.
>We should be debating how they're constructed, how they
>should be constructed, and how are they stacked to serve
>particular interests.