Firstly… I only engage Booman on this out of respect. From my point of view we are using the classical philosophical/scientific/intellectual dialogue method. When Einstein said, “God Doesn’t Play Dice” in criticism of Niels Bohr’s theory, it was out of respect… he didn’t debunk the nutty theories of just anyone. When Bohr said “don’t tell God what to do”… the debate was very clarifying. The issues are still not really resolved, but the dispute is a part of the argument, helping to illuminate the dispute still.
Well… we’re not Einstein and Bohr, but my point is… I take contrast with Booman because I think it’s worth it. Booman’s position is relevant, it’s clear, it’s intentional… it’s well thought out (but mistaken), all good things in a position used to contrast its anti-pode.
Framing is about ideas, the ideas are everywhere, they are the engines behind what we say… to say “don’t frame, just do” is to say “don’t have an engine in your car… just go”… frames are the programs of the mind. To say, “don’t frame” is to say, “don’t run a word processing program… just word process”.
You cannot speak without framing.
The simplest perspective to have on framing is to understand that frames are made of the metaphor we think with, from which we draw conclusions.
Asking progressive to frame is asking us to think about which metaphors we use, to know why we use them, to create new metaphors and refine those we use, and to never use metaphors rigged against us. That last one is important, the advice is to recognize rigged, dishonest metaphors, when we see them.
Booman is actually quite good at this! So I have sought out the frames in his good work at dkos debunking the “defense” of the WH by the WSJ.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board has presented Karl Rove and Scooter Libby’s defense. If this all they’ve got, they are going to be doing hard time. The WSJ should carefully consider testing their kool-aid, because I don’t think the best defense for lying to a grand jury is to lie to a trial jury. Let’s take a look at how many lies the WSJ is putting forth:
Already two frames are invoked in the traditional home for the frame… above the fold.
Firstly, the WSJ is framed in the “true believer” frame invoked by “kool-aid”… they are not rational, but “true believes”, aka “kool-aid” drinkers.
Also they are framed as “liars”… accurately let’s note, but still as a frame, they are cast as such liars they fix their lies with more lies. We KNOW that lying in a trial is bad… proving that is not the purpose of that text, of course, the point is that these “true believers put lies on top of lies”.
Don’t get confused here, I like Booman’s essay, a lot, but I like framing as well, because it’s a conscious traversal of metaphor.
That claim is a frame, the trial in question has yet to run… this is invocation of a frame. The Administration and WSJ are being cast as something… not something in itself, but something from metaphor, as “kool-aid drinking lie addicted true believers”. That’s before the facts are presented, and why? because you need a frame to interpret facts. Put your facts first and they fall to the ground, with nothing to hold them, just so many dead symbols.
You have to put your facts into a framework, a metaphorical (or metaphor-like) framework ready to find place for said facts.
The assumption here, is that the decision to bypass the traditional vetting of intelligence by stovepiping raw intel into the VP’s office, and then using that raw unvetted intel to push forged documents on Congress, the United Nations, the IAEA, and the public…all to trump up false rationales for a war of aggression…all of that is beyond the scope of the law. All of that is merely a policy fight and/or political differences. Okay. Let’s be generous and grant them their assumption.
I am tempted to go into the fact that the “stovepiping” language is also part of a frame, and will… but note again… it’s an accurate one… we use that metaphor, both left and right, because it makes clear what’s really going on in a situation involving sensitive information… information is not going through “channels”… it’s being fed directly to source. Sometimes this is good, “getting information where it needs to be”, sometimes bad, for it may be “missing reality checks” along the way.
We can’t think without metaphor, metaphors help us understand the real world… ideally honest metaphors allow us to draw various conclusion, and are not overly rigged. I think “stovepiping” is certainly such a metaphor.
That is an agreed on metaphor, but Booman also decides to accept the frame presented by the WSJ that this is all “merely” a policy fight… Booman doesn’t think this, nor do we, but it’s for the sake of argument, a fair enough concession to make. We do accept some frames, even questionable ones presented by opponents (e.g. “it’s just politics) as worthy, if imperfect, fields of battle… we have to, because only if you are accepting the same frame can you actually engage… otherwise you are in different worlds entirely.
Judith Miller was stonewalling
Judith was stonewalling, but is not actually made of stone. It’s like a metaphor we use to understand that Miller was being obstinate. I think it’s fair to frame that as stonewalling… others like to frame it as “journalistic integrity”… which metaphor is more honest? Should we stick to the “fact” that she was “protecting a source”..? or was she “stonewalling” an investigation? There are “facts” to fit in either frame… I prefer that latter of the two as more accurate, more apt… as a frame that leads to conclusions more in line with all the facts, with the complete situation.
Amid an election campaign and a war, Bush administration officials understandably fought back. One way they did so was to tell reporters that Mr. Wilson’s wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame, had been instrumental in getting him the CIA consulting job. This was true — though Mr. Wilson denied it at the time — as a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documented in 2004.
This all depends on what the meaning of ‘instrumental’ means. Joe Wilson took a trip to Niger for the CIA in 1999. At that time, his wife may have suggested him for the job. But in 2002, she was asked whether he was willing to go, asked to write up his bona fides, asked to raise the matter with him, and then introduced him to the meeting at headquarters, before recusing herself. She did not authorize him to take the trip. She didn’t have that authority. She had newborn twins at home, and the Niger job payed nothing. How could it have been a ‘boondoggle’, as Rove or Libby told Walter Pincus it was? How is any of this relevant in any way?
VERY CLEVER framing here… you see, this draws similarity (that metaphorical basis) to another famous phrase… does it not? “depends on what the meaning of ‘instrumental’ means”, I think it’s fair to note this is really invoking the “depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” frame. Booman is framing the WSJ as partaking in ridiculous levels of parsing, not merely by saying “you are partaking a ridiculous level of parsing”… but by invoking a well known frame, complete with years of back and forth thus invoked, and knowing the conservative position in that past battle, doing so pointedly to have impact, to say, “you are hypocritical”. I don’t think this is a dishonest way to say “you are hypocritical”… it’s a fair way. But it’s framing, fully. It is using a frame to make that accusation. Then, the facts presented have somewhere to sleep.
This is the new line the GOoPers have been pushing this week.
Frame: The GOP are talking point distribution automatons… this week, here is their mindless mantra. Then Booman provides the facts to fit into this frame which detail how the assertion is false, and the frame then does the heavy lifting of explaining why they are saying something clearly false, simply false, easily shown false: because they have weekly talking points and they go to battle with the talking points (“new lines”) they’ve got.
Mr. Wilson’s original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited. What a bizarre irony it would be if what began as a politically motivated lie by Mr. Wilson nonetheless leads to indictments of Bush Administration officials for telling reporters the truth.
This is such horseshit.
Ok, that’s not framing… that really is horseshit, literally. It came from a horse, and it’s shit.
Mr. Fitzgerald may have recognized this problem early, because in February 2004 he asked for permission for much broader investigative authority. It was granted by the man who appointed him, his friend and then Deputy Attorney General James Comey. (Attorney General John Ashcroft had recused himself, in what looked to us then, and still does today, as an act of political abdication.) Mr. Fitzgerald’s office only recently created a Web site and has posted Mr. Comey’s letters — an act of odd timing, at the least.
Let me get this straight.
Ok, stop. Even this is framing. It’s also a common rhetorical device. Why? Because framing is how we think, and common rhetorical devices have evolved due to how we think. Before I go to the next sentence, I know that Booman is going to say that the argument quoted is overly confusing… that it’s self contradictory, that he will lay out the same details and draw another conclusion. The sentance doesn’t spend even a MOMENT implying it’s literal meaning… which would be that Booman is going to follow their argument as they have made it, straight to the conclusion they’ve drawn.
To the contrary, when Booman says, “let me get this straight”… we are certain to not find him subsequently “getting it straight”… but rather, instead, he’ll most likely be “drawing the opposite conclusion”… iow, “they don’t have this straight, let me straighten it”… a more literal statement would have been, “wait, let me PUT this straight”… and invoking this frame, really, is to point a finger and say, “they have reasons to make this convoluted, they wish to draw the erroneous conclusion for their own interests, not because their argument really leads in the direction they would like to claim.”
——
Summary: if you think I’m criticizing Booman you don’t understand… so here is the syllogistic form (framing my argument as logical), and note it’s not about Plame or Booman’s excellent points on the Plame affair… it’s about framing.
( ) Booman told the truth and was honest.
( ) Booman used framing.
(therefore) Framing can be truthful and honest
see?
Also Posted at MLW
I’ll bet you can’t guess what I voted for.
… You see now!
ok ok.
cats.
I don’t forget my cat voters you know.
Hmm, what is the appropriate framing for kitties? Let’s see…
I have some knits to pick, but why bother?
I know, I know, Meteor Blades did with my last diary, and it was a good idea.
But me? Now? I just want to sit back and bask!
Maybe I’ll pick a few knits later on, after the glow has had a few hours to sink in.
I would not feel so confident to post errors if it didn’t lead to so much further education.
cheers.
According to this, the mere act of writing means that I am framing, therefore I am a framer, therefore I really am a fan of framing.
Shorter version: I write, therefore I frame, therefore I like framing.
Or it is impossible to dislike framing if one engages in it.
Or you have totally missed the point of all the arguments I have made about framing.
it’s not as if I run from the tautology.
Framing is about how people think, as you are aware.
Saying we need to work on framing is saying we need to work on how we think, we need to make it conscious.
Surely, you know, at least, that saying “kool-aid” was framing?
That invoking “what the meaning of ‘is’ is” is framing?
Now, note that it’s HONEST.
And yes, we will have something akin to a tautology… the same one now.
From MY side of the argument, it’s as if you are saying that thinking about how we think is lying.
That choosing metaphors is immoral… they should be used without chosing… because clearly they are used, and must be used, to communicate.
I hope to have made that clear.
But in reality this isn’t a tautology, it’s not true by definition… it follows from the fact that we do think and communicate… using frames.
Precisely!
This is why it’s cognitive science. It comes from a study of how thinking is actually done. Not how we assume it is done.
are not getting my ‘frame’ of reference.
By FRAMING, I mean: the act of contemplating which language will be most effective with the general public without doing an actual scientific study, but just as a series of diaries endlessly droning on about what individuals think will be effective, and endless tsk-tsks to people that use language like pro-life or death-tax for not understanding framing, and the idea that the American public keeps voting for Bushes, not because our candidates are nerds without a spine, but because we haven’t used the right framing arguments to makes them understand their church is wrong and abortion is just dandy.
By FRAMING, I do NOT mean: the cognitive framework in which information is received on a pre-cognitive basis. I do NOT mean that we shouldn’t choose our language carefully, or try to put our beliefs into a coherent whole.
See the difference?
but why do you say working on framing is dishonest then… pointless crooning is pointless… not due to framing.
I don’t hear you saying “improve framing” this or that way, you condemn framing.
Really, it’s a way to make the marketing honest, it’s not as though Dem Party marketing is honest on its own and framing threatens that…
Now as for how we go about framing… that is a very important issue.
I think the best way I’ve seen so far is to go through the great speeches, through good blog posts… and show, “look, that’s framing”.
And it’s not about the wording, or choosing wording carefully, it’s about choosing ideas carefully.
I am not saying that every instance of someone talking about framing is a good instance, a good essay… but you cannot say that’s a fair way to critique a political theory, either, by criticizing those getting it wrong.
And it seems you do that a bit on this subject.
What you have said, to me, is “beware the urge to manipulate and lie” and “framing is fraught with that danger and temptations”… and I agree with that… but you go the extra step and say that framing IS THAT. I don’t accept that because it’s very important, I think, for us to understand what framing REALLY is, and to understand the dangers it tempts AS dangers, to avoid in the specific, rather than put us off the whole exercise.
framing is a political theory, it is a cognitive theory being used by pinheads that don’t understand science, let alone political science.
I object to the pinheads, not the cognitive theory. I could get elected President without poll-testing a single thing I said, without having a single framing workshop, even without knowing what the fuck I think, and why I think it.
Framing as an object of my contempt, is this bellyaching about losing and thinking language has something to do with it. We lose because of poor candidates with poor charisma, with poor speech making, and no balls, who are hamstrung by the very poll-tested bullshit that Lafoff’s braindead acolytes think they understand.
The next person who tells me not to say pro-life because I am playing into GOP frames gets a fist in the mouth.
Get it? It’s not about framing as valid science, or the absolutely rock-solid tautology that being have cognitive maps that they use when they cognate.
I think I do get that Booman, and insofar as I call it a political theory, I misspeak, the political theory is that we can apply the cognitive theory.
“Framing as an object of my contempt, is this bellyaching about losing and thinking language has something to do with it. We lose because of poor candidates with poor charisma, with poor speech making, and no balls, who are hamstrung by the very poll-tested bullshit that Lakoff’s braindead acolytes think they understand.”
how the hell did I avoid taking that from “framing”?
Lakoff doesn’t say it’s about language… he says it’s about ideas.
He doesn’t say that it’s about focus groups.
I think what you miss is that this is a way to have better candidates giving better speeches.
Look, if we were looking at the 2004 candidates and asking who framed their issues better… we would choose Dean.
Thinking about focus groups got us into “electability”… that was not framing, Dean’s frames were better, more compelling.
They did not poll better, a sound metaphor does not poll better day one, but is more effective in the long run. Dean’s “democratic wing of the democratic party” and his southern strategy which didn’t make enemies of “confederate sticker having” southerners were solid frames.
You conflate all this not with Lakoff, but Luntz.
You have focus-group Luntz as your model, or something.
there are some serious people that really understand the underlying science, and understand Lakoff on a deeper level, and they understand that to really make his language game work, you have to look at it from a generational standpoint.
I don’t work on a generational level. I work for right now, fighting today’s battle, fighting to win today’s battle of ideas, to outregister you today, to out GOTV you today, to recruit better candidates today, to raise more money than you today.
Put me on a stage anywhere in America and I’ll explain why these crooks have to go, how the fatcats have been tricking social conservatives into voting for the wrong causes and the wrong reasons. I’ll frame the crap out of them, but I won’t be engaging in framing, which is either total b.s., or a very long-term strategy.
Give me a candidate who is unafraid, and I’ll give you victory. We won’t run one poll on one issue. We won’t sit down and try to work out the best language. We’ll just sling it at em rat-a-tat with no fear.
Because we know the truth, we know the truth hurts, but we know unvarnished truth is what sells. I’m an activist. An act-now-i-vist.
And right now, I don’t need any help explaining why Dick Cheney needs to resign. I don’t have any trouble understanding what I believe or organizing my thoughts coherently, or making a narrative other people can understand. It’s just being an effective communicator. Nominate one of those and you are probably going to win.
Sorry, Boo, but it’s true.
Do we need to be fearless, unapologetic and sure of what we stand for? Abso-fucking-lutely!
Does that mean we don’t need to do anything else?
Not if we want to win.
For one thing, winning candidates tend to have a feminine side. It’s called listening to the people in order to represent them. I’m not talking focus groups. I’m not talking polls. I’m talking plain old fashioned listening. It’s a crucial part of having a conversation. And that’s what political representation is all about.
(1) Who are these people?
(2) What is the basis for your claim that they “understand Lakoff on a deeper level”?
(3) What is the basis for their argument?
I agree it’s a long term thing.
I believe working on a long term issue is part of the here and now. I think it’s not just about each person, but also having a group vision we can share, I believe to do that we have to seek the strongest metaphors, these underly our thought.
When you object, I can’t help but notice you DO use metaphor, and many people could be more compelling writers by using metaphor. Now, I use them, but I don’t exactly aim for the public, and I’m not claiming you or anyone else should aim for the public… but while we discuss how to change a whole nation, I know that what reverberates beyond your immediate presence are the evocative metaphors of your movement.
We can call them something else, they are notions, ideas, stylistic phrases sometimes, but the point is they involve mapping from one domain to another… and applying the way one system works to the working of another system.
My objection is maligning framing as a waste of time, and especially as being something dishonest.
I object to others that cast it as just masterbation… a lie on the face of it… that is, just a name for something they already know (and generally detest)… like “rhetoric”… blah blah.
I’m as sick of that as we both are about hearing that framing means “sound more republican”.
That’s not what it means… it’s not masterbation… and in fact, I think looking down on framing, specifically in politics where this involves socially understood metaphor, as a little bit too good for “talking down” to people.
I believe in straight talk, but that involves being conscious about what we say… that means, you don’t slip the metaphors in, you highlight and celebrate them. It’s not manipulation to find metaphors that suit you, that suit your “adversary” and use them to find solutions to common problems.
I don’t think that WE know all the rights and wrongs… to me the solution is not that our progressive truths dominate so much that we find a solution together, that we learn in the process as well, that we form a social thought together and act on it, within our caucuses and within our nation too, and I feel certain that understanding metaphors/frames is a way of approaching that problem and doing it.
is a frame too.
“my god, it’s full of frames”
Booman gets so damn hysterical over framing that we often don’t get around to critiquing a few of his more fundamental mischaracterizations. Here you have honed in on one of them. To wit:
I’d like to expound on this a bit.
Booman has said repeatedly that scientific framing is dependent on focus groups–or their more rigorous equivalents, in order to find out what frames work best. As if it would be immediately apparent. (Just like it was immediately apparent that The Gettysberg Address was one of the greatest speeches of all time–Not!)
But this is quite mistaken, since–despite what Booman himself says–it fails to recognize the cognitive nature of Lakoff’s theory. In particular:
(1) It ignores the BASIC way that cognitive metaphor works systematically in a single mapping: using a structured subset of the source domain to map onto the target domain.
This means that you are not just chosing a specific word in a speech, but choosing an entire set of inter-related words and the realities they invoke. And it necessarily takes time for these relationships to start to make sense together.
(2) It ignores the underlying structure of implications that source domain metaphors are always embedded in.
For example: The Love Is A Journey metaphor comes with a whole set of implications from the “Journey” source domain that are radically different from the implications of madness in the Love Is Madness metaphor. English speakers do not need to scientifically verify that such differences exist. Part of being an English speaker is KNOWING that such differences exist. If you don’t know that, then you can’t really speak English.
(3) It ignores the over-arching logic that can be teased out of seeing how language has been used over significant periods of time, in combination with the above two points. This is very clearly demonstrated in the way Lakoff develops his arguments in Moral Politics. It is also seen in his work on the moral norms frame for foreign policy.
Basically, Booman has to ignore all this, since it’s the only way he can continue to trivialize framing. If he actually admitted that it comes with a significant amount of empirical information–about what frames work in what sorts of ways (not always, not every time, not immediately, but statistically the way that virtually all social scientific causes work)–then he would have to admit it has considerable value. And he would have to sensibly distinguish between people who are being thoughtful in their approach to framing, and those who are falling into various different sorts of mistakes.
what I hear is Booman honors honesty, and framing is an assault on honesty.
My point about framing was merely that as I read this I saw many metaphors… and these are chosen for their fit, and that is framing. And it’s done up front, before the facts, because it sets the frame work, the skeleton to which facts can be arranged.
It’s dishonest only insofar as it’s been invisible… only insofar as via propaganda this is nothing other than the functionality that has been exploited.
From my point of view it’s all about people understanding how our minds work, at least in a social context.
The advocacy to engage in framing, I think, is just an invitation to discuss the metaphors we use, for we will learn applicable ideas that way. The strategy can get more specific only as the metaphors we agree on are discovered. Therein lies the key to keeping out coalition together… what will bind us will be common metaphor… a worldview, a model we all agree makes sense and pertains, and we cannot engage in this alone. Ideas can be created alone, but not these social, democratic, ideas… they require us together.
But anyway, I don’t see the same thing you do. Your standards of familiarity with the theory are more specific… Booman does acknowledge the theory, understand there is validity to it.
However, behavioralism also has theoretic validity, demonstrable validity, but it’s more than a bit degrading. It’s possible that framing is just a new generation, where behaviorialism was long understood and applied to train animals and human slaves both, what if framing is just the new way to control minds and conform consent?
Booman has, as far as I read, witheld judgement on the theory itself. It may accuratlly describe what it says. Perhaps he’s even acknowledged that it is accurate (to some degree of approximation, of course).
But the application of the theories to Booman seem degrading, treating people stupid.
I for one am not going to deny that happens. We could discuss examples I guess.
This was an example… as would virtually any piece of writing.
btw, I have taken your arguments to heart.
I understand you make a distinction between the theories of framing and believe people that advocate framing really are not worrying about that theory of cognition, but seek quick one liners and marketing tricks.
I see that as argumentation that you don’t advocate dishonesty… they are not discussions about framing, just cautions to be honest. You seem to take those arguments as against framing itself, but they are not, imo, because yes, framing is unavoidable.
To speak is to frame, unless you start first by inventing a language. However, if you do that, you will require frames to build your language from scratch.
The attempt to build a language that is frameless has failed, it is the idea that we can use the objective frame, or, put another way, God’s frame, and since it’s the one true frame, it won’t count.
But there is no such frame, the frames are context, and contexts must be chosen and are not absolute or “official” and objective.
the debate can be about this assertion that humans thing with cognitive maps such as “metaphor”.
it can be about which frames are dishonest, which are honest.
But it cannot be about, imo, “avoiding framing”… that’s like “avoiding speaking” as a way to communicate.
It can’t be about “just act” either, because thinking is also behind action. There is no shortcut directly to the “genuine”… it is through these hallways of metaphor, and that only.
Having a fundie shove his religion down your throat is annoying.
Having one do it “for your own good” is beyond annoying.
Having one tell you you’re already a believer because they say your own words imply you accept their tenets is patronizing.
If one wished to be “saved”, it really is a personal choice. And all such well-intentioned badgering is really condescending.
If you are one of those who love framing, if you live and breathe it, if you believe it is a key component to political success — congratulations.
But could you please have the courtesy of treating others with a bit of respect? Leave the condescension and the psychoanalysis of what someone is “really thinking” at home. Explain it patiently to the unwashed masses. Demonstrate the benefits. Offer tutorials. Show the benefits of your academic theory in a way that invites folks to share in the benefits, not by shaming or laughing at others, or setting them up to look the fool. Tell it in your own words, not by deconstructing theirs.
Kinda the way non-fundies might interest others in their religion. Bring more of the upside, less of the fervor.
I’d really recommend y’all quit with the using Booman as a strawman, talking down to all the “non-believers”, and impressing yourselves with your mastery of your pet hobby. To me, it all sounds like mental masturbation. And like the real thing, its a lot more interesting to the one doing it than to the other folks in the room.
Now I’ll leave this topic to the m-m’ers and voyeurs who are into that sort of thing… have fun.
silly.
One, this is about language, of course we are deconstructing language.
Also, I didn’t say Booman was a believer… I pointed out the parts of his work which were frames… which presented frames.
You chose to ignore all that… and why? Because you are more polite?
Hardly.
Yours is an especially condescending remark, while mine were very respectful.
I have now adopted the phrase “GLOBAL HEATING” to replace the lackluster moniker “global warming”. I have done this because the ‘frame’ that ‘warming’ invokes is one of toasty happiness in which you stick your toes a little closer to the fire and sip a cup of hot chocolate to ‘warm’ your insides.
‘HEAT’ implies something more like being too close to the fire, or burning the roof of your mouth on a too-‘hot’ pizza, or even Burning In Hell. A “heater” is something a gangster might use to kill you. Have you ever heard of someone being killed by over-warming, or by a “warm-stroke”?
Am I lying and conniving by using a more urgent word-‘frame’ to attempt to communicate the gravity of the problem? Or am I wasting my time with some stupid framing stuff?
Should I instead truthfully state long strings of scientific research results and timidly accept the framing of this grave issue as simply ‘warming’?
NO! IT WOULD NOT MAKE THE POINT AS WELL AS IT COULD BE MADE. RHETORIC=FRAMING=RHETORIC. If you do not use all the rhetorical techniques that can be used to make your argument more effective, you are pissing in the wind, because someone will take your ass apart and hand it back to you when you least expect it. (“What are you so upset about, even the scientists just call it ‘warming’, it’s not like the planet is gonna heat up like an oven or something, and btw, isn’t a ‘greenhouse effect’ something that’s gonna make the flowers grow better?”)
There’s a tool for every job, and a job for every tool. If anyone out there wants to be a carpenter without a hammer, go ahead and use the back of your monkey wrench, just don’t try to claim that hammers are a bad tool, please…
framing is about ideas.
it is based on a theory that human minds think with metaphors, by mapping one domain to another and back again.
what is so hard for you to understand about that?
from what definition do you think that “rhetoric” is the same as “mapping from one cognitive domain to another”?
WHY?
And still, you wish to make this a contest rather than collaboration… fine… then engage the syllogism.
BOOMAN framed his argument.
THERE WAS NO ACTUAL KOOL-AID.
The argument was framed.
I’m fine with that.
I think that was a good idea.
I think what’s good for Booman is good for the rest of us.
Why do you object!? And if you don’t… why not?
You object to us talking about framing… but not it actually being done, is that it?
I engage this here, because I’ve found there are people willing to take the other side of the argument, as far as I know that is how dialectical reason works.
btw, your comment about “global heat” wasn’t funny to me because it’s not framing to make that change, at all. The framing would come down to answering, “what is our role wrt to global warming? what is our role wrt to Earth?” Are children? caretakers? miners? lumberjacks? all of the above?
I see that you don’t get it, but I wonder why you refuse.
First of all, I’m completely serious about reframing global heating. I’m just so stinkin mad about it, maybe it came across as sarcasm. If so, I failed, for which I take full credit.
Framing is good. But what exactly framing is and what it means to different people is what we are arguing here. That is called semantics – arguing about the meaning of a word or words. Now, some will argue that Lakoff has defined “framing” precisely, and that no further insight or reduction is allowed. If you are one of those, my rhetoric will fall on deaf ears.
[Note: Rhetoric sometimes has a negative connotation, as in “all rhetoric, no substance”, but I mean ‘rhetoric’ in its classical sense – the tools of debate used to advance a position.]
To me, framing belongs to the larger group of tools used in developing and arguing a case, of which classic rhetoric is also a member. Indeed, I classify classical rhetoric and Lakoff’s framing into a broader group of tools I would venture to call “modern rhetoric”. I would also put subliminal suggestion in this category.
The use of metaphor to advance an argument is a classical rhetorical technique. The fact that a metaphor may be the result of soul-searching and looking for new ways to apply metaphors to one’s goals does not make the end result any different. Disguising metaphor in big language by calling it “mapping from one cognitive domain to another” does not make it different either. It is still old-fashioned metaphor, with perhaps some subliminal redirection added.
Where the modern focus is placed by Lakoff, as I read him (and I have read a lot of his stuff, not all of it, but a lot) is: If you really focus on what you perceive to be “the structure of good” the metaphors that you produce to further your arguments will reflect “the good as you perceive it”. Further, he seems to say that if your “goodness framework” rules your rhetoric (metaphors), it will yield specific usable chunks of rhetoric that appeal to others who are like-minded, and that these chunks may even convince some who are somewhat-like-minded or somewhat-different-minded that your argument is absolutely correct. Further, if your chunks of rhetoric are self-consistent chunks as a result of your having soul-searched a whole philosophy, rather than disjointed also-chunks, your total argument for “the good framework” is also more convincing to the ‘listener’. This is the aim of all good rhetoric.
The discussion about framing has ultimately been about what the Democratic party should be saying in order to convince voters to vote for them. Please, lets all talk about framing, but lets not fool ourselves into believing its a whiz bang new invention. It is wrapping old tools into a new language to get people to think about how to build a master plan for internally consistent and self-consistent argument. And yes, I do believe that the whole thrust of Lakoff’s ‘invention’ is – more effective argument. [note: that’s “Argument”, as in building one’s case, not “argument” as in yelling at one another]
If I truly believe that we need to stop GLOBAL HEATING, then as a consequence of my caring about future genrations of humans, I must care about SUV-owners today, and offer them some way out of the dilemma. Otherwise, my “framework” is not logical, and will not appeal to SUV-owners, who I would like to have place their votes for me. I have to have a complete and well thought out framework from which to draw arguments that will convince them to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Now, there is one much more direct meaning to “framing”, as I see it. It is exemplified by the title of Lakoff’s famous book. A tricky play on words or images can invoke something else by misdirection or redirection, whether it’s related to one’s values or not. Such manipulations CAN be used to one’s advantage, and hopefully such manipulations will be consistent within the larger ‘frame’-work. My reframing of GLOBAL HEATING is an example, perhaps a weak one, but nonetheless it is true that ‘HEAT’ sounds worse than ‘warm’, because of a host of language associations and connotations. It is a re-framing. I reframe it this way because I don’t want future generations to get “burned” because WE are playing with fire. It is a frame which I will proceed to propagate.
BUT it is still just clever rhetoric. Used for evil, it begets evil; used for good, it begets good.
I suspect I didn’t really hear that last time. Thank you for taking time to clarify.
There is nothing new under the sun except that everything is changing… so everything is new.
A metaphor is just a metaphor, and in a way you can just focus on them and forget the word frame…except metaphor in cognitive science seems to me to be just a metaphor itself… it’s not JUST “metaphor” as classically understood, it’s that whole set of mapping words and then some, metaphor, analogy, simile, et al. It is even recognition… I interpret a tree fallen across a river as a bridge, and then I grasp using it to cross the river. This is a mapping, from similarities, from past experience, it’s a mapping from a model of “bridges and crossings” onto a current experience, but it’s so direct, that’s not really “metaphor”, as classically understood.
But it’s JUST LIKE metaphor. Everything in understanding really is metaphor, in this looser sense, until you reach raw data, which is sensory, subject to error, and only given meaning far along the chain of metaphor later, after “interpretation”. I’m not telling you Lakoff’s theory, which you likely know better than I, but what attracts me most to bother agreeing that “progressives need to learn framing”.
This is my interest in the affair: I think progressives and Democrats need to change. We need to change. All that stuff about maybe striking a tone with like minded people and convincing them of your position is not of interest to me. I want bother parties to change and learn from each other.
That is progress.
If I’m ten times “better” than some other person, more “right”… that wouldn’t mean that I shouldn’t manage to learn from interaction with them… and vice versa, it should be mutually beneficial. But of course, we are not really 10X better than the standard, and there is a lot of room for people both to modify their models of the world and improve their conception of reality.
We are all learning, in other words, ideally, not convincing.
People need to change, and learn, and I think if progressives discuss how we “cast” ideas, cast one thing as another thing, then we will inevitably learn and go through changes as a result of the conversation. We will become the opposite of more deceptive.
Thanks for being so reasonable when I got the wrong of the stick… tell you what… it’s Global Heating as far as I’m concerned. cheers.
Agreed: (I think)