First off, I totally admit I am posting this here because I know there are those that object… that say that framing is dishonest, or that as practiced is dishonest, or at least, that the people that claim they are engaging in framing are really engaging in focus group least-common-denominator dumbing down and pandering to the worst in us.
I seek out difference of opinion… what can I say, I think it’s beneficial… we can solve problems, clarify reality.
I believed that the accusation above, give or take a modest amount of hyperbole, had something in it… and I’ve found it. I think I have a simple explanation about the concern, and it’s not that I don’t share it.
The advice, “to take framing into account”… aha! that has two different meanings! VERY different meanings… not opposites but antipodes.
One is to take the frames that are out there into account. That’s what Booman is talking about. One idea of framing is to learn the frames that people already use, and try to use those. Most of those things are cliches and a shit-ton of bigotries and petty biases. This disgusting suggestion for framing is also just pandering. For example, Nixon’s “southern strategy”… you pander to their biases and hatred… propaganda, manipulation, regression result, if “successful”. Blech. I agree.
But TWO is: using the models that appeal to you! Talking about them, knowing them, becoming familiar with the metaphors just you live by. Just you.
Think of the frames that appeal to YOU, let the petty biases of others fade away from your speech and thought… how do you visualize the mother of nature?
The frames that appeal to you! That’s what we’re wondering.
Like: I like the idea that the planet is a living creature, it’s alive… I find it literally and figuratively true, both.
I like the idea that the nation is a body… though I know that freaks other people out… sometimes. But I like it… even though it’s far from really true, for one, the whole habitat is more like the body, and the humans are supposed to be the brain… (as if).
I like the idea that humanity is a distributed family, that’s a frame… though it has access to being a literal truth as well if you are allowed to fiddle with the definition of “family”, which of course you are allowed to do.
I think group web logs are communities… that’s a frame, all computer software uses frames, but anyway, I think these are communities, I consider them “places”, I consider them just AS I consider communities, with the rights of a community, the responsibilities. I think we can learn how to solve community’s problems by solving the problems of virtual community, and vice versa.
So anyway, I don’t care what frames appeal to “most people”… in fact, I hate popular things. I care what frame appeals to you.
Update [2005-11-3 22:51:38 by pyrrho]: some minor corrections
I will say I never -expect- or demand response.
However, I think this is an exception.
Perhaps this is a taboo subject… like suggesting 2004 fraud is at dkos… kapu! stay out!
when we don’t engage these “sore points”… we are refusing to excersize, we are letting parts of our brains atrophe.
To dislike framing is one thing… but no comment on “honest framing”…
I still see a lot of frames in Booman’s writing… perhaps analysis of these frames is a better way to procede.
I’m a little suprised.
I’m not a big fan for groups that fall silent when certain issues arise… THAT is scary to me, that’s a bigger problem than marketing and manipulation in my book, a group that simply turns a blind eye when challenged… “I. can’t. hear. you.”
I expect those opposed to XYZ to be able to offer up opposition on it, to give their reasons. “We know what we don’t like” is legitimate… but not reasonable… unless you at least give “personal taste” as a reason.
Silence is a lack of reason.
sigh.
Um, if I am mistaken, geel free to call me on it, but did you even allow any time to pass before sighing about no response?
I read your diary and was about to respond when I read the comment — what you wrote in the diary motivated/inspired me to respond, what I saw in the commnet caused me to recondiser and post this instead.
Open up and shut down? Communications, like “visializations of reality” are slippery things, eh?
6 minutes after posting he complained about a lack of response, while there are diaries that were posted 10 hours ago that have 1 or no comments.
Pyrrho, why do you cast aspersions on the community after 6 minutes?
I got my AM’s and PM’s mixed up. Never mind.
aplogies pyrrho! I wasn’t up at 4 am (3 am for me though…), so this was the first I saw.
Perhaps I’ll come back later and re-read the diary and comment — and post an actual reponse to what you wrote!
again, apologies.
I actually do not believe anyone owes me a response, ever… so I expect to be fully out of line with that comment… and should have kept with my usual rule of leaving response as a personal choice and not called out about it.
I feel a bit stupid already actually… I just felt that perhaps the issue is that this is a subject which is not welcome…
I’m not sure if I should apologize or not… I guess I won’t since I do feel a little that putting the word “framing” in my title makes this something uninteresting.
Pretty much all subjects are welcome as far as I can tell, which is what I love about this place. Sometimes I think we weary of certain topics (I know I do), it’s sort of cyclical — a kind of “been there done that, got a sunburn” kind of thing….
😉
These are the kinds on conversations I usually like to have FTF with beer, or tea, or whatever, for me it is difficult to wax philispohical asynchronously and with a whole bunch of people — a bit of cognitive overload, so much to respond to, ya know?
I don’t see the need for you to feel stupid or apologize, no worries, eh?
The question you pose, though, is a rather diffcult one for me and, being in a period of instense avoidance and procrastination and general passivity right now, I’m not sure I’d like what I see if I take a look at the metaphors I’m living in right now. I will take a look around and see what I can find out, though, because I find your writings and conversation fascinating (have since my dkos days) — I didn’t see your wanting a response as a demand, so much as a sincere desire to talk and learn — that’ll always get a response from me, no matter what the topic!
Be back later!
is that I posted this last night… literally hours and hours ago.
… anyway.
I feel very self-conscious about that… no one is required to respond and there are infinit possible reasons for that.
But I would appreciate response…
what made me feel (though now with some regret) like assuming the response was a blind eye toward the topic I put right in the title… was no responses on the poll.
Generally people will click on a poll, however contructed… and to see none have to me shows not merely no comments, but an avoidance.
still… I shouldn’t jump to conclusions… I’ll assume it’s because I’m not a compelling writer… but I refuse to frame my discussions about framing as something else.
that would be dishonest.
🙂
PS: sorry about the aspersions… really, I should have not.
our minds are neuro-chemical machines.
we are not reality, we must try to understand it by visualizing it from the limited data we recieve.
all our conceptions are visualizations. Our conscious mind lives in this visualization… and we are merely trying to make it realistic as possible because discrepencies lead, sometimes, to rude awakenings.
Not slippery for you? Well, ok, but in my world, very very slippery! I don’t tend to the “realistic” (as in a untity that is “out there”), I try to stay honest and be as accurate as I can in my honesty about what my neuro-chemicals are telling me, but I never have noticed any of that having much to do with the “realities” of others, except in the most transient of ways — but those fleeting connections are the fun of it, imo (or should I say, in my realities? heh, a new acronym: IMR).
there is an element of slipperyness to the world itself… it’s an ocean in motion.
We have perception, relativity, doubt in all things.
There are slippery elements, and the description of your perception that you give is similar to the foundation of everything I believe in, pyrrhonistic skepticism.
There is no absolute anything.
But there are approximations.
And our visualizations of reality are meant to be those approximation, and we can share those with our kin (every living thing on the planet)… so that’s why I say it’s not too slippery.
I was an asshole… I was up tight when I came to the booman tribune this time last… how did that happen? You can check to see yourself if you see what I mean. I don’t know the Trib. I know your reputation, it’s a good one in my school of thought, so I thought I knew you because of all the people I know from here or knew before they moved to this part of Blognation, such as the most excellent catnip. It’s a great place, I’ve vacationed here and really like it. Actually, I wasn’t sooo bad, but I have high standards you see.
so mainly I assumed too much… I don’t know the ‘bune well enough to say that shit.
sorry.
It seems to me that you are approaching “framing” from a cognitive/linguistic perspective. Framing, then, is about how our thought system organizes the information we take in. Through the process of framing, we create a framework in which to make sense of the world around us.
“Making sense” of the world around us is essential for survival. So this framing process is active at birth, though not through the higher level conceptual/linguistic areas of the brain. Young humans are very much dependent on the beings around them for survival, so there is a social component to this framework of understanding we construct. And there is an emotional overlay.
We piece together the world and ourselves when we are babies, toddlers, and very young children – we come to “know” and to “believe.” There is a question on whether we believe what we see or see what we believe. In addition, we don’t think the same way. Not everyone thinks in metaphors. Not everyone thinks in words.
Piaget, the child development expert, proposed that in our final stage of development, around 11 or 12 years old, we begin “formal operations” in which we develop the ability to think abstractly. However, not everyone transitions into the “formal” stage. It was found that only 35% of high school graduates in industrialized countries obtained “formal operations.”
I do not know the details of the study. But whether most adults are able to think abstractly or not, we can examine the cultural beliefs to see what nearly everyone in this culture has been exposed to as they develop. Since Piaget’s time we have added TV and the whole “entertainment industry” to our cultural teachers.
What are the lessons of movie after movie, TV program after TV program?
After September 11th it seemed that many felt the U.S. was an “underdog.” Many of our stories show the underdog fighting against great odds, achieving the desired goal. The multi-billion dollar sports entertainment thrives on this underdog theme with a great deal of hype.
Another cultural belief is the “weak and innocent” need to be protected. Consider all the movies which show the hero doing just that. We have seen that belief used to form opinion on abortion.
Deeply held beliefs, when challenged, most often cause the person challenged to feel threatened. It is not comfortable to change our minds, after all, that is where we have made sense of everything. So all kinds of protective actions come into play. Facts are not believed; logic is dismissed; the speaker of the facts is challenged; or people agree to disagree.
However, other beliefs can be used to get people to change their minds. What other cultural beliefs are presented in our TV and movie stories?
It is discovering and using these beliefs that can open discussions and change minds. This would be “framing,” at least as I understand it.
I want to try to explain ‘framing’ at root in a political context.
It is a different animal than framing as a cognitive theory.
Framing in a political context is this:
Take any issue that you want. You can support the issue or not support the issue. Think of it as a debating society, where you may be tasked to argue for or against the death penalty. Your job is to learn debating techniques, rhetoric, and to do the best job possible with the available facts.
Recognizing that human being are not fully rationale beings, but that we can be influenced by a number of non-cognitive factors (posture, height and bearing, authority of voice, confidence, projection of authority, colors, symbols, positive and negative associations on a visceral level) you seek to tap into these factors and use them to your advantage.
You also want to combat and neutralize your opponent’s attempts to do the same.
So, you stand up straight, you look into the camera, you enunciate clearly, you assert your opinions with an air of authority, you put an American flag in the backdrop, you use positive words like (pro, home, familiy, love, support) for things you are in favor of, and you use negative words like (anti, small, short, alien) to describe things you are against.
All of these things work on the listener on either a pre-cognitive, or a subconscious level.
They make the listener more predisposed to accept what you are saying, to give it credence, to think it is informed, or important.
The presupposition of all this is that you can convince people of the correctness of your position more effectively if you take these measures, and frame your message to be received in a favorable light.
Of course, this is absolutely true. And you would be a fool to go into court in Bahama shorts, unshaved, and wearing a Usama shirt.
But all the hifalutin talk about framing in a political context as a way for people to better understand and articulate what they believe is a bunch of manure. Framing is a cognitive theory about how people take in and process information. The political theory is that we can convince people to vote for our policies by winning the battle of symbolism and metaphor.
I’d rather take power by main storm than get bogged down in that sort of discussion.
See X and Y, below.
When I think about “framing” what I have in mind is what tampopo said. But, yes, I do use it in a political way. Not by trying to “work on” anyone at the precognitive level. For me, it’s a way to have a discussion with my Fox-watching, Rush-listening brother in law without it dissolving into a screaming match. And he really is (really, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true) a very sweet guy and I do love him.
But I find that we actually can converse civilly if I take the time to imagine what the world looks like from his point of view and why he believes the things he does. And it also helps if I take a little time to think about the same in me – why he and I look at the world and human beings in such different ways.
I’m not a politician. There’s no flag behind us when we talk around the kitchen table, and I’ll be wearing the jeans and T-shirt that I always do. There will always be politicians and we can’t just ignore them because they have such profound power – literally life and death – over our lives. I do sincerely hope that we can get better ones, and I’ll do what I can in that effort. Naive I may be, but I think those conversations with my brother in law – multiplied a million times – are also important.
see my other more recent post in this thread.
But, one thing I want to say vis-a-vis your brother-in-law:
I don’t see effort to see where he is coming from, and your effort to see yourself as he sees you, as efforts in ‘framing’.
We all do that all the time in normal interaction without any self-consciousness. And if we do it consciously it can improve our ability to communicate effectively and civilly.
But I never said otherwise. My critiques lie elsewhere.
is Lakoff’s idea as far as I’m concerned… though many want to do it.
It’s a theory how we can defeat the power of propaganda. People that think it’s instruction to use framing the way Luntz uses it… they’re republicans or conservatives… elitists, whatever, they are not my allies. That’s not the point of POPULARIZING it. We want everyone to understand it because if you do, you are immune to that propaganda.
And you will also see what frames appeal to you as an individual, not just those you share, but those you use.
I learned mine LONG AGO, before I heard about framing, life is like conoing down a river. That won’t convince someone else, but I USE IT. So you will be able to express yourself better when we know all our frames.
And also, if we discussed our frames, or personal progressive frames (we are a village– not my cup of tea but… not bad), something will come from that, specifically the evokation of a compelling progressive philosophy…
that is what we lack!
you are saying my essays on framing are about that?
you are taking a competing marketing school using framing to what? sell classes, who are these people? I’m talking about reality here, I don’t care to have this competition for this term, I arrive at my version of the same cognitive theories from a skeptical basis, they are the theories that skeptics anticipated and gravitate to, they follow from our limited nature, that our minds have to strive to understand… it’s not automatic, it works a certain way… it will not be the final theory, but we can defeat all propaganda by understanding the better form of framing.
My diaries on the subject certainly don’t advocate this version you define.
what do you mean?
all that, but all people do think metaphorically if you take metaphor very broadly (as a metaphor itself?) to represent all the kinds of mapping from one domain into another, such as analogy, etc, that all thinking comes from thinking of reality in terms of some model.
As you can probably tell from some of my comments on other framing diaries, if you remember them, I find the topic extremely fascinating. I haven’t participated recently because it just got too frustrating.
BooMan defines “framing” as “X” and declares he hates X (framing). Well, actually, I hate X too, but I define “framing” as “Y.” I find Y (framing) very interesting. It’s led me to see a lot of things (not just politics, but most definitely including politics) in new ways and I think it would be fertile ground for discussion.
But the discussion always seems to devolve into “framing is X!” “No it’s not, it’s Y!” “You’re wrong – it is too X!” “No, you’re wrong – it’s Y!”
Now, that is not a very interesting conversation to me, past the first few rounds of it. So I just withdrew from the conversation. For now, anyway.
And further, I feel like my thinking is not particularly deep – I’m not a linguist or a philosopher – just, as I describe myself politically, “an ordinary pissed-off citizen.” So I also felt very much put in my (intellectual) place by Booman.
Lakoff’s work explains a lot to me about how we got to this benighted place – what’s happened to our country since the day early in the Clinton administration when I was standing at a counter at Walmart (forgive me, this was before I was enlightened on the evilness of Walmart) and the man next to me said something rude about Clinton. And I said, thinking we were having a casual conversation between strangers, “I like Clinton. I voted for him.” And the guy went nuts. He turned beet red, started sweating, and literally started screaming at me, right there in public.
And I thought, holy shit, this guy has some terrible mental problem – and here I provoked it somehow.
Of course, as time went on, I discovered that there were many like him. It was scary, but worse, I was totally mystified by it. Not understanding it, I felt even more vulnerable to the irrationality of it. Lakoff gave me some tools to understand it better and to feel like maybe there was some hope – total incomprehension just leads me to despair. And what I got out of it had absolutely nothing to do with word choice.
So, I dunno. Lakoff’s books are out there. Most of us have read them, I suppose. I’ve heard him speak. Some of us love the ideas and some of us hate them. I think all of us can agree that a lot of people have twisted what he was saying beyond all recognition and are calling what they are doing “framing.” (Much to the great aggravation of Lakoff himself, I gather, from some of his comments.)
So where would you like to go with this? Trying to convince the “framing” haters seems like a waste of thought and keystrokes. Is there something else we can discuss?
Oh, was your diary an attempt to get us to describe our own frames? Well, now that I’ve taken up a lot of screen space with my (usual) Incredibly Long Comment, my answer is going to be very unoriginal and boring. Because I really have spent the past couple of days revisting the “nurturant parent” vs. “strict father” frames. I’m a parent and a teacher, so they really explain a lot to me. Sorry I couldn’t do better.
(Now I must go to bed, because, you see, I have a department meeting tomorrow morning, and even though we have replaced the former “strict father” chair with a “nuturant parent” – hallelujah! – there’s an issue to be discussed that will pit the strict fathers against us nurturers of students and I am not looking forward to the fight. If we lose, I fear the students will lose more – and well, being one of the nurturers, I find the possibility very distressing.)
as far as I’m concerned you have had by far the most intelligent things to say about framing in all these discussions.
And what you have had to say has changed how I feel about the issue.
But I am guilty of playing a game with Paul and the others.
It’s really an ancient game. It divided the early Christian intellectuals between two groups.
Maybe the funnest book on this is The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters by Elaine Pagels.
Basically there are a class of people that feel that they see deeper into things (say the hidden meaning in scripture) and that they uniquely know and understand things that the regular hoi polloi never will. These are the gnostics.
The rest of the people are fed a line of bull to keep them in line, or at least to be in line with their ability to understand.
To me, these framing devotees are latter day gnostics. They want to operate on a deeper level than the populace at large in order to guide their opinions. They know that there is no difference between pro-life and anti-choice, but they also know that the hoi polloi can be persuaded by the choice of these terms.
They then set about to find ways of saying things that will play on this non-rational aspect of persuasion.
And it is not only the word choice, but also the setting and backdrop and music and colors and posture, and tone of voice, and clarity, and brevity, and repetition, and all the other things that can be used as either learning aids or positive reinforcers.
Now, as I have said over and over, all of this stuff is true, important, and only a simpleton would ignore them in a political campaign.
But let’s be honest about what we are talking about. This is elitist, non-populist, non-rational manipulation. At least it is when it leaves the realm of the obvious and becomes a political strategy unto itself.
The presupposition is that we lose elections (or at least that we can win more of them) if we become more effective at framing our arguments.
Now, there is another aspect to this which is brought forth in things like framing workshops. And that is that people can clarify their ideas and learn about themselves and others, by examining the frameworks within which they process information. That’s true.
But we don’t need to do this introspection within a framing paradigm. It is good as any other framework for introspection, but it is not the only one by any means.
And it is my opinion that liberals are at a disadvantage when they intellectualize their arguments too much (a la Kerry and Gore and Dukakis), so I am suspect of an effort to workshop out messages for the common man.
I prefer to let the Republicans play the gnostics, as they have always fulfilled that role in reality, and let the Democrats engage in plain talk and, when necessary, traditional demagoguery.
I’m trying not to be guilty of that… but obivously fck up regularly. but…
They want to operate on a deeper level than the populace at large in order to guide their opinions.
People like Lakoff are trying to popularize this.
This isn’t like the manipulation of the masses by a ruling class… they have done it and will continue to do it.
This is about giving that power right to the people, so they do it themselves.
You seem to rely on an idea either that they can’t learn it, which would be a real elitism, perhaps practical, but which I deny, OR, possibly you think “no one should do this manipulation, not even the self”.
But the mind thinks in terms of these relationships between one domain and another, the nation as a family, any given war as WWII or Vietnam and on and on into relations that are not strictly metaphorical but which always have these source domains, these “frames” which are the model we are using to represent our current understanding of some subject, some feature of the real world.
We’re saying everyone can learn how to do this if they watch themselves to see what frames they us.
I don’t want to use the frames of others to manipulate them… that what “honest framing” is about… I just want to hear YOUR frames. I want to discuss them. It’s important.
I’ll admit, I’m selfish, I have believed in this talking about the models we use, the metaphors, for a long time, before I heard of framing, before I even heard of all the metaphor cataloging that Lakoff and Johnson were doing, for a long time. And if I talk about a metaphor for the nation I see that people have not given this much thought, and yet they are using metaphors all the time to think about the nation.
THAT is how they are manipulated… the popularization of framing is how people will control this phenomenon and free themselves from the manipulations of propaganda.
what if I told you my solution to the over 50% of Americans that don’t believe in evolution was to teach every schoolchild secular biology?
Would you think my plan was likely to work?
You are evangelizing ‘framing’ which is exactly what drives me nuts about it and why I complain.
How many hundreds of years have you scheduled for your plan of educating the public to resist GOP talking points to take effect?
um… I would say, yes, teach secular biology.
In fact… isn’t that what we support?
How many hundreds of years? Many more… indeed, philsophy has taken that perspective with many things… and it does work. We have hundreds of years.
However, with a few decades of developing a philosophy through discovering how we think, I believe we can establish a long term philosophy.
We can start winning elections quickly as well, on this multiply hundred year plan.
It seems to me yours is the elitist view, that this is over the people’s heads, so you can only use this type of knowledge to manipulate.
I have changed my own views quite a lot from the recieved opinion I was given, I don’t think it takes more than years, more than decades, to make significant changes in our worldview, especially where we are in history, with so many hundred years of unprocessed information… we have a lot of facts which are not a part of the public worldview… indeed, thats why, in my view, we have progressive politics… now it’s time for progressives to try to understand themselves, not assume they know where even they themselves are coming from, and to put it all together.
I feel this “just act” kind of sentiment is misguided. It sounds good, people love hearing that and thinking that… but show me the track record for that? That only works when there is a MASSIVE sentiment that it has come time to acts, and that sentiment comes from philosophy, from the national discourse, from the world view we lack a coherent expression for as an ideology.
thanks for asking.
First… “an ordinary pissed-off citizen”… this is the contingent the philosophers and linguists hope to recruit, they’ve got some neurologists and psychologists… but they are really in need of the “ordinary pissed off citizen”… in my case, while I would say I am a philosopher because anyone that wants to do philosophy can make that claim… I’m a very ordinary philosopher, I think I have a very practical real life perspective… I do not take it particularly seriously… I’m using things loosely as an ordinary citizen as well.
Next, yes on the devolving conversation… and I see I was touchy from that, contributing to it… when I posted I also worried, but I waged in… I think it’s promising. This diary was very hopeful about talking about the honesty of it.
Why? I like to think I am not into convincing people of too many things, I like that people all think different things.
So why “framing”.
It would not be enough just because I believe the model of metaphor, I believed it before cognitive scientists came up with these theories, I found I think that way myself, I realize that all things are metaphorical, one thing taken as another… why? because the first has been experienced, and we are seeking to measure this new thing… we try to find what it is, and we develop abstractions for this, and they are flexible.
Beyond that I think we need to develop our progressive philosophy.
I want people to be talking about HOW they think of things, and that seems difficult. It can take years to write some essay that gets to how you think about things. It’s easier to know what you think, that how you think.
But the cognitive science behind framing is another system which gives a surprisingly simple way for us to explore this together, what we all think like, and it is to discuss the metaphors we like. That’s all, discuss the metaphors we like and we will discover what we already think. And this escapes us so much but we don’t care to even realize that… we have to discover what WE think. Shouldn’t we already know? They ask. No. We have to discover what we really think, and this is how. A discussion of metaphors. How do we cast the world?
To say “we don’t apply one” is just to try to apply an objective frame… that’s fine, it’s a very solid, good, analytical frame, one in which everything fits in quite well and seems solid and well apprehended. It’s known to be especially accurate in certain respects. This is grid that is one of the biggest approximations of all which quantizes everything into line… it’s advantage is consistency, not “most accurate”, it all seems quite certain, too certain, this frame erases much of the poetic mystery of real life. It’s just a subtle frame… I use it all the time but we can’t call it “more honest” than a good old metaphor relating our nation to a family or life to a river.
Revenge of the poets perhaps.
This is wonderful!
I, too, enjoy thinking about thinking and learning.
The use of “metaphor” confuses me. I keep reading the dictionary definition, but I can’t seem to wrap my mind around your use of the word.
Two questions then. Can you give me another word(s) for “metaphor?”
And, is it a “metaphor” if I presented to you an interactive sculpture of how I think our minds work? I guess I think of “metaphor” as word-bound and that locks up my thinking.
and others went about looking for the metaphor we use in our speech.
a friend of mine studying under johnson in the 90s, for example, studied Bush Is Gulf War speeches and found a lot of “Gulf War IS WWII” metaphor in place.
They built a catalog.
The basic theory is that all thinking works by metaphor… but as you point out, a “metaphor” is a literary construct and they are talking more about a general thing… “mapping”… any time you take one set of concepts and use it as a frame to understand the real world. So all forms of this are involved… analogy, scientific models (light AS a particle, light AS a wave)… such modeling is also “metaphorical”… if by “metaphor” you mean “metaphor AS a metaphor for all cognitive mapping”.
The reason it’s important to go back and search out our literary metaphors… the type of metaphorical framing we do in political speech is because, one, much of our political thought IS put in language, and the metaphors will be literal… two, they are accessible, we can read a speach or write one and see what metaphors we put there. Often they are put their subconsciously, and they are read that way, but if you pick through a speech looking for them, they do jump out.
Finally, I think it’s “revenge of the poets”… so called straight talk with no frames is really just talk that calls on some objective-reality frames which while quite good, are still frames. These frames have to their advantage consistency and a lot of success in the physical sciences… however, they also drain the emotive power from things, these frames are not how we live our lives, how we judge our votes, they are a bit dry and dead. They are good frames for data collection, but they are poor frames for communication because they are not evocative for us, they do not spring to life like the deftly used metaphors of poets and other “liars”.
The poets needed to be pushed out… but now, it’s time for them to be let back in.
Thanks.
This part: “‘mapping’… any time you take one set of concepts and use it as a frame to understand the real world.” is more along what I have understood from cognitive models of thinking.
And I better understand the confusion and differences that surround “framing.” Bush I’s “Gulf War IS WWII,” maybe a verbal metaphor, however, words act as “cues” for other bits of knowledge which may come as images and often have emotional tones.
So “WWII” brings to mind all the movies I have seen set during the war and all the books I have read, both fiction and nonfiction about WWII and memories of conversations with people who experienced WWII. And then the mind expands to “good guys/bad guys” and the U.S. to the rescue and then…
So Bush2 using the visual props for announcing “Mission Accomplished,” activates a great many associations through a visual medium. Visual “metaphor?”
And I can see how this “framing” can be viewed as simplistic or as marketing or as lying. Yet, what I understand you saying is, learn to recognize these things and become aware of what you believe and value, so you don’t get manipulated.
Pretty sound advice – thanks.
It seems to me you are using what you have understood from Lakoff to listen differently. Your ability to pick up the framing elements of others allows you to respond in a different way – that is very powerful.
As to your comment, “Well, now that I’ve taken up a lot of screen space with my (usual) Incredibly Long Comment, my answer is going to be very unoriginal and boring,” I can only say, “Wrong, wrong wrong!” (How’s that for subtlety and nuance?)
Studying your own frames and recognizing your beliefs and position – knowing what is important to you – and using what you have learned to defend your students – wow – that is very far from “unoriginal” and “boring.”
I hope your meeting today went well for you. And that you will write about how it went.