i finally got a handle on how the popular language of political discourse has been, and is, controlled by the neo-conservative bunch. right now we are seeing it in action once again, as weeks roll by and the public discourse of the election continues to take place in small semantic boxes put in place by the neo-conservatives. these boxes are tiny, and any "discussion" that takes place within them are losers for the democrats, no matter what tack they take.
the grand daddy of this strange phenomena is the word "liberal", which became a vehicle for negative feelings some years back. today we have kerry reporting for duty at the democrat convention and several weeks later wasting his time defending his tour of duty in vietnam.
i used to think there was some svengali at work for the neo-conservatives who was morphing language to a state in which discourse was impossible, and public relations, marketing, and branding was all that was left.
yesterday a friend emailed me an article by UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff who shows how conservatives use language to dominate politics. he tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics and sheds some light on the contraction of political discourse. guess what: turns out that money is at the bottom of this development. here's a few quotes:
"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.
"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.
"...Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined
relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt,"
that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is
being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which
would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.
"If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like "voter revolt" - something that most people read and never
notice.
"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
coservatives 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.
"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."
the only way for the dems to break out of this box and escape the tarbaby of republican framed discourse is to jump up a level, stop replying to the innuendos and begin talking about about the framed discourse. and do it in small sound bites.
for instance: if kerry were to say "i did what i felt i had to do during the vietnam years, including serving in the war and later critiquing the policies that created it, not the soldiers fighting it. end of story", it might shut the whole thing down.
there is some hope. i've noticed a feeling floating around that indicates the public is tired of this type of controlled discourse - at last.
I still say let edwards loose. let him, without upstaging kerry, deflate this pseudo language by short quick comments that frame this framing process as an object of discussion, and pointing out the negative effects it creates.
