Linguistic Framing

I’ve been following some of the work by linguistic expert George Lakoff. Something that fascinates me is what he calls “framing”, which is the manner in which politicians position issues to fit their respective moral world views. Framing allows a political party to define themselves as a green party that supports the environment even though they are really attacking the environment in the name of the economy. You just have to frame your strategy by calling it the “Clean Air Act” and use phrases like “reducing emission intensity” while you are allowing overall pollution levels to rise to unprecedented proportions.

Linguistic framing is a strategy that works. It manipulates underprivileged people to vote for a party that exhorts “tax reform” which implies reducing taxes but in reality is really about cutting social services so that corporate taxes can be kept minimal.

Linguistic framing is not all about manipulation and deception. The more we understand the power of the language we use, the easier it is to properly communicate our ideas. Linguistic framing can help people open their minds and become more receptive to new ideas while breaking down their existing paradigms. From my perspective, linguistic framing is a definitive strategy that is going to have to be applied if we ever want the western world to make the environment and long term future of our species THE priority.

"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." - Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897 - 1941)