September 14, 2004 - Lakoff Organizational Update - Metro Publishing - full Lunz book (next to Musical Offering on Bankroft) - go to blackboard to see course requirements -- framewars analysis of some issue (one will be available on Rockridge Institute's website); pick a topic to see all of the framing on both sides of the issues -- every argument for and against, all language specific to the issue. format is on the site -- read through Lunz - take the issue from framewars and turn out Lunz for liberals out on that issue; what would it look like? how does this differ? -- short paper (12 pages) on some topic relevant to the election [use lexis nexus and the like... online tools. go to right-wing websites, magazines; a lot of quotes; blogs are great] -- send Lakoff resource listings on blogs [i.e. politics.technorati.com] Go through classic cognitive science Framing - 2 approaches: Charles Filmore (small frames - sentential frames); Erving Goffman (big frames) - Goffman was a sociologist; was friends with Filmore; both wrote their books in Berkeley; both used the same term (frame) but in very different ways - Goffman used a single metaphor for social life (dramatic metaphor; life is a play). He went into places where people went into an institution and played a role. What kind of roles are there? What's inside the play? What's outside the play? [Prisons, asylums, etc.] - It was strange being his friends because you felt like you were constantly being observed; you were. - Goffman's notion of a frame is a larger frame, like the frame of an asylum or a casino. What are the rules of the casino? What is normal inside and weird outside? What is an impossible thing to do? - Filmore looks at smaller frames, ones that goes with verbs. Like the term "sell." "John sells a car to Harry for $1000." If you take the term buy, you get a different perspective. "Harry buys the car from John for $1000." Filmore looks at this and the grammar of the sentences. - Filmore is interested in semantic fields - bunches of related words (buy, sell, cost, price). You know when a word doesn't fit (Sunday, Monday, apple). Is there a generalization here? The generalization is a frame. Every commercial event has a scenario. Every word is defined relative to some such frame. - Do frames presuppose other frames? [Buyer has the money; buyer wants the goods. Notions like legal possession, desire.] They do bottom out in everyday experience. Framenet website - http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/framenet - linguistic analysis of verbs. What are the rules of those grammers? - Goffman frames made up of lots of Filmore frames. - Tax relief. Filmore use of frames - what are the roles? You have a scenario (affliction, then reliever, then alternative possibility - someone preventing it, reliever as a hero | reliever/villain frame) - Politics itself is a Goffman-esque frame. Categories Sub-categories (subparts of a frame) Subcategory: used car. Any category that is interesting has at least three types of prototypes: an ideal used car, typical used car, nightmare used car. [repeat of last week discussion.] - reason differently about the three types. Ideal used for a goal (standard that is set; used for making judgments). Typical case used for reasonable expectations. Nightmares: what you're trying to avoid. - Salient examples. (Danny Conoman studied this.) You use salient examples for probability judgments; they skew judgments of probability which skew risk. After 9/11, people didn't want to fly airplanes because they thought it was too risky. Because of their salience, they appear to have increased probability and thus you increase your risk. (Stats don't matter here.) - Good example: you are at the slots and you with $5K. You keep playing and you lose it all. You feel miserable. Invert that. You lose and lose and then you win it all back. You feel ecstatic. New baseline. - Social stereotypes. A snap judgment you make about somebody (one group vs. another group). Made on ethnicity, race, gender, etc. When that's done, you can challenge it. It's harder to challenge a typical case or an ideal case. Typical cases don't have negative effects (?!?!?) on social behavior. - In elections, people try to make candidates try to fit nightmare/ideal case. - Politicians want to be ideal cases (and their opponents nightmare cases). Also, you want to create a social stereotype and use that to setup the opponent as a nightmare case. - Republicans: Set up the norm of Bush as ahead. Democrats: trying to set up the norm as Kerry as the great closer. Before the DNC, the Republicans said that Kerry would get a 7 point boost. This set him up to fail so that it looked like he didn't live up to expectations. Folk models - intermediate in complexity between a Goffman and Filmore frame - account of what certain types of people are like - folk model of people on welfare, of generals, of reporters - social stereotype is a snap judgment (he's a general - he kills lots of people); a folk model can be as small as that or it can be larger (a general who has lots of soldiers under his command, cares about how many people live/die) - with these models, you have a structure in your brain. the synapses have changed. it's a lot harder to change the structures in your brain. a new structure has to be built up; you have to inhibit the old one with it. building this up is a lot harder Barak Obama - ideal prototype - has a name that gives him a clear african association - social stereotype of a black american (?english?, not to be articulate.. may be articulate in his own language like Jesse Jackson); stereotype of an African American black - attitude, black "racist", wanting something he hasn't earned - opposite of every stereotype - professor at University of Chicago, articulate, normal american english, worked his way up, opposite of stereotype of ghetto black, talks about opportunity, american dream, disciplined person... goes against all negative stereotypes - goes against fear - you feel happy, hopeful - fits the strict father model while being a complete progressive; gives hope that black people are going to be like him Metaphor - history of how metaphor was discovered - 1978 (Feb) Lakoff was teaching a 6 person class [Linguistics and Performance Art]; was reading a book on metaphor. - one day, a woman came in completely drenched and in tears. tried to not notice. went around talking about paper. she said "sorry, i just can't do this today. i have a metaphor problem with my boyfriend. maybe you can help. on my way over, he said that our relationship has hit a dead-end street. maybe we'll have to turn back." - we realized that love has lots of metaphors around travel - long bumpy road, we're at a crossroads, spinning wheels, we may have to bail out, etc. is there any generalization? in each case, the lovers are seen as travelers, the love relationship is seen as a vehicle. goal is destination that they're trying to reach together. difficulties - impediments to travel, to keep moving. - woman says "i don't care about your generalization; my boyfriend is breaking up with me. he's thinking in terms of this metaphor." - how does it work that people think in that image? "spinning the wheels." effort being placed into it, feeling frustrated, want the car to be moving. the lovers are in a relationship that's not going anywhere; they're putting a lot of effort into it and they're frustrated. take what you know about travel - image, knowledge about that image, map onto love and that's how you reason using a metaphor. metaphors are mappings from one conceptual domain to another. - thousands of metaphors, language follows suit - certain metaphors seem to be universal (or near universal) - they occur by the hundreds; relatively small - example: more is up, less is down. map linear scale of verticality onto quantity - getting lots of data for primary metaphors (ones learned when you're very young); learned just by functioning in the world - how does this happen? because of how the brain works neurally. when you're born, lots of random connections. to do something, they have to have major inputs and major outputs to really do something. this reinforces the chemistry of the synapses. receptors migrate to where the synapses are. neural circuits are the metaphors. primary metaphors. - poetic metaphors - novel things that are made up. autistics are probably capable to deal with common primary metaphors, but perhaps not poetic metaphors. - morality metaphors are in primary metaphors - learned around the world pretty early on. morality has to do with well-being. - you're better off if you're strong than if you're weak. you're better off if you're can stand erect than if you have to crawl on the ground. morality is up, immorality is down. better off if functioning in light than in the dark. morality is lightness. better off if you're eating things that are pure than rotten. purity rituals around the world. better off if well than if you're sick. immorality is a contagion. better off if you have wealth. metaphorical money - i owe you one, i'm in your debt, etc. - metaphors for social groups. nation as a family. large social groups in terms of small, familiar social groups - primary ones require synaptic change - common sense: reasoning in terms of brain's models - tax relief, tax relief, tax relief... sooner or later your brain has changed. - love as a journey is not a simple metaphor. why the hell should love be a journey? doesn't fit all cultures. why should we have such a metaphor? also a metaphor as love as a container - in the relationship, enter the relationship, leave the relationship, etc. also an intimate relationship - distance and physical closeness. if in intimate, small container. like a car. - achieving a purpose is like reaching a destination. certain purposes you can only solve by going the right way - we live in a culture where you're supposed to have a purpose in life (cvs - course of life.. curriculum vitaes - how much progress you've made) - love: life goals that are about similar progress in this life, connected purpose - [the woman is now a department chair with a wonderful husband, but not the boyfriend in the situation] Metonomy - 1 frame and 1 element of the frame stands for another. - waitress says to another - the ham sandwich wants his check - ham sandwich stands for the customer - "the white house says..." (Doonesbury) - when bush attacks kerry's voting - says that he votes against the war on terror; he has voted against the weapons system (even though he voted no on the appropriations bill) - 2 self defenses. saddam == al quaeda; self-defense. rescue the iraqi people from saddam. the self defenses get blown, but the rescue stays. - war on iraq -> war on terror; redemption/preemption -> freedom - republicans frame the whole thing and then just repeat repeat in the RNC. [see all of Lakoff's articles on berkeley.edu] - Bush systematically applies this framing everywhere pissing off financial conservatives and social conservatives.