October 26 - class 9 notes Announcement: there are 2 Tuesdays in November where i have to be out of town. I want to make them up or shift them. 9th of November and 30th of November; the 30th will be made up on Friday, December 3 Discussion of next Tuesday. Can we be in front of a TV? Questions: Q: You can't attack a frame... you have to establish your own. When the conservatives started this in the 70s, how long until they had established one themselves. A: They were tearing their hair out... at that time, they were having difficulty Estate Tax. Lots on the right, not very much on the left. Bill Gates Sr. has an answer, as does MacKinnon. Their answer has to do with an implicit discussion of taxes as infrastructure. The Democrats in Congress just role over - they don't know how to do framing. Gates is not heard by people there. It's astonishing to Lakoff that they wouldn't hear these arguments. They need to rename it, but they don't have the apparatus to do it, they don't know that there's something that they should do. [Introduction of individual's class paper on Estate Tax, including his arguments.] Estate tax: trying to create a level playing field. Once a kid is on hir own, s/he should be able to support hir own. Estate tax only concerns property worth > $2.5M. Why wouldn't conservatives want every generation to prove that they can make it on their own. Just because they were raised by the strict father, there is a natural aristocracy. If you are raised well, you deserve it. Part of the incentive for working is that i can create some beautiful to pass on to my kid. But in the same breath, if the children get a "handout" ... This fails. There's a link between morality and prosperity and discipline. Every good strict father is going to create good children. Argument put out is that it will kill family farms... There's a procedure already in place so that it's spread over 10 years. [Truth check: does this actually affect farms? Aren't they normally covered under "businesses"?] How much of our visions with farming, the framing, is going back to age-old ideas of what that connotes? People empathize with this frame, regardless of its truth value. Research on tax cuts - asking people if they will be affected if their children will pay taxes on an estate worth more than $1M. More than 50% think that they will be affected. In reality, < 2% will be affected. Kerry's "this will only affect 3 of us" goes against what people think about their status in the economic system. Talk about Estate Tax as a Deferred Reinvestment after death. Anyone who makes a lot of $ off of business, they are getting lots of $ from taxpayers (tax dividends) for infrastructure he doesn't have to create. This is a deferred tax... Another way to think about it is as reinvestment. Reinvesting the money in society. "I have the right to do what i want with MY money." "My kids deserve it because i raised them right." -> powerful conservative arguments. The question is "Is it your money?" The issue is the concept of self-made man. If $ is borrowed from society, then a repayment is in order. Is the government's money "our" money? Question of whose money is it. If "I" made money, i am the causal agent in it. Your property values go up because infrastructure was put in by the government.. your property value goes up because of infrastructure. Luxury Tax. Sin Tax. Should you tax things that have external harm? Ideas that need to be destabilized: the Self Made Man, Taxation as Investment. Taxing earned income, but not unearned income. Taxes are being focused on income not wealth. Wealth rises as stock market goes up. The result is that if you have a lot of assets, you are going to have a lot more without work. Goes against the idea that we respect work over non-work. The question is: how do you get this to be seen as wrong? How do you get the fact to be known? [People have no idea what the facts are here.] Frame: old miser, hoarding their wealth in old age... needs to be used for good purpose. Lakoff: very few people think that way. Right wing argue that the wealthy give people jobs, but most of the wealthy just keep their wealth. The idea that money can do something or not is not a normal idea. It's a very important idea. What are all of the ideas or frames that you would have to have to make it absolutely natural that you keep an estate tax. What would you call such a tax? Deferred reinvestment? Unearned income tax? What are the values that lead you to believe that if the top 2% have 80% of the income... wealth should be in relation to work. [Discussion of Orwellian language with examples brought in... things like "Working Families" that says that Marxist rhetoric is completely false - there's no working class separate from the bourgeoisie! From this book, every liberal idea is a Orwellian term.] Fiscal conservatives: mapping just onto money. Just one way to be a conservative. Thrown "away" - "away" doesn't exist in the frame... How do you bring future generations into the frame? Full accounting. "Natural Capitalism" -> book that insists on full accounting with the future in mind... you pay your own way. Redefining Progress folks - GDP measures flow of $ in society, but doesn't measure quality of life in a society. How do you differentiate between quality of life and standard of living. Quality of life has everything to do with environment... need to incorporate that into the standard of living measurements. Need to bring in the externalities. Natural capitalism is about eliminating externalities... externalities are what is outside the frame... like collateral damage. They don't count in figuring out what really happens in the war. "What frame should i use?" -> wrong question.. you have to have a system involved. Generic question about the assignment - hypocognition, frames that should be necessary... is that this or Luntz for liberals. That's part of this assignment. Luntz for liberals - what kind of language should you have. Name the frames. State the arguments and your language. Try to make it short. Try to make the whole thing short. Don't have to explain... you're writing it for Lakoff, period. No need to explain to the outside world. Mention Lakoff frames if appropriate. Focus is on the ideas, not the language/words explicitly. On reasoning. Email: anat@berkeley.edu "I find it weird that we're sitting here, a week from the election. In a week, the history of the world will be changed. And we have no idea which way to know." "And will we know in a week?" Global warming - a terrible terrible name. Warming is warm... that's nice. Global climate change. Introduced my interest in Proposition F: May San Francisco residents who are 18 or older vote in School Board elections, whether or not the resident is a United States citizen, if the resident is a parent, guardian or care-giver of a child in the School District? - Are people in Britain allowed to vote in local elections -- There is a precedent for local elections elsewhere Reaction in the Castro: i don't have children. People can't project the consequences of this. People were scared because they didn't know how this would change the consequences of the school board. They didn't know how they would be voting. People dont' know what the effects will be. Framing perspective. Someone outside of the family making decisions for the family. From a conservative framing: freeloaders... why do they take our resources but don't want to join. How many of these people are waiting? Focus on kids... level playing field. Parents of American citizens should be able to vote. In loco parentus. -- ties into teachers and beurocrats? parents make the best decisions for kids -> Luntz arguments Newsom - where is he? Feinstein & Boxer (against it) want to keep it out of the Supreme Court... the Supreme Court is super conservative. What are the underlying interests in empowering these people? Who are they empowering, especially given the numbers. What kind of strategic initiative is this? The assumptions is that decisions will be made that this won't benefit the family. Question of family boundaries. Discussion of Luntz booklet. Luntz uses Washington, not the government. Local politicians are liked by local people... Local is good, away is bad. The right builds on resentments, anger. How do you talk about politics and government? How do you get people to see government as taxes as investments, forest rangers, disaster relief people, public health people, etc. OK city - people never saw this as an attack on government. Would've been a perfect opportunity for Clinton to talk about it as an attack on government... he didn't. Need nice pictures of people - who are your public servants. They need a pro-government campaign. What format do we have? - Good parts: good speeches by the other side, analysis of those frames; sample speech on our side. - Forms of reasoning on each side - Overview statement - Things to say and not say | Red Flags - things to make sure you don't do [Test out with people a little bit... don't run focus groups... take a stab.] [Less interested in getting the right answer... more interested in the method. Have to talk about all of these values, moral values, political principles go into your argument. What values is this coming from?] Cognitive science vs. cognitive linguistics - Two generations in cog sci - early (artificial intelligence in early stage), in mid-70s, results about the brain started coming in. Became clear that thought was embodied - Cognitive linguistics - linguistics that was consistent with cognitive science... prototypes, prototype structures, frame semantics, metaphor... ideas of cognitive linguistics arose empirically. Where does this all come in? - Frame. Conceptual metaphor. Prototypes. Metonymy. Not in non-cognitive linguistics. Basic mechanisms of thoughts come from there. - Activating a frame, assumes that frames are instantiated in the brain - Hypo-cognition. Lack of frame instantiated in your brain... not that you couldn't write down a frame, just that it's not in someone's brain. Metro Publishing - down Bankroft below Telegraph. (to get Luntz book)