Lakoff on Dems, Language

George Lakoff's is a name I've heard bandied about for a while. At Swarthmore, he was the dark side of linguistics -- they, like most institutions, taught the Chomsky party line, which is meaty enough to occupy the entirety of one's entire B.A.; but he was mentioned from time to time (more so, predictably, as I veered away from syntactical analysis and into cognitive science). I don't fully understand the rift that occurred between him and his mentor, the founder of modern linguistics (as Matt Bai says, a bit presumptuously, in the article I'm about to start talking about: "The technical basis of their argument, which for a time cleaved the linguistics world in two, remains well beyond the intellectual reach of anyone who actually had fun in college"), but I do understand that it's about embodiment -- the idea that human cognition, and therefore language, is fundamentally tied to the physical structure of our minds, and that to understand the mind is to understand the brain. More or less.

This is a fascinating argument, and I wish I knew more about it. But, embarrassingly, I've never read any Chomsky or Lakoff, and don't much feel like going back for a PhD in linguistics right now, which is the one context in which I can fathom having time to wrap my head around it to the degree I'd like to.

But Lakoff is apparently a rising star on the political scene right now, his ideas quickly becoming much more germane to the Democrats, and their approach to -- well, everything. Matt Bai has written the cover story to this week's New York Times Magazine, a nice, New-Yorker-length summary of, as Lakoff and now the DNC et al. call it, the "framing" problem. It's longish, but I'd print it out and read it on the way home from work if I were you. (That is, if I were you and not driving home from work -- it's hard to read while keeping one's eyes on the road.)

Basically, everyone knows the Dems fucked up the 2004 election big-time. What was clear to anyone watching the debates, watching Kerry's slow-on-the-uptake response to the swift boat brouhaha, was not that anyone candidate's ideas were better (or, in some cases, different) that the other's, but rather that one side did an amazing job of presenting them, and the other solidified his reputation as an intellectual elitist nuanced thinker -- to his detriment. (Sigh.)

Says Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND): "I can describe, and I've always been able to describe, what Republicans stand for in eight words, and the eight words are lower taxes, less government, strong defense and family values." That's important; the Dems can't do that. As he goes on to acknowledge: "We Democrats, if you ask us about one piece of that, we can meander for 5 or 10 minutes in order to describe who we are and what we stand for. And frankly, it just doesn't compete very well. I'm not talking about the policies. I'm talking about the language."

Enter Lakoff. Apparently, his most recent book, Don't Think of an Elephant!, has propelled the Dems to actually start listening to inside-the-Beltway consultants who have been urging them to stay on message for years. Hopefully, they will.

There's a lot more to be said about this article, but the gist is above. Now I want to read Lakoff's book, which is apparently a lot more nuanced than he lets on during his talks to sold-out audiences around the country. (It's on hold at the library for me -- such shame that I don't know my public library card barcode yet!)

As Bai points out, though, while language is clearly a crucial problem in the modern American bipartisan political arena, it's not the only one. A lot of articulating of what our core values actually are needs to be done. Lakoff proposes: "Stronger America, broad prosperity, better future, effective government and mutual responsibility"; Bai counters that these generalities are but a smokescreen for the lack of clarity of ideas. He ends: "The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place."