dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
Don't you love it when academia finally catches up to you? A while ago we were talking about the roots of morality and I said it was emotional, and now this view has a name: "cognitive linguistics", a branch of this new hot theory of intelligence known as Embodied Cognition, itself the idea that intelligence doesn't exist independently of your body and brain.
Okay, so it's not that new. It's been around since the mid-90's.
Anyhow, here's a taste, showing how cognitive linguistics is being applied to political advertising. The italics are mine.
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In his new book, Lakoff takes aim at "Enlightenment reason," the belief that reason is conscious, logical, and unemotional. Harnessing together work from several fields, particularly psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, he mounts a polemical assault on the notion that people think rationally — which, he argues, is fundamentally at odds with how the brain actually functions.
Approximately 2 percent of the millions of pieces of information the brain absorbs every minute are processed consciously. The remaining 98 percent are handled by the unconscious brain. The mind, in other words, is like a tiny island of conscious reasoning afloat in a vast sea of automatic processes. In that sea, which Lakoff calls "the cognitive unconscious," most people's ideas about morality and politics are formed. We are all, in many respects, strangers to ourselves. Lakoff's book grandly describes what he believes are the revolutionary implications of his findings: "a new understanding of what it means to be a human being; of what morality is and where it comes from; of economics, religion, politics, and nature itself; and even of what science, philosophy, and mathematics really are." (He singles Chomsky out as "the ultimate figure of the Old Enlightenment.")
It is the political ramifications of Lakoff's theory that preoccupy him these days. An unabashed liberal (he insists on the label "progressive"), he says that Republicans have been quick to realize that the way people think calls for placing emotional and moral appeals at the center of campaign strategy. (He suspects that they gleaned their knowledge from marketing, where some of the most innovative work on the science of persuasion is taking place.) Democrats, Lakoff bemoans, have persisted in an old-fashioned assumption that facts, figures, and detailed policy prescriptions win elections. Small wonder that in recent years the cognitive linguist has emerged as one of the most prominent figures demanding that Democrats take heed of the cognitive sciences and abandon their faith in voters' capacity to reason.
The roots of the cognitive revolution in the social sciences are numerous and wide-ranging, but Lakoff traces his own story to Berkeley in 1975, when he attended a series of lectures that prompted him to embrace a theory of the mind that is fully embodied. Lakoff came to believe that reason is shaped by the sensory-motor system of the brain and the body. That idea ran counter to the longstanding belief — Lakoff traces it back 2,500 years to Plato — that reason is disembodied and that one can make a meaningful distinction between mind and body.
One of the most influential lectures Lakoff heard that summer was delivered by Charles J. Fillmore, now an emeritus professor of linguistics at the university, who was developing the idea of "frame semantics" — the theory that words automatically bring to mind bundles of ideas, narratives, emotions, and images. He called those related concepts "frames," and he posited that they are strengthened when certain words and phrases are repeated. That suggested that language arises from neural circuitry linking many distinct areas of the brain. In other words, language can't be studied independently of the brain and body. Lakoff concluded that linguistics must take into account cognitive science.
The field of cognitive linguistics was born, and Lakoff became one of its most prominent champions. But it wasn't until the mid-1990s that he began thinking through some of the political implications of framing. Startled by the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, Lakoff set about looking for conceptual coherence in what he saw as the seemingly arbitrary positions that defined modern conservatism. What thread connected a pro-life stance with opposition to many social programs, or a hostility toward taxes with support of the death penalty? Lakoff concluded that conservatives and liberals are divided by distinct worldviews based on the metaphor of the nation as a family. Conservatives tend to relate to a "strict father" mode, which explains why they are concerned with authority, obedience, discipline, and punishment. Liberals, on the other hand, perceive the nation as a "nurturant parent," an empathic presence dedicated to protection, empowerment, and community. Swing voters harbor both frames.
That schema is at the center of Lakoff's seminal 1996 book (reissued by the University of Chicago Press in 2002), Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. In working out his theory, Lakoff found that people tend to vote not on specific issues but rather for the candidate who best reflects their moral system by evoking the right "frames." Consider the phrase "tax relief," an effective staple of the Republican lexicon. According to Lakoff, the word "relief" elicits a frame in which taxes are seen as an affliction. And every time the phrase "tax relief" is heard or read by people, the relevant neural circuits are instinctively activated in their brains, the synapses connecting the neurons get stronger, and the view of taxation as an affliction is unconsciously reinforced.
================
Cognitive Linguistics is part of this new revolution in psycholinguistics and AI that rejects the analogy of the brain as a simple computer and sees emotion and perception as integral, inseparable parts of the thought process. Much of what we think of as logic is actually based on body-wisdom, for example, and much of what we think of as rational judgment is based on emotion.
Okay, so it's not that new. It's been around since the mid-90's.
Anyhow, here's a taste, showing how cognitive linguistics is being applied to political advertising. The italics are mine.
================
In his new book, Lakoff takes aim at "Enlightenment reason," the belief that reason is conscious, logical, and unemotional. Harnessing together work from several fields, particularly psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, he mounts a polemical assault on the notion that people think rationally — which, he argues, is fundamentally at odds with how the brain actually functions.
Approximately 2 percent of the millions of pieces of information the brain absorbs every minute are processed consciously. The remaining 98 percent are handled by the unconscious brain. The mind, in other words, is like a tiny island of conscious reasoning afloat in a vast sea of automatic processes. In that sea, which Lakoff calls "the cognitive unconscious," most people's ideas about morality and politics are formed. We are all, in many respects, strangers to ourselves. Lakoff's book grandly describes what he believes are the revolutionary implications of his findings: "a new understanding of what it means to be a human being; of what morality is and where it comes from; of economics, religion, politics, and nature itself; and even of what science, philosophy, and mathematics really are." (He singles Chomsky out as "the ultimate figure of the Old Enlightenment.")
It is the political ramifications of Lakoff's theory that preoccupy him these days. An unabashed liberal (he insists on the label "progressive"), he says that Republicans have been quick to realize that the way people think calls for placing emotional and moral appeals at the center of campaign strategy. (He suspects that they gleaned their knowledge from marketing, where some of the most innovative work on the science of persuasion is taking place.) Democrats, Lakoff bemoans, have persisted in an old-fashioned assumption that facts, figures, and detailed policy prescriptions win elections. Small wonder that in recent years the cognitive linguist has emerged as one of the most prominent figures demanding that Democrats take heed of the cognitive sciences and abandon their faith in voters' capacity to reason.
The roots of the cognitive revolution in the social sciences are numerous and wide-ranging, but Lakoff traces his own story to Berkeley in 1975, when he attended a series of lectures that prompted him to embrace a theory of the mind that is fully embodied. Lakoff came to believe that reason is shaped by the sensory-motor system of the brain and the body. That idea ran counter to the longstanding belief — Lakoff traces it back 2,500 years to Plato — that reason is disembodied and that one can make a meaningful distinction between mind and body.
One of the most influential lectures Lakoff heard that summer was delivered by Charles J. Fillmore, now an emeritus professor of linguistics at the university, who was developing the idea of "frame semantics" — the theory that words automatically bring to mind bundles of ideas, narratives, emotions, and images. He called those related concepts "frames," and he posited that they are strengthened when certain words and phrases are repeated. That suggested that language arises from neural circuitry linking many distinct areas of the brain. In other words, language can't be studied independently of the brain and body. Lakoff concluded that linguistics must take into account cognitive science.
The field of cognitive linguistics was born, and Lakoff became one of its most prominent champions. But it wasn't until the mid-1990s that he began thinking through some of the political implications of framing. Startled by the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, Lakoff set about looking for conceptual coherence in what he saw as the seemingly arbitrary positions that defined modern conservatism. What thread connected a pro-life stance with opposition to many social programs, or a hostility toward taxes with support of the death penalty? Lakoff concluded that conservatives and liberals are divided by distinct worldviews based on the metaphor of the nation as a family. Conservatives tend to relate to a "strict father" mode, which explains why they are concerned with authority, obedience, discipline, and punishment. Liberals, on the other hand, perceive the nation as a "nurturant parent," an empathic presence dedicated to protection, empowerment, and community. Swing voters harbor both frames.
That schema is at the center of Lakoff's seminal 1996 book (reissued by the University of Chicago Press in 2002), Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. In working out his theory, Lakoff found that people tend to vote not on specific issues but rather for the candidate who best reflects their moral system by evoking the right "frames." Consider the phrase "tax relief," an effective staple of the Republican lexicon. According to Lakoff, the word "relief" elicits a frame in which taxes are seen as an affliction. And every time the phrase "tax relief" is heard or read by people, the relevant neural circuits are instinctively activated in their brains, the synapses connecting the neurons get stronger, and the view of taxation as an affliction is unconsciously reinforced.
================
Cognitive Linguistics is part of this new revolution in psycholinguistics and AI that rejects the analogy of the brain as a simple computer and sees emotion and perception as integral, inseparable parts of the thought process. Much of what we think of as logic is actually based on body-wisdom, for example, and much of what we think of as rational judgment is based on emotion.
