Although some of linguistics is very old, such as the international phonetic alphabet, and dating back hundreds of years (for a long time it was called philology but it means the same thing), some subfields of linguistics are relatively young. An example of one of these subfields would be cognative linguistics, also sometimes called neural linguistics. One of the pioneers of the field is a man from California named George Lekoff. He has turned his attention to debunking propoganda and understanding how political parties use metaphors to cause people, particularly men, to vote against there better interests. Republicans have convinced ordinary Americans that if they elect them then these ordinary people will get to keep more of there money and not paying taxes. Twenty-seven years after Reagon we should look around and see that the middle class is being destroyed for precisely this reason and it was all a lie. Since Nixon, Republan strategists, who thought in long term’s—30 years ahead, according to some horiffic memo’s that have been leaked; they have been very successful at convincing men that the government is the bad guy. But to quote Chomsky, another great linguists, ”The government is a buffer between the public and private power (corporations). But it has one defect: it is potentially democratic and therefore it has to be squashed.” That’s why we have people in government who don’t believe in government, some, like Grover Norquist, who even say there desire is to “drown government in the bathtup.” These same elites have also convinced Americans that labor unions are bad, with propoganda films like Marlon Brando On The Water Front and huge anti-union advertizing offennsives. Lekoff’s work on propoganda, like Chomsky’s on the same subject, is simply breathtaking. I have had a chance to hear him speak on the radio as well as perusing his books. Much of his time is spent debunking the ideology of James Dobson. He has team of linguists who are committed to this enterprise. What? It sounds far fetched, right? Lekoff could be called Dobson’s nemesis. It makes sense, though. In books like Moral Politics, Lekoff is working on the basis of conceptual metaphors. Political strategists use patriarchal concepts to snare innocent voters who then feel strong psychological pulls to vote against there better interests in favor of these authoritatian paradimes. It is called Framing The Debate. This was a title of one of his talks which can be ordered for 15 dollars by going to www.alternativeradio.org I think it should be said, though, that although I find his research fascinating and compelling and think everyone should be aware of this luminary, I do not agree with all his assesments. The Cosby family is his ideal family and his views on abortion, I feel, should be changed. I don’t think there is anything wrong with tradtional gender roles. A strict father, intrinsically, could also be a nurtuting one, as we see in many Jane Austen novels. George Lakoff uses “the strict father metaphor” to explain pretty much everything from taxes to invading other countries. Even he admits that there are many variations and overlaps. So having a traditional gender mindset is natural. I might have less of a problem with it than him. What is wrong, however, is when these classes are used cunningly to do evil. And as in the case of the Iraq war, inflation and destroying the middle class by shipping jobs overseas, these are indeed evils and the language that is used to make these evil enterprises successful needs to be unpacked and exposed. I think his anaylsis is basically correct.
Because of my busy schedule, I am not able to re-read much of what I post. I realize that it is haphazard. These should really be considered just notes. Someday I hope to write more in depth on these subjects.
