Not-So-Cunning?

Writing in the New Republic, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker gives a scathing review of Berkeley linguist George Lakoff's latest work, Whose Freedom? Lakoff has become a much sought-after consultant in progressive political circles where his advice about "re-framing" the political debate has been taken to heart.

Lakoff has counseled environmentalists to ditch the phrase "global warming." In 2004, he told an interviewer for Sierra magazine:

"Global warming" is the wrong term: "Warm" seems nice. So people think, "Gee, I like global warming, Pittsburgh will be warmer." "Climate change" is the attempt to be scientific and neutral. "Climate crisis" would be a more effective term. Climate collapse. Carbon dioxide strangulation. Suffocation of the earth. But it’s not easy to change these things once they get into the vocabulary.

Somehow, I find it hard to take "carbon dioxide strangulation" as a serious attempt at re-framing. I mean, if environmentalists are already tarred as alarmists, where will that kind of talk get us? And last time I checked, asphyxiation was not one of the risks associated with greenhouse gases.

Pinker, author of books like The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct, takes similar issue with Lakoff's arguments. Here are a couple of passages from his review, reprinted here at Powell's Bookstore.

Political debates, according to Lakoff, are contests between metaphors. Citizens are not rational and pay no attention to facts, except as they fit into frames that are "fixed in the neural structures of their brains" by sheer repetition. In George W. Bush's first term, for example, the president promised tax "relief," which frames taxes as an affliction, the reliever as a hero, and anyone obstructing him as a villain. The Democrats were foolish to offer their own version of tax relief, which accepted the Republicans' framing; it was like asking people not to think of an elephant. Instead, they should have re-framed taxes as "membership fees" necessary to maintain the services and infrastructure of the society to which they belong. Likewise, the lawyers who are said to press "frivolous lawsuits" should be reframed as "public protection attorneys," and "activist judges" who "legislate from the bench" rebranded as "freedom judges."

...

But Lakoff's advice doesn't pass the giggle test. One can imagine the howls of ridicule if a politician took Lakoff's Orwellian advice to rebrand taxes as "membership fees." Surely no one has to hear the metaphor "tax relief" to think of taxes as an affliction; that sentiment has been around as long as taxes have been around. (Even Canadians, who tolerate a far more expansive government, grumble about their taxes.) Also, "taxes" and "membership fees" are not just two ways of framing the same thing. If you choose not to pay a membership fee, the organization will stop providing you with its services. But if you choose not to pay taxes, men with guns will put you in jail. And even if taxes were like membership fees, aren't lower membership fees better than higher ones, all else being equal? Why should anyone feel the need to defend the very idea of an income tax? Other than the Ayn Randian fringe, has anyone recently proposed abolishing it?

Lest Pinker get the last word, Lakoff responds to the hatchet job here, accusing his academic rival of, you might say, framing him by misrepresenting his ideas. As you may have gathered, I find Pinker much more convincing, but I'd be interested to hear other views. Anyone care to stand up for Lakoff?