I tried to find a definition of framing but couldn’t. (I didn’t look very hard, mind you.) So here’s my inadequate effort at one:
Framing is the attempt to control the context of a discussion, from language to references to imagery to metaphors. The idea is to control the discussion in this way in order to bring others to a desired conclusion.
In other words, it’s sort of a propaganda technique – horse manure, if you will.
I think we see this everywhere. In many ways, it’s a basic tool of marketing. Advertising tools and techniques strive to place a product or service within a favourable context in order to persuade consumers to purchase.
It reminds me a lot of the either/or argument, the “you’re either for me or against me” notion that suggests there are only two positions when the reality is there can be many positions. It’s a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand.
Now here’s the troubling thing about the George Lakoff Manifesto: it argues that since conservatives use this technique that liberals (or progressives) should too. (Let’s ignore the politics here for a moment. This post isn’t about that.)
It’s like an old Star Trek episode. The Enterprise comes to a planet with two races. One is peaceful, the other warlike. The latter group is battling, and defeating, the peaceful group because the peaceful group won’t fight.
Now Captain Kirk enters and passionately tells the peaceful group they must become warlike to survive – they have to do what the other guy is doing because otherwise they won’t win. So they do. But when they finally win everyone realizes that they have lost because they are now no different than the group they defeated.
Well, it seems to me the manifesto’s argument is saying you must become the other group to win. It doesn’t look at other options, alternative strategies or anything else. It’s a panic response to the feeling you are losing your foothold.
This business of framing is really the business of telling lies, the kind of lies that are not so much overt as they are lies of omission. (Some fault must also be owned by us, the ones who willingly embrace the lies because it’s easier than actually thinking something through.) The manifesto’s argument is that since one group is doing it all groups must do it if they want to remain in contention.
And it seems to me this is saying to hell with the people, winning is all we care about.
In the current circumstance of an American election, it is saying to hell with the American people. We want what we want and we’ll do whatever we have to do to get it.
It’s not an issue of right-wing versus left-wing, tax cuts versus spending, war strategies or anything else except winning at any cost.
The whole framing thing reminds me of the slogan for the recent (and idiotic) Alien vs. Predator movie: “No matter who wins, we lose.”
(If you want to see framing in action, watch the next U.S. election debate, both the debate itself and afterwards when all the spin people will be trying to tell us what to think about it because, of course, they wouldn’t want us thinking for ourselves.)
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