George Lakoff is the co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
A Professor of Linguistics at the University of California,
Berkeley, he previously taught at Harvard University and the
University of Michigan. He has been a Fellow at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a
Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales, Paris (1995) and at the Linguistics Society of
America Summer Institute at the University of New Mexico
(Summer, 1995).
He has been a member of the Governing Board of the Cognitive
Science Society (1989-1995), a Senior Fellow at the Townsend
Center for the Humanities (1995-1996), and President of the
International Cognitive Linguistics Association (1989-1993).
He is currently on the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute
(1995-01) and is co-director with Jerome Feldman of the Neural
Theory of Language Project at the International Computer
Science Institute at Berkeley.
Dr. Lakoff has published a multitude of articles in major
scholarly journals and edited volumes. He is the author of the
influential book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and
Conservatives Think, Second Edition, (2002). He is also the
author of Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories
Reveal About The Mind (1987) and co-author of Metaphors We
Live By (1980) [with Mark Johnson], More Than Cool Reason
(1989) [with Mark Turner], Philosophy in the Flesh: The
Embodied Mind and Its Challenge To The Western Tradition
(1999) [with Mark Johnson], Where Mathematics Comes From: How
the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being (2000) [with
Rafael Núñez]. His most recent books include Don't Think of
an Elephant: Know Your Values, Frame the Debate (2004), Whose
Freedom? (2006), and Thinking Points (2006) [with the
Rockridge Institute].
In addition to his teaching and research commitments, Dr.
Lakoff has been on the editorial board of Metaphor and
Symbolic Activity, Journal of Pragmatics, Cognitive
Linguistics, Philosophical Psychology, Connection Science, and
the University of Chicago Press Cognitive Linguistics Book
Series. He is regularly interviewed in the public media and
has appeared on such radio shows as Talk of the Nation (with
Ray Suarez), Bridges (with Larry Josephson), To the Best of
Our Knowledge, and Forum (with Michael Krasny).
RockridgeInstitute.org resources by George Lakoff:
-
Articles
-
Simple Framing
An introduction to framing and its uses in politics.
-
What's in a Word? Plenty, if it's "Marriage"
George Lakoff analyzes the current debate over same sex marriage.
-
How to Respond to Conservatives
An excerpt from the book Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.
-
Framing: It's About Values and Ideas
Reframing is rethinking, sometimes a conceptual overhaul. The debate over reproductive rights demonstrates the conceptual work that needs to be done. A response to Katha Pollitt's piece in The Nation.
-
Crucial Issues Not Addressed in the Immigration Debate: Why Deep Framing Matters
Constructive critics of our paper The Framing of Immigration have suggested that we say more about immigration and American workers. We do that here. Other critics have misframed framing and attacked us for engaging in it. We respond.
-
Framing Versus Spin: Rockridge as opposed to Luntz
(c) The Rockridge Institute, 2006 (We invite the free distribution of this article)
Two weeks ago, Rockridge published The Framing of Immigration by George Lakoff and Sam Ferguson, an analysis of the framing surrounding immigration used by progressives and conservatives, as well as a discussion of framings not being used, but which would reveal important truths. Late last week, the DailyKos leaked a memo by Frank Luntz, the Republican messaging strategist, advising Republicans how to talk about immigration. If you want to compare what Rockridge does with what Luntz does, this is your chance.
-
Bush Is Not Incompetent
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush’s “failures” and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush’s disasters — Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit — are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault.
-
Occupation: The Inconvenient Truth About Iraq
It is time to tell an inconvenient truth about Iraq: it is an occupation, not a war. In wars, armies fight to dominate land. The US won the war three years ago when Bush said, “Mission Accomplished”. Then the occupation started, and our troops were not trained or equipped for an occupation under predictably hostile circumstances. Finally getting the courage to tell the truth that the US is an occupying force drastically changes the picture in Iraq. You cannot “win” an occupation. “Cut and run” does not apply to an occupation. Occupiers have to leave; the only question is when and how. Progressive Democrats agree that it should be soon; they only disagree on details. Political courage is called for. Truth now!
-
Whose Idea of Freedom Will Shape America’s Future?
Editorial from the Boston Globe, Tuesday, July 4, 2006.
-
The Framing of Immigration
Framing is at the center of the recent immigration debate. Simply framing it as about “immigration” has shaped its politics, defining what count as “problems” and constraining the debate to a narrow set of issues. The language is telling. The linguistic framing is remarkable: frames for illegal immigrant, illegal alien, illegals, undocumented workers, undocumented immigrants, guest workers, temporary workers, amnesty, and border security. These linguistic expressions are anything but neutral. Each framing defines the problem in its own way, and hence constrains the solutions needed to address that problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we will analyze the framing used in the public debate. Second, we suggest some alternative framing to highlight important concerns left out of the current debate. Our point is to show that the relevant issues go far beyond what is being discussed, and that acceptance of the current framing impoverishes the discussion.
-
Five Years After 9/11: Drop the War Metaphor
Language matters, because it can determine how we think and act.
-
When Cognitive Science Enters Politics
A Response to Steven Pinker’s Review of Whose Freedom? in The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com/doc_posts.mhtml?i=20061009&s=pinker100906)
-
Beyond Beauty and Wonder
Understanding the Mind is Necessary to Understanding Politics
-
The Framers Got It Right: Congress is the Decider
A Rockridge Institute Call to Action
-
Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues
In this article Joe Brewer and George Lakoff provide an introduction to cognitive policy - the values, frames, and arguments that make sense of the political process.
-
Books
- More Than Cool Reason
-
Moral Politics
A fresh look at how we think and talk about political and moral ideas.
-
Metaphors We Live By
A seminal work on the fundamental importance of metaphors in thought, and where they come from.
-
Don't Think of an Elephant!
The book that challenged the last forty years of conservative dominance of the national public policy debate
-
Thinking Points
Thinking Points is an essential tool kit for anyone who wants to participate in shaping an America that serves the common good.
-
Whose Freedom?
In Whose Freedom?, Lakoff shows that the right has effected a devastatingly coherent and ideological redefinition of freedom.
-
Downloadable Files
-
Take Back America presentation
A presentation on the importance of political framing, given by George Lakoff at the Take Back America conference on 6/4/04.
-
Metaphor, Morality, and Politics
Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust. An early and abbreviated discussion of the themes in George Lakoff's book, Moral Politics
-
Links
-
George Lakoff explains the need for Rockridge
This thorough and popular U.C. Berkeley interview with Rockridge Senior Fellow George Lakoff chronicles the motivations for starting the Rockridge Institute.
-
Michele Norris' Interview with George Lakoff
The interview provides a short capsule of why Rockridge is needed to counter the Right's successes in shaping the language of political debate.
-
Inside the Frame: An Interview with George Lakoff
The interview examines how the current election can be understood with the tools of cognitive linguistics.
-
News Items
-
George Lakoff Tackles Conservative Catchphrases in UC Berkeley Interview
George Lakoff sat down again with Bonnie Powell for a follow-up to an enormously popular interview published in October 2003. In this second interview, Prof. Lakoff looks at 'war on terror' and other conservative catchphrases, and discusses his forthcoming book, Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.
-
Reports
-
Conceptual Levels: Bringing It Home to Values
Why is it so easy for the radical right to label progressives as wishy-washy flip-floppers? Why is it so hard for progressives to shake these labels? The answer lies in some old habits.
-
Raising Real Children
Chapter 21 of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think.
-
A Cognitive Scientist Looks At Daubert
Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc (1993) has made our judicial system significantly less fair and more politically conservative. Daubert is not just about the application of some procedural rule. Daubert functions in its application as a strategic initiative that significantly moves America in a conservative direction, in the moral and political spheres, as well as in the legal sphere.
