The ALL NEW Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate Read Free Page A

press in describing his policies, and slowly became so much a part of public discourse that liberals started using it.
    Think of the framing for relief . For there to be relief, there must be an affliction, an afflicted party, and a reliever who removes the affliction and is therefore a hero. And if people try to stop the hero, those people are villains for trying to prevent relief.
    When the word tax is added to relief , the result is a metaphor: Taxation is an affliction. And the person who takes it away is a hero, and anyone who tries to stop him is a bad guy. This is a frame. It is made up of ideas, like affliction and hero . The language that evokes the frame comes out of the White House, and it goes into press releases, goes to every radio station, every TV station, every newspaper. And soon the New York Times is using tax relief . And it is not only on Fox; it is on CNN, it is on NBC, it is on every station because it is “the president’s tax-relief plan.” And soon the Democrats are using tax relief —and shooting themselves in the foot.
    It is remarkable. We have seen Democrats adopting the conservative view of taxation as an affliction when they have offered “tax relief for the middle class.”
    They were accepting the conservative frame. The conservatives had set a trap: The words draw you into their worldview.
    That is what framing is about. Framing is about getting language that fits your worldview. It is not just language. The ideas are primary—and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas.
    There was another noteworthy example of conservative framing in George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2005. This one was a remarkable metaphor to find in a State of the Union address. President Bush said, “We do not need a permission slip to defend America.” What was going on with a permission slip? He could have just said, “We won’t ask permission.” But talking about a permission slip is different. Think about when you last needed a permission slip. Think about who has to ask for a permission slip. Think about who is being asked. Think about the relationship between them.
    Those are the kinds of questions you need to ask if you are to understand contemporary political discourse. While you are contemplating them, I want to raise other questions for you.
    My work on politics began when I asked myself just such a question. It was back in the fall of 1994. I was watching election speeches and reading the Republicans’ “Contract with America.” The question I asked myself was this: What do the conservatives’ positions on issues have to do with each other? If you are a conservative, what does your position on abortion have to do with your position on taxation? What does that have to do with your position on the environment? Or foreign policy? How do these positions fit together? What does being against gun control have to do with being for tort reform? What makes sense of the linkage? I could not figure it out. I said to myself, These are strange people. Their collection of positions makes no sense. But then a thought occurred to me. I have exactly the opposite position on every issue. What do my positions have to do with one another? And I could not figure that out either.
    That was extremely embarrassing for someone who does cognitive science and linguistics.
    Eventually the answer came. And it came from a very unexpected place. It came from the study of family values. I had asked myself why conservatives were talking so much about family values. And why did certain values count as “family values” while others did not? Why would anyone in a presidential campaign, in congressional campaigns, and so on, when the future of the world was being threatened by nuclear proliferation and global warming, constantly talk about family values?
    At this point I remembered a paper that one of my students had written some years back that showed that we all have a metaphor for the nation