Lakoff: Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff
The New York Times (free registration required) has an opinion piece by George Lakoff of "framing" fame.The Bush administration has finally been caught in its own language trap."That is not a stay-the-course policy," Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, declared on Monday.
The first rule of using negatives is that negating a frame activates the frame. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, he’ll think of an elephant. When Richard Nixon said, "I am not a crook" during Watergate, the nation thought of him as a crook.
"Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George," President Bush told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News a day earlier. Saying that just reminds us of all the times he said "stay the course." ...
posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 5:42 PM
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