Lakoff: Trump has turned words into weapons. And he's winning the linguistic war

[G_j]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/how-to-report-trump-media-manipulation-language

George P Lakoff and Gil Duran
Wed 13 Jun 2018

Donald Trump has been a salesman for nearly half a century. He is now selling himself, his worldview and his self-serving views of the law and the truth. His principal tools are language and the media. By faithfully transmitting Trump’s words and ideas, the press helps him to attack, and thereby control, the press itself.

Trump knows the press has a strong instinct to repeat his most outrageous claims, and this allows him put the press to work as a marketing agency for his ideas. His lies reach millions of people through constant repetition in the press and social media. This poses an existential threat to democracy.

Language works by activating brain structures called “frame-circuits” used to understand experience. They get stronger when we hear the activating language. Enough repetition can make them permanent, changing how we view the world.

—

Scientists, marketers, advertisers and salespeople understand these principles. So do Russian and Islamic State hackers. But most reporters and editors clearly don’t. So the press is at a disadvantage when dealing with a super salesman with an instinctive ability to manipulate thought by 1) framing first 2) repeating often, and 3) leading others to repeat his words by getting people to attack him within his own frame.

..more..

[Iliyah]

1. Nope.

[marylandblue]

2. Lakoff is right, but nobody listens to him

Even if we defeat Trump, he has primed the people for the next authoritarian populist to take it to the next level. If we don't defeat Trump, this is why.

[G_j]

3. & the IRONY..

After meeting with North Korean dictator, Trump calls press America's 'biggest enemy'

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/13/media/trump-tweet-media/index.html

[0rganism]

5. to be duly reported verbatim by the press...

and our cycle of endless winning continues apace

[herding cats]

10. "War games"

Rather than military exercises. Also repeated by the media after that.

[G_j]

13. exactly nt

[KewlKat]

4. Kick

[unblock]

6. Sadly it's the media that's to blame.

Used to be they knew how to make editorial decisions and simply not cover things like fringe crap or overt hate speech (they used to insist on a thin veil of deniability) or obvious lies.

Now they insist that anything Donnie says is newsworthy even though they never use that standard for democrats.

And coverage of democrats is limited to responding to Donnie or defending against a democratic scandal.

Donnie's no genius. His word choice isn't particularly calculated. It's just responding to what the media will cover and hat gets him the most eyeballs.

Really, he's exactly what the media has been asking for because he exists for media attention.

[JI7]

7. He only has support among his bigoted base

The media helps normalizeit all.

But it's not really the message itself as much as the failure of the media .

[Freethinker65]

8. Instead of quoting what Trump says/tweets, the media should just say "Once again, Trump lies...

This time Trump is lying about X. Explain that facts about X, then move onto the next factual news item.

[lagomorph777]

11. They really don't need to bother playing video of Trump and his cronies.

I am sure most non-Fox watchers mute the TV when Turd appears on it. I certainly mute him.

[lagomorph777]

9. Trump proves you don't need a large vocabulary to win a war of words,

when your target audience is composed entirely of idiots.

[smirkymonkey]

12. K&R