GEORGE LAKOFF: UNDERSTANDING TRUMP (And his supporters.)
George Lakoff is an old linguist from the 70's, much like Noam Chomsky.
He became famous not just for black dialect studies, but for the psycholinguistic model of family communicating systems.
He's now using that model to describe our politics, and I have to say that he describes Trump and his followers better than they ever could articulate themselves TO themselves, even.
I will say this up front: there is way more behind the Hillary camp's invoking mothers and grandmothers than the simple media PR "softening" of her image. She's sending a message to the world about patriarchal austerity economics and politics.
I can get into that later. But first, here are some upfront tidbits:
...Why does Donald Trump publicly insult other candidates and political leaders mercilessly? Quite simply, because he knows he can win an onstage TV insult game. In strict conservative eyes, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who deserves to be a winning candidate. Electoral competition is seen as a battle. Insults that stick are seen as victories — deserved victories.
The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, America above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/
?1469462652
= new reply since forum marked as read
Very enjoyable-- very informative
The place was packed, I remember.
