Lakoff was one of the founders of the field of cognitive linguistics. He's been linguistics professor at Berkeley for 39 years. Two of his not-overtly-political books, _Metaphors We Live By_ and _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind_, are among the most frequently studied books on linguistics. I have no data in front of me, but having been assigned both books in both undergrad and graduate studies, at two very different universities, I'd guess general linguistics surveys are the most frequently assigned linguistics reading, followed by Chomsky, Lakoff, and Saussure, in that order. Google Scholar shows that at least 16,891 different papers published in academic journals have cited _Metaphors We Live By_. That is an extraordinary number for a field as relatively small as linguistics.
Not convinced by externals, because you'd need to see proof for yourself of his brilliant analyses of language, thought, and communication? Get over it. You respect Marx's thought, but in the course of five or six paragraphs you'd never be able to do justice to his ideas. No brief summary can do justice to any broad, engaging set of ideas. Also, I thought you'd rather judge for yourself than be spoonfed, which is why I suggested reading the analysis of the Schwarzenegger/Davis campaign, although his overtly political writing is an extremely simplified, deliberately "warmer" version of his academics (I prefer the academic writing, but I recognize the need to make the work more accessible).
His field of study is (basically) the way language shapes perception, and his political writing is essentially focused on how to use language to shape perception. You want to call that marketing? You're not wrong, but that's one of many categories that could be chosen -- "rhetoric" being another -- and the choice of the word "marketing" is so laden with sneering, it's likely to prevent someone from seeing the value of a tool.
You think the OP and I are colluding? How... bizarre. It's the middle of the night, and most people are in bed (I was, but only for a few hours, sadly). So yes, only two people who respect Lakoff have posted in this thread so far. But it's not like Lakoff has been discussed here before....
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1377735http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8225796http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=296x2937http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x459802http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=108x135936http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x6684...and two or three or thirty-seven thousand other times, by hundreds or thousands of other DUers, who must be "jointly pushing" to draw people into their touchy-feely cult.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/searchresults.html?q=lakoff&sitesearch=democraticunderground.com&sa=Search&domains=democraticunderground.com&client=pub-7805397860504090&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A11&hl=enIf you're actually interested in exploring some of Lakoff's linguistics, you can take a stroll through 49,000 academic articles by him or at least referring to him in their summaries (not citations, summaries):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=lakoff&as_sdt=1%2C6&as_ylo=&as_vis=1