George Lakoff is a retired professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at University of California, Berkeley. Through his work with political discourse analysis, he has authored over 40 books, papers, and articles that explore how political parties use language and rhetoric. Below is an interview between Lakoff and I surrounding this research project.
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Interviewer: My project largely surrounds a discourse analysis where I account for the reasons passive voice is consistently used by each political party and politicians to their advantage. My thesis involves 4 key reasons politicians use passive voice: eloquence/clarity, end-focus, blame aversion, and unknown agent of verb. Can you speak to any or all of these?
Lakoff: I think you got the basics, you know. Those are the usually reasons. There is another which has to do with just declaring the existence of something. “This has happened” or “this was done.” Where usually the people who did it aren’t necessarily involved.
Interviewer: How did you use your knowledge of linguistics and political discourse analysis
Lakoff: Everything in every sentence. That’s not something you can explain quickly. I’ve been doing linguistics for 55 years. I’ve used all sorts of stuff. And there isn’t any particular way. I know a lot of stuff and I use it, basically whatever I see. And you know, what I am trying to do largely… well, there’s a few interesting points. One, there’s framing. You want to know if there is significant political framing from a certain point of view. And you want to notice that. And those frames can be built in all kinds of ways grammatically; but what you’re doing there is noticing the semantics. And you do that partly by noticing where you might frame things differently or where they are being framed differently by different parties in a dispute. So a lot of what you’re doing when studying political grammar is looking at how the framing is working and how you know political opponents will frames things in different ways.
Interviewer: I know you do a lot of work with metaphor as a method of revealing ideology. How can ideology influence sentence construction, diction, and other linguistic features of language, particularly in terms of passive voice?
Lakoff: In politics the passive voice is a way to avoid responsibility for an action. “Asylum seekers have been stopped from entering the country “ vs. “I have ordered asylum seekers to be prevented from entering the country.” One of my former students (former being like 25 years ago) wrote a paper on various uses of the passive. And he concluded one of the uses is to shift from the focus of one party to another. So if you want to change the person you are talking about or the topic you’re talking about, you can use the passive voice.
Interviewer: How did you get interested in political discourse and linguistics?
Lakoff: I was raised in a political town where there was politics everywhere. Bayonne, New Jersey. There was a political machine running Jersey City. There was my father who read the New York Times cover to cover everyday and got me to start doing that when I was ten. He started explaining to me what the politics was when I was ten, you know. I started that with my son when he was seven. It is just from childhood.
Interviewer: Why should people pay attention to not only the words politicians say, but also how they say it?
Lakoff: The how-- the words are only part of how language works. Language has to do with grammar and intonation, presupposition, I mean I study language and language is very complicated; words are only part of that. And so you have to look at the total utterance and the context of the utterance and the people you are talking to and how they are framing it and so on. So there are a whole lot of things that you have to look at in understanding language. And I’ve been studying this for 55 years; it’s what I do. It’s not simple, you know. Language is enormously complicated, and thought is enormously complicated; it is not something that is obvious or easy.
Interviewer: Is there anything else you would like to add about my project or politics and linguistics in general that you think might be helpful?
Lakoff: Well, I think the issue of framing is essential in all of this. I have a book called Don’t Think of an Elephant that goes into all of this in great detail. It’s easy to read, and it’s cheap. You can read it in a night and get the gist of how framing works. You can build frames into grammar, into words, into any part of language. And you need to be able to see how an issue is being framed no matter what aspect of language is being used to frame it. And that takes some skill. This book is a very good primer in how to go about it.
Interviewer: Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me, George. I really appreciate it.
Lakoff: My pleasure, thank you for getting in touch.
Lakoff: I think you got the basics, you know. Those are the usually reasons. There is another which has to do with just declaring the existence of something. “This has happened” or “this was done.” Where usually the people who did it aren’t necessarily involved.
Interviewer: How did you use your knowledge of linguistics and political discourse analysis
Lakoff: Everything in every sentence. That’s not something you can explain quickly. I’ve been doing linguistics for 55 years. I’ve used all sorts of stuff. And there isn’t any particular way. I know a lot of stuff and I use it, basically whatever I see. And you know, what I am trying to do largely… well, there’s a few interesting points. One, there’s framing. You want to know if there is significant political framing from a certain point of view. And you want to notice that. And those frames can be built in all kinds of ways grammatically; but what you’re doing there is noticing the semantics. And you do that partly by noticing where you might frame things differently or where they are being framed differently by different parties in a dispute. So a lot of what you’re doing when studying political grammar is looking at how the framing is working and how you know political opponents will frames things in different ways.
Interviewer: I know you do a lot of work with metaphor as a method of revealing ideology. How can ideology influence sentence construction, diction, and other linguistic features of language, particularly in terms of passive voice?
Lakoff: In politics the passive voice is a way to avoid responsibility for an action. “Asylum seekers have been stopped from entering the country “ vs. “I have ordered asylum seekers to be prevented from entering the country.” One of my former students (former being like 25 years ago) wrote a paper on various uses of the passive. And he concluded one of the uses is to shift from the focus of one party to another. So if you want to change the person you are talking about or the topic you’re talking about, you can use the passive voice.
Interviewer: How did you get interested in political discourse and linguistics?
Lakoff: I was raised in a political town where there was politics everywhere. Bayonne, New Jersey. There was a political machine running Jersey City. There was my father who read the New York Times cover to cover everyday and got me to start doing that when I was ten. He started explaining to me what the politics was when I was ten, you know. I started that with my son when he was seven. It is just from childhood.
Interviewer: Why should people pay attention to not only the words politicians say, but also how they say it?
Lakoff: The how-- the words are only part of how language works. Language has to do with grammar and intonation, presupposition, I mean I study language and language is very complicated; words are only part of that. And so you have to look at the total utterance and the context of the utterance and the people you are talking to and how they are framing it and so on. So there are a whole lot of things that you have to look at in understanding language. And I’ve been studying this for 55 years; it’s what I do. It’s not simple, you know. Language is enormously complicated, and thought is enormously complicated; it is not something that is obvious or easy.
Interviewer: Is there anything else you would like to add about my project or politics and linguistics in general that you think might be helpful?
Lakoff: Well, I think the issue of framing is essential in all of this. I have a book called Don’t Think of an Elephant that goes into all of this in great detail. It’s easy to read, and it’s cheap. You can read it in a night and get the gist of how framing works. You can build frames into grammar, into words, into any part of language. And you need to be able to see how an issue is being framed no matter what aspect of language is being used to frame it. And that takes some skill. This book is a very good primer in how to go about it.
Interviewer: Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me, George. I really appreciate it.
Lakoff: My pleasure, thank you for getting in touch.
Reflection on Interview
In our interview, Lakoff mentioned a key trait of political discourse— framing. He remarked that a politician’s ability to frame an idea, concept, problem, or message is essential to their platform. This theme particularly connected to my research on passive voice. Because passive voice allows a speaker to focus the audience on the direct object or patient, they are able to reframe an event in different terms. For politicians, this may be especially valuable in times of crisis, disaster, or political scandals. However, it can also be used to highlight one’s values. Lakhoff summarizes the importance of this when he writes, “Voters don’t vote their self-interest. They vote their values” (2017). In 2004, George Lakoff helped the Democratic National Convention with their presidential campaign by studying cognitive science, linguistics, and politics (Powell, 2004). Similar to the way syntax can convey ideals, Lakoff worked to explain how politicians should work to express their values over specific policy details. Although Lakoff was largely concerned with the partisan use of metaphor, his work also applies to the way passive constructions can convey a politician's message and morals most effectively. By using passivization, a speaker can effectively frame their values, even at the sentence level.
In this discourse analysis, I will pay particular attention to the ways in which framing instills different values as a result of agent-patient inversion and end-focus. When the agent and patient are inverted through passivization, the subject of the sentence can be highlighted. This may place additional emphasis on the patients of verbs, altering what an audience will focus on. On the other hand, for some sentences, end-focus is more important to conveying personal values. By reserving the most impactful or most powerful items of a sentence for the end, a speaker or politician can conclude an idea on the strongest moral principles. In any case, understanding framing bolsters the way audiences can parse through a politician's message and recognize ideology.
In this discourse analysis, I will pay particular attention to the ways in which framing instills different values as a result of agent-patient inversion and end-focus. When the agent and patient are inverted through passivization, the subject of the sentence can be highlighted. This may place additional emphasis on the patients of verbs, altering what an audience will focus on. On the other hand, for some sentences, end-focus is more important to conveying personal values. By reserving the most impactful or most powerful items of a sentence for the end, a speaker or politician can conclude an idea on the strongest moral principles. In any case, understanding framing bolsters the way audiences can parse through a politician's message and recognize ideology.