Media Mindfulness

George Lakoff who introduced to the general population the idea of “framing”- using language to frame how we think of issues- writes on how Bush’s latest rhetoric might be imploding:

Staying the Course Right Over a Cliff:

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.