Street Prophets

Obama will restore Faith in the Constitution!

Fri Jul 04, 2008 at 02:22:34 AM PDT

This is an example of George Lakoff's framing. Think of how much information is conveyed in this one sentence. Let's take a closer look.

The world "restore" is defined relative to a frame made as follows: (using George Lakoff's notation)

Restore Narrative
 Semantic Roles
   Damaged or lost object (good, important object, victim, The Constitution)
   Party that caused loss (bad, villain, Republicans, McCain)
   The actual violations of the object (harmful, torture, illegal war,  war profiteering, etc)
   Hero that restores object (good, Senator Obama)

 Scenario
   (Start) Opposing party (McCain) harms Object (Constitution)
   (Central) Hero (Senator Obama) has the skill and knowledge to repair object (The Constitution)
   (Finish) Hero (Senator Obama) defeats villain (McCain)
   (Final State) Constitution restored, President Obama achieves noble goal, Republicans punished.

This is a condensation of the Lakoff process of analysis, and I combined some steps. A full analysis of this would involve the expanding this to include all the words used in the ad copy by adding additional frames and "binding" them together by maps.

The above example can be used as a basis for a radio ad. Print ads allow for the use of images that reinforce the message. See below. Notice the dual use of the word Faith. What is curious, is that the conservative world view reader may only perceive one meaning initially. But, the progressive world view reader may see both meanings at once.

I thought it might make a nice bumper sticker. So I made one up.

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Because of Senator Obama's command of Constitutional law, as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, I'm confident he can achieve the goal of restoring the Constitution. And further, I believe he can restore Faith to it's important place in the American society without engaging in the trappings of Civic Religion.

I believe that Senator Obama is that rare individual who's mind can shift between the world views in order to accomplish his goals. In other words he is complex. If one of his strategic goals is restoring the Constitution, we need to forgive him for making tactical decisions that we disagree with.

Have a safe 4th of July,

JON


Tags: Lakoff, Framing, Obama (all tags)

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