George Lakoff Quotes

George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his thesis that lives of individuals are significantly influenced by the central metaphors they use to explain complex phenomena.

The conceptual metaphor thesis, introduced in his and Mark Johnson's 1980 book Metaphors We Live By has found applications in a number of academic disciplines. Applying it to politics, literature, philosophy and mathematics has led Lakoff into territory normally considered basic to political science. In his 1996 book Moral Politics, Lakoff described conservative voters as being influenced by the "strict father model" as a central metaphor for such a complex phenomenon as the state, and liberal/progressive voters as being influenced by the "nurturant parent model" as the folk psychological metaphor for this complex phenomenon. According to him, an individual's experience and attitude towards sociopolitical issues is influenced by being framed in linguistic constructions. In Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf , he argues that the American involvement in the Gulf war was obscured or "spun" by the metaphors which were used by the first Bush administration to justify it.

Between 2003 and 2008, Lakoff was involved with a progressive think tank, the now defunct Rockridge Institute. He is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundación IDEAS , Spain's Socialist Party's think tank.

The more general theory that elaborated his thesis is known as embodied mind. Lakoff served as a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1972 until his retirement in 2016. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. May 1941   •   Other names جورج لاكوف, Джордж Лакофф, جرج لیکاف
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George Lakoff: 4   quotes 0   likes

Famous George Lakoff Quotes

“Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral?”

Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate — The Essential Guide for Progressives (2004) as quoted in the Washington Monthly (November 2004) http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/monthly/2004_11.php

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