(2005-01-20) Lappe Contra Lakoff

Frances Moore Lappe questions the George Lakoff parental Framing model. Maybe, in many respects, we're moving beyond hierarchy, which any parent-centered frame necessarily must be. Big shifts are underway... We need to ask: What frames best embrace the growing appreciation that human beings are going beyond one-directional communication, moving from "one-to-many" directives toward "many-to-many" multi-logues? What frame suggests mutuality - mutual responsibility, cooperation, teamwork, dialogue, synergy, inter-connectedness, and the co-creation of meaning? Any parent frame fails the test; it is inevitably one-directional, and hierarchical. So let's bury the family metaphor and search for a more robust frame - one that suggests communities that work for all because they are connected, responsible, compassionate and therefore strong... When Lakoff expands on his nurturant parent frame, he also notes that "the basic progressive vision is of community - of America as family, a caring responsible family." He includes "mutual responsibility" and "community-building" as central pieces of an effective progressive framing, suggesting he, too, chaffs within the limits of the nuclear family metaphor. And his examples of progressive reframing are more embedded in a community than a nurturant parent metaphor: such as the progressive rationale for taxes being "membership dues" contributed in order to reap the benefits of a community to replace the Right's message of taxes as an affliction for which they offer "tax relief." Here his progressive frame is about mutuality, not nurturing.