By Joel Bowman, on September 27th, 2013% In my spare time, I follow political discussions as best I can, primarily because politics influence all of us in ways both large and small, including the taxes we pay and the way our collective dollars are spent. The past several years have provided a wonderful opportunity for noticing how linguistic framing influences the way we think about the decisions politicians are making about how our money is to be spent. The best way to know what’s really going on in politics is by understanding the rhetorical concept of framing.
The word frame applies to discourse in basically the . . . → Read More: Language Matters
By Joel Bowman, on September 24th, 2011% When President Obama announced his new plans for improving the economy in the States, Republicans cried, “Class warfare!” Obama’s response was, “It is not class warfare—it’s math.” This response not only reminded me of Nixon’s infamous claim, “I am not a crook,” but also reminded me of George Lakoff’s warning against using your opponent’s frame in your counterarguments (see Framing—Again. It is a failure to remember the Don’t think of elephants rule. When Nixon said, “I am not a crook,” the connection made in most people’s minds was, “Nixon—crook.” The not gets lost in translation.
In addressing the issue . . . → Read More: Elephants, Crooks, and Class Warfare
By Joel Bowman, on September 18th, 2011% One of the metaprograms of NLP, the “Scope Metaprogram,” is about the tendency of individuals to prefer a “Global” or a “Specific” perspective. At least theoretically, those with a Global preference focus on the “Big Picture” or the “End Result,” while those with a Specific perspective are more concerned with the details, especially with the first step. Some tasks, such as completing a jigsaw puzzle, are best accomplished by using one approach, while others seem to require the Big Picture approach encapsulated with Covey’s “habit” of “Beginning with the End in Mind.”
I suspect that experienced jigsaw puzzlers could . . . → Read More: Global, Specific, and More
By Joel Bowman, on September 11th, 2011% In a recent article in the Huffington Post, George Lakoff (author or co-author of numerous books and articles on metaphors and other aspects of language usage), said the following about framing:
Framing is much more than mere language or messaging. A frame is a conceptual structure used to think with. Frames come in hierarchies. At the top of the hierarchies are moral frames. All politics is moral. Politicians support policies because they are right, not wrong. The problem is that there is more than one conception of what is moral. Moreover, voters tend to vote their morality, since it is what defines . . . → Read More: Framing—Again
By Joel Bowman, on April 15th, 2011% The “Bell Curve” is the common expression for what is otherwise known as Standard Normal Distribution. The concept basically states that in any category, most members of the category will be grouped in the middle, with fewer members at the extremes. Wikipedia provides a fancy definition:
In probability theory, the normal (or Gaussian) distribution, is a continuous probability distribution that is often used as a first approximation to describe real-valued random variables that tend to cluster around a single mean value. The graph of the associated probability density function is “bell”-shaped, and is known as the Gaussian function or . . . → Read More: The Bell Curve Theory of Life
By Joel Bowman, on March 13th, 2011% The Christian Bible says that Satan is the “Father of Lies.” The actual Father of Lies, however, is fear. Regardless of whether you believe that Satan is a metaphor for fear, you undoubtedly know that people lie when they are afraid. Everyone, George Washington included, has lied and will probably lie again. Lying is a normal part of human existence because humans experience fear. Think about the last time you told a lie, especially a significant one, and note that you felt fearful before uttering your lie. You can use knowing that fear is the “father” of lies to increase . . . → Read More: The Father of Lies
By Joel Bowman, on March 6th, 2011% Those of you who have studied NLP or persuasive communication are familiar with the concept of perceptual frames. The metaphor is fairly obvious: a window frame, for example, limits what we see on the other side of the window; a photographer can choose what is included in the frame of a photo by trimming the image so that it focuses on, say, one person instead of a group. The concept has been adopted by psychology for the purpose of understanding the context that determines how something is interpreted.
All communication (all? Yes, all…) occurs within a contextual frame. In . . . → Read More: Framing and Reframing
|
|
|
Comments are closed 
