Amazon.com: Books: Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives by George Lakoff

How did I get on to this? Another blog, called "At ease" linked to "EhKansasWassamattaU?" which linked to this book written by an interesting but deeply flawed Linguist whose work I studied extensively (more or less) as part of my Cog Sci major.

I wrote a paper about Metaphors we live by in 1993 which is probably the best and most famous of the Lakoff books. In fact, I just looked over my shoulder at my bookshelf and (lo!) there it is.

The best, but least original, parts of the book give relatively straight-forward explanations of true Cog Anth/Ling jargon terms. Two in particular are

1. Synedoche - choosing some part or element to identify a larger thing (e.g. Hired hands)
2. Experiential gesalt - we are only in the mood to understand ideas that somehow relate to what we've already seen, heard, tasted, touched, smelt, or done.

Then they try to do some American Empirical Flavored version of French Existentialism whereby if everyone just lives life to the fullest and doesn't get swayed by metaphorical constraints then we will all be free!!!!!

Let me summarize what I think about Lakoff and Johnson's Cognitive Linguistics: George Orwell already said everything salient that these guys had to say with considerably more flair and in fewer words in 1984's appendix talking about doublespeak. (The spell checker just suggested "TABLESPOON" for double-speak, how funny is that?) ((How funny is the notion that I actually spell check my entries, you wouldn't know it from reading this blog))

I guess it just annoys me that people actually make money selling books about the idea that you can win a debate by confusing the meaning of words.

Honestly! What could be more obvious than that? Nothing.