Who Framed George Lakoff? – ChronicleReview.com
11 AUG 2008
In the so-called “linguistics wars” I find myself most impressed by those who, like Michael Halliday, root their linguistics in anthropology and sociology rather than in neural science or genetics. While I am aware that the old parable of the elephant applies, my principal reason for my preference is pragmatic; as a teaching tool and as a means of critique of actual language in use — “critical literacy” for example — that approach to language study is most useful. It provides the best framework for thinking through who says (and sometimes does) what, to whom, when, where, why and how?
Who Framed George Lakoff? is one of the weekend offerings on Arts & Letters Daily. Lakoff [right] is within the camp of linguists I find useful, even if he presents as a “brain-based” linguist. From a teaching perspective, I have found the likes of Chomsky and Pinker fairly useless — I speak of the linguistics, in the first instance, not the political commentary.
Naturally, I also relate to this:
George P. Lakoff is falling asleep. It is a bright summer afternoon in San Francisco, and Lakoff is nursing a latte at a small table near the entrance of a bustling, sun-dappled cafe. “This is what happens when you are 67,” he explains sheepishly after dozing off midsentence. A stocky man with a wide smile and a well-trimmed white beard, Lakoff doesn’t seem tired so much as beleaguered…
I have occasionally referred to Lakoff before, and his 1995 study Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust has long been on my Links Page.
Here, according to “Who Framed George Lakoff?”, is the gist of where he is now:
…In his new book, Lakoff takes aim at “Enlightenment reason,” the belief that reason is conscious, logical, and unemotional. Harnessing together work from several fields, particularly psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, he mounts a polemical assault on the notion that people think rationally — which, he argues, is fundamentally at odds with how the brain actually functions.
Approximately 2 percent of the millions of pieces of information the brain absorbs every minute are processed consciously. The remaining 98 percent are handled by the unconscious brain. The mind, in other words, is like a tiny island of conscious reasoning afloat in a vast sea of automatic processes. In that sea, which Lakoff calls “the cognitive unconscious,” most people’s ideas about morality and politics are formed. We are all, in many respects, strangers to ourselves. Lakoff’s book grandly describes what he believes are the revolutionary implications of his findings: “a new understanding of what it means to be a human being; of what morality is and where it comes from; of economics, religion, politics, and nature itself; and even of what science, philosophy, and mathematics really are.” (He singles Chomsky out as “the ultimate figure of the Old Enlightenment.”)
It is the political ramifications of Lakoff’s theory that preoccupy him these days. An unabashed liberal (he insists on the label “progressive”), he says that Republicans have been quick to realize that the way people think calls for placing emotional and moral appeals at the center of campaign strategy. (He suspects that they gleaned their knowledge from marketing, where some of the most innovative work on the science of persuasion is taking place.) Democrats, Lakoff bemoans, have persisted in an old-fashioned assumption that facts, figures, and detailed policy prescriptions win elections. Small wonder that in recent years the cognitive linguist has emerged as one of the most prominent figures demanding that Democrats take heed of the cognitive sciences and abandon their faith in voters’ capacity to reason…
…Lakoff acknowledges that both academic and political cultures are slow to change. But he is optimistic, pointing to the way in which the growth of cognitive psychology has undermined the rational-actor model that long dominated economics. In his own field, Lakoff predicts that “brain-based linguistics” will soon become the new standard — indeed, eclipsing Chomsky.
And despite his setbacks, Lakoff is not giving up on politics. He is still confidant that his ideas can make a difference to Democrats. When he wrote Thinking Points, his handbook for progressive activism, he sent the first copy to Barack Obama. “I don’t know if he read it,” Lakoff says, as a wide grin flashes across his face, “but a number of people have observed that if you look through Thinking Points, it is the Obama campaign.”
See also George Lakoff on Edge.
East Redfern December 2008
Measuring the quality of education not as simple as it seems – Letters – Opinion
14 AUG 2008
Measuring the quality of education not as simple as it seems writes Greg Whitby, Executive director of schools, Catholic diocese of Parramatta. How true that is! Mind you I wonder a little at his opening paragraph, though I can see why he has done it. Can’t help wondering who the UNprofessional educators might be though… Perhaps “teachers” is enough?
Professional educators would welcome Julia Gillard’s assertion that teaching excellence should be identified and rewarded, and that high standards be expected of all students (“Tell-all report cards to compare schools“, August 12). We all want better schools.
However, the strategies for improving education require careful scrutiny. Comprehensive and valid data is a necessary basis for any improvement strategy. However, great care must be taken in interpreting and applying this data if it is expected to guide the educational agenda and determine resource levels.
A test-driven curriculum would undoubtedly distort educational programs; and general comparisons of schools, not based on a thorough understanding of the complexities of learning and teaching, would simply mislead and distract the public.
Even comparisons of schools in similar environments, and with similar problems, may not be helpful unless based on a deeply informed understanding of the specific context, culture and rate of improvement of the schools concerned.
When governments around the world have adopted quick and simple solutions to complex educational problems, they have usually got it wrong and seem determined to continue doing so.
It would be so much easier if schools were factories, created to produce easily measured, standardised products. But they are not. They are full of vibrant, growing, learning human beings, each with individual needs, styles, natural abilities and background experiences.
We have known for well over two decades now that the key to improving students’ learning is a combination of good teachers using relevant methods. We would be better served by helping teachers to continuously improve the effectiveness of their teaching, rather than focusing on narrow measures of some aspects of student achievement that don’t show the whole picture.
The world of learning is delightfully complex. We need to be careful we do not confine learning to a simplistic mindset of measurements and comparisons in our endeavour for a better education system.
We do seem fated to chase the phantom again; the new government is not much better than the Howard government in its pursuit of the measurable — whatever can be crunched in a computer is the limit of reality, it seems.
Look, people; I’m retired. Fatalistically, I will just let them go on their preset course reinventing the wheel. At the end of some period — five, ten years — they will wake up to discover that little has changed and certainly not much has improved.
I have said my piece before.
Sydney skyline from Rosebery, December 2008
Australian poem 2008 series #19: You Don’t Get Me — Lachlan Irvine
15 AUG 2008
You won’t find Lachlan Irvine’s poems in the anthologies or in, so far as I know, the usual literary magazines. They are outside the stream; but they have an honesty to commend them, and an experience, particularly in the Vietnam series — and we are coming up again to the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan — denied most of the actual poets. Because Lachlan was actually there.
THE THOUSAND YARD STARE
I know a man who looks at me
With eyes that see right through.
Like a dog whistle with a pitch
Beyond the reach of human ears,
His eyes are focussed on the middle distance,
Fixed on a point which others cannot see.
I know I may not share his world
Where tracer splits the midnight sky,
Where ambush waits along each track,
Where constant guard must be maintained,
And even sleep can bring no rest
When relaxation may mean instant death.
What has that world to do with me?
It seems so very far away.
Yet I cannot escape those eyes,
That ice-blue look that haunts me still;
That steady, thousand-yard stare…
There – in my mirror – every day.
Check Lachlan Irvine’s site. I especially commend the personal pages.
View from East Redfern December 2008
Neil's Commonplace Book 