George Lakoff ist ein führender Denker der Kognitionswissenschaft und Linguistik. Seine Arbeit untersucht, wie Metaphern und Denkrahmen unser Denken und unsere Politik prägen. Lakoff erforscht, wie Sprache unsere Wahrnehmung der Welt beeinflusst und wie wir besser kommunizieren und überzeugen können. Seine Erkenntnisse bieten einen Schlüssel zum Verständnis komplexer gesellschaftlicher und politischer Debatten.
Metaphern sind integraler Bestandteil unserer alltäglichen Sprache, nicht bloß praktische oder rhethorische Mittel. Sie bestimmen unsere Wahrnehmung, unser Denken und Handeln und somit unsere Wirklichkeit. Die Lektüre dieses fesselnden und unterhaltsamen Buches führt dazu, dass man ganz neu über die Sprache und darüber, wie wir sie benutzen, denkt.
80 Prozent unseres Denkens bleiben unbewusst und werden durch Metaphern und Deutungsrahmen geprägt. Unser vermeintlich freies Denken wird durch diejenigen beeinflusst, die bewusst bestimmte Metaphern in die öffentliche Diskussion einführen. Diesen „heimlichen Macht-Habern“ sind George Lakoff und Eva Elisabeth Wehling auf der Spur: Welcher Sprache bedienen sich Politiker in öffentlichen Debatten, um in den Köpfen der Menschen die gewünschte „Wirklichkeit“ entstehen zu lassen? In lebhaften Gesprächen klären die beiden Wissenschaftler anhand von Sprachschöpfungen wie „Krieg gegen den Terror“ oder „Achse des Bösen“, wie Menschen denken, wie solche Denkstrukturen unser Gehirn auch physisch verändern und wie wir die Welt begreifen. Dabei werfen sie ein völlig neues Licht auf Fragen der politischen Identität, der Moral und religiöser Werte oder der Rolle von Medien und Berichterstattern. Als Leser lernt man so die Mechanismen seines eigenen politischen Denkens, Sprechens und Handelns besser kennen. Man erfährt, wie stark und gleichzeitig subtil die eigenen politischen Einstellungen durch Metaphern bestimmt sind und was nötig ist, um sich davon zu befreien.
When Moral Politics was first published two decades ago, it redefined how Americans think and talk about politics through the lens of cognitive political psychology. Today, George Lakoff’s classic text has become all the more relevant, as liberals and conservatives have come to hold even more vigorously opposed views of the world, with the underlying assumptions of their respective worldviews at the level of basic morality. Even more so than when Lakoff wrote, liberals and conservatives simply have very different, deeply held beliefs about what is right and wrong. Lakoff reveals radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. Moral worldviews, like most deep ways of understanding the world, are unconscious—part of our “hard-wired” brain circuitry. When confronted with facts that don’t fit our moral worldview, our brains work automatically and unconsciously to ignore or reject these facts, and it takes extraordinary openness and awareness of this phenomenon to pay critical attention to the vast number of facts we are presented with each day. For this new edition, Lakoff has added a new preface and afterword, extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the Affordable Care Act to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent financial crisis, and the effects of global warming. One might have hoped such massive changes would bring people together, but the reverse has actually happened; the divide between liberals and conservatives has become stronger and more virulent. To have any hope of bringing mutual respect to the current social and political divide, we need to clearly understand the problem and make it part of our contemporary public discourse. Moral Politics offers a much-needed wake-up call to both the left and the right.
At first glance, issues like economic inequality, healthcare, climate change, and abortion seem unrelated. However, when thinking and talking about them, people reliably fall into two camps: conservative and liberal. What explains this divide? Why do conservatives and liberals hold the positions they do? And what is the conceptual nature of those who decide elections, commonly called the "political middle"? The answers are profound. They have to do with how our minds and brains work. Political attitudes are the product of what cognitive scientists call Embodied Cognition the grounding of abstract thought in everyday world experience. Clashing beliefs about how to run nations largely arise from conflicting beliefs about family life: conservatives endorse a strict father and liberals a nurturant parent model. So-called middle voters are not in the middle at all. They are morally biconceptual, divided between both models, and as a result highly susceptible to moral political persuasion. In this brief introduction, Lakoff and Wehling reveal how cognitive science research has advanced our understanding of political thought and language, forcing us to revise common folk theories about the rational voter. "
The first edition of this book was published as Don't Think of an Elephant!-- Title page verso.
Three major findings of cognitive science cast doubt on the past 2,500 years of Western philosophy. Lakoff and Johnson propose to rebuild philosophy from the ground up, starting from clearly known facts about the mind.
"Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science. . . . Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist
"The authors restore metaphor to our lives by showing us that it's never gone away. We've merely been taught to talk as if it had: as though weather maps were more 'real' than the breath of autumn; as though, for that matter, Reason was really 'cool.' What we're saying whenever we say is a theme this book illumines for anyone attentive." — Hugh Kenner, Johns Hopkins University "In this bold and powerful book, Lakoff and Turner continue their use of metaphor to show how our minds get hold of the world. They have achieved nothing less than a postmodern Understanding Poetry, a new way of reading and teaching that makes poetry again important." — Norman Holland, University of Florida
Renowned linguist George Lakoff pairs with psychologist Rafael Nunez in the first book to provide a serious study of the cognitive science of mathematical ideas. schovat popis
Provides guidelines for United States Democrats to connect moral values to important policies, using practical tactics to guide political discourse away from extreme positions.
