Monday, February 13, 2006

What Framing Analysis Is

I've reached a point at which I cringe every time I see the words "framing" or "Lakoff" in the blogosphere or mainstream media, and when I see them together, I damn near have a seizure. Two things are clear to me now:
  1. Most people don't really feel the need to actually read something about frame analysis, even if it's only Lakoff, before they develop opinions about its worth.
  2. Lakoff himself hasn't done a very good job of explaining what frame analysis is, because even the people who do appear to have read him usually don't get it.
Three cases in point: The comments to this post by Amanda at Pandagon (I think Amanda actually has a pretty good grasp on the basics of framing, but many of her commenters do not), the comments to this post at Pharyngula, and this monstrosity (developments in GEM are widely followed by scienitists? huh? find me 20 scientists who even know what the hell that is!).

Several misconceptions reappear, again and again. For example, "Lakoff is a postmodernist." If we put aside for a moment the fact that I haven't the slightest idea what that means, I can't imagine that if we compared Lakoff to many of the thinkers who are labeled "postmodernists" in more serious circles, we'd find a whole hell of a lot in common. I mean, sure, Lakoff readily admits to being a "relativist," but the sort of relativism he's talking about is probably not all that common among analytic philosophers, and I know it's not uncommon among cognitive scientists, and I don't think we can count many in either of those crowds as members of "postmodernist" schools of thought. The "relativism" of Lakoff, and many other cognitive scientists, simply says that our background knowledge influences our understanding and interpretation of facts and language. And that, in a nutshell, is what frame analysis is about.

Another common misconception is that framing is just a marketing tool. To be fair, I don't think that Lakoff has done a particularly good job of dispelling that notion, as when he talks about who should be the spokesperson for evolutionary science. And it's certainly true that framing is often used for marketing purposes, both in advertising and in political rhetoric. But that's not all it is. Frame analysis is a tool for interpreting discourse, and a tool for more effective communication. The goal of framing doesn't have to be convincing, it can simply be understanding.

A related misconception is that the purpose of framing is to manipulate or trick people into taking your side. Again, it can be used for that purpose, but I've never gotten the impression that Lakoff is advocating that type of use, and that's certainly not what frame analysis is about.

So, since my frustration has peaked, I thought I'd attempt to provide a very brief explanation of frame analysis, with the hope that it will clear up those misconceptions and others. This is all ground I've covered before, but what the hell? I'll cover it again.

First, what is a frame? Frames are essentially schemas in the head, or words and phrases used to elicit schemas in the head (follow the last link for more technical definitions). When referring to frames that are in people's heads, we're talking about knowledge structures in long-term memory that are used to interpret incoming information, and to reason. An example of a mental frame might be the FANCY RESTAURANT frame. You have specific knowledge of the order of events to expect in a fancy restaurant (the order of the courses, when the check comes, and even how often the server should check up on you), how to behave in a fancy restaurant (you don't eat with your hands, for example), and so on. When you're actually in a fancy restaurant, the frame serves to highlight certain information and create expectations (which is why you get pissed off if the server leaves your drink near empty or watered down for too long), while it causes you to ignore other information (like, say, the color of the plates, unless you're just really into plates). Frames in language are designed to take advantage of those representations or change them, by highlighting certain parts of them or additional facts or associations, and perhaps ignoring others.

So frame analysis will consist of three stages (maybe only two, if you're a linguist... sorry, I couldn't resist that little jab):

1.) Discovering the mental frames that people already have. If you don't do this, you won't know what information you should highlight or add, or what information you should de-emphasize.

2.) Developing an understanding of what it is you want to communicate. What do you want to make more salient in people's mental frames, and what do you want to add to their knowledge?

3.) Framing your speech and writing in such a way that it accomplishes the goals from 2) given 1).

That's it, really. You're just developing an understanding of how people are representing something, deciding what you want to communicate, and choosing your wording based on the combination of those two things. There's nothing inherently postmodern or manipulative (I think that some people mean "manipulative" when they say "postmodern") about any of that, and the potential uses of it extend well beyond simple marketing. In fact, it's a good idea to do those three things anytime you want to communicate effectively. Of course, in practice, all three of those things can be very difficult, particularly when your audience is diverse and/or your message is complicated. And it's important that you go into the process with a good understanding of how people represent information in general, and how they reason. And that's a large part of Lakoff's point, even if he really has no clue how people actually represent information or reason. But at least he's trying.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must say I read Lakoff's book and I understood all that without a problem. I did not get any of those misconceptions. English is not my first language, so maybe that was it.

Bora Zivkovic said...

Thank you for taking your time to do this...again...and again...and again. I guess it needs to be repeated on a regular basis, as evidenced by those threads on Pandagon and Pharyngula.

L said...

I've really got to make time to read Lakoff's books. *sigh* And so many others.

I know I had a negative reaction to the idea of framing when I first encountered it, which was through interviews with Lakoff and others on Air America radio. Honestly, it did seem to me like it was presented as a liberal form of neural linguistic programming (of which the right wing image makers seem enamored but I think is complete bunk), replete with the marketing allusions.

Anonymous said...

Liz here from I Speak of Dreams. Another way of talking about frames is to say, dissecting the presuuppositions held by a particular person, in a particular setting.

I do not feel it is necessarily a manipulative approach (although it could certainly be used that way.

Personally, I don't see the connection to neurolinguistic programming, as I understand it. I also don't see the right wing connection to NLP.

Some other discussions on framing, for you and your reader's information:

Discussion at Alternet by Peter Teague:

http://www.alternet.org/story/31318

Suzette Haden Elgin on Lakoff Sept. 29, 2004:

http://ozarque.livejournal.com/24031.html

SHE on Lakoff Oct. 17th, 2004

http://ozarque.livejournal.com/2004/10/17/

SHE on Lakoff Oct 18, 2004

http://ozarque.livejournal.com/2004/10/18/

Deep Thought said...

Please refer to my clarifications for the post you linked to:

http://andune.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-people-think-why-they-think-and-if.html

Here:

http://andune.blogspot.com/2006/02/clarifications-i-seem-to-have-failed.html

Anonymous said...

I think part of the problem is that a LOT of people read Don't Think of an Elephant, which is nice as an introduction, but if you really want to understand the concepts, you've got to read Moral Politics. This doesn't mean Don't Think of an Elephant is a bad book. Most of the people who read it would never read Moral Politics. Still... it's tough to understand the concepts without doing so.

Chris said...

Human, I agree. I think I've actually mentioned that elsewhere. Don't Think of an Elephant is basically a long introductory essay turned into a book to make some money. It's not meant to really explain frame analysis. Lakoff's own concept of a "frame" depends on ideas about metaphoricity and embodiment that took a few books for he and Mark Johnson to explain. So trying to build a political theory on it, and then explain it to non-scientists who have no previous expsore to frame analysis (which is 30+ years old, and not an invention of Lakoff's), in a small book, or even one medium-sized one, is near impossible.

Deep Thought said...

Chris,
Thanks for your comments, I hope my replies are clear.

Since we seem to agree that the Strict Father/Nurturant Parent conceptualizatioin is far to broad to apply to specific Conservatives (and I contend that it is too inaccurate to be more than marginally useful for Conservatives as a whole), what effect does this have on the concept of framing? Do our existing schema (I hope I am using your term properly) to intrusive to our own formulation of concepts to allow us to accurate model foreign schema?

Chris said...

deep, I think our own schemas definitely make it difficult to fully grasp the schemas of others. That's part of why frame analysis is so difficult. We go into it, like we go into anything else, full of inherent psychological biases (e.g., the my-side bias that I talked about recently), and the biases born of our own background knowledge. But that doesn't make grasping the reprsentations of others impossible. It just means that we have to do with with extra care, and using objective methodology. I myself would use the sorts of indirect, third-person experimental methods that I use in my own work on concepts, categories, memory, and analogy, to explore people's representations.

Deep Thought said...

Sorry, I was distracted before I could edit. To clarify; do our existing schema make it too difficult for us to 'model' others' schema with enough accuracy to be truly useful? In other words, is a necessary condition for my formulation of a sufficiently accurate schema the alteration of my own, pre-exiting, schema to the point that I have inalterably changed my initial frame?

If this is the case, is the result that we cannot communicate actual "schema changes" to others (especially over long periods of time) without first purposefully altering our own frames in significant ways?

Anonymous said...

To deep thought...

There are two reasons why I do not think that you have to "inalterably change" your initial frame. Assuming that two opposing frames are being invoked in a debate:

1) When you are communicating, the words/expressions/metaphore you apply evoke certain frames, whether you are aware of it or not. Say 'pro-life' vs. 'forced childbirth'. Rather than thinking of it as changing one frame into different one, you use one INSTEAD OF another. Thus, they are both there, and you do not need to manipulate any 'hardwired' frames.

2) Communicating a "frame change" is an implicit and somewhat unconscious process and results from the application of more suitable words/expressions/metaphors. Thus the problem seems more related to the effort of being consequent and coherent, since your framings must spread to other speakers over time.
Recently, Lakoff has also pointed out that the idea of frames as 'hardwired' representations may be misleading, since it seems that they can be contrued ad hoc. But of course, certain frames are more entrenched than others, and that is why it is difficult to 'popularize' a new one.

Chris said...

hissy, that's actually a good question. I should come up with a list of resources. I'll compile one this weekend, time permitting, and post it.

Anonymous said...

so what do you think is the difference between framing analysis & agenda setting??

Chris said...

Hmm... well, the use of framing can be one way of agenda setting, in Shaw and McCombs' sense. But it would also go beyond that, in that it would not only highlight certain issues, and make it more likely that people will care about them, but it would, presumably, also highlight certain facts that people can consider when reasoning about the issue.

Artists With Artitude said...

Reading suggestions to some of your visitors: start with Erving Goffman and then read Gregory Bateson...No Lakoff pleaaaase

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