#lakoff

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Corporate Bullshit

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America is Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:

https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht

I found out about this book last fall when David Dayen reviewed it for the The American Prospect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter, which prompted Hanauer to send me a copy, which I finally got around to reading yesterday (I have gigantic backlog of reading):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. What's more, we keep falling for it. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses – and their well-paid Renfields – dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.

It's a four-stage plan:

I. First, insist that there is no problem.

Enslaved people are actually happy. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Higher CO2 levels are imaginary and they're caused by sunspots and they're good for crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer is only a problem if you foolishly decide to hang around outside (this is real!).

II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault.

An epidemic of on-the-job maimings is actually an epidemic of sloppy workers. A gigantic housing crash is really a gigantic cohort of greedy, feckless borrowers. Rampant price gouging is actually a problem of too much "spending power" (that is, "money") in the hands of working people.

III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.

Equal wages for equal work will cause bosses to fire women and people of color. Protecting people with disabilities will cause bosses to fire disable people. Minimum wages will cause bosses to buy machines and fire "unskilled" workers. Gun control will only increase underground gun sales. Banning carcinogenic pesticides will end agriculture as we know and we'll all starve to death.

IV. This is socialism.

Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist (Biden: "I beat the socialist. That's how I got the nomination").

Though this playbook has been in existence since the nation's founding, the authors point out that from the New Deal until the Reagan era, it didn't get much traction. But starting in the Reagan years, the well-funded network of billionaire-backed think-tanks, endowed economics chairs, and latter-day propaganda vehicles like Prageru breathed new life into these tactics.

We can see this playing out right now as the corporate world scrambles for a response to the Harris campaign's proposal to address price-gouging. Reading Matt Stoller's dissection of this response, we can see the whole playbook on display:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs

First, corporate apologists insisted that greedflation didn't exist, despite the fact that CEOs kept getting on earnings calls and boasting to their investors about how they were using the excuse of inflation to jack up prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

Or the oil CEOs who boasted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave them cover to just screw us at the pump:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#soak-the-rich

There are all these out-in-the-open commercial entities whose sole purpose is to "advise" large corporations about their prices, which is just a barely disguised euphemism for price-fixing, from meat-packing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

To rents:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

That's stage one: "there's no problem." Stage two is "it's your fault." That's Larry Summers and co insisting that a couple of stimulus checks a couple years ago are responsible for inflation, because it gave you too much "buying power," and so the only possible fix is to jack up interest rates and trigger mass layoffs and sharp wage decreases across the economy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/14/medieval-bloodletters/#its-the-stupid-economy

Stage three is "any attempt to fix this will make it worse." When Isabella Weber pointed out that there was a long history of price-controls being used to fight price-gouging, corporate apologists lost their minds and brigaded her, calling her all kinds of nasty names and insisting that her prescription didn't even warrant serious discussion, because any attempt to control prices would destroy the economy:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-millennial-economist-who-took-on-the-world/

You may recognize this as cousin to the response to rent control proposals, which inevitably trigger a barrage of economists screaming that this will not work and will actually reduce the housing supply and drive up prices, which is true, provided that you ignore all evidence and history:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

And stage four is "this is socialism." Look, I am a literal card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and I can assure you, Kamala Harris is not a socialist (and more's the pity). But that didn't stop the most eminently guillotineable members of the investor class from hair-on-fire, ALL-CAPS denunciations of the Harris proposal as SOCIALISM and Harris herself as a COMMUNIST:

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1824580470052725055

The author's thesis is that by naming the playbook and giving examples of it – for example, showing how the "proof" that minimum wage increases will destroy jobs was also offered as "proof" not to abolish slavery, ban child labor, add fireproofing to textile factories, and pay women and Black people the same as white guys – we can vaccinate ourselves against it.

Certainly, we've reached a moment where the public is increasingly skeptical of claims that we can't fix anything because the economists say that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if that means that we're all going to boil to death in our own skin, so be it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

In other words, after 40 years of subordinating politics to economics, there's a resurgence of belief in politics – that is, doing stuff – rather than hunkering down and waiting for the technocrats to fix everything:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/seeing-like-a-matt

Corporate Bullshit is a brisk and bracing read – I got through it in about an hour in my hammock yesterday – and, in laying out the bullshit playbook's long history of nonsensical predictions and pronouncements, it does make a very good case that we should stop listening to people who quote from it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/#narratives

[ninurtaturtle]

Great first step! The more ancient the language, the more embodied, we say.

This is very interesting. In Egypt, the Ebers Medical Papyrus does something similar. Lot of work being done in this field at the moment.

[quotelr]

pg.90 of Philosophy in the Flesh: We are basing our argument on the existence of at least three stable scientific findings--the embodied mind, the cognitive unconscious, and metaphorical thought. Just as the ideas of cells and DNA in biology are stable and not likely to be found to be mistakes, so we believe that there is more than enough converging evidence to establish at least these three results. Ironically, these scientific results challenge the classical philosophical view of scientific realism, a disembodied objective scientific realism that can be characterized by the following three claims:1. There is a world independent of our understanding of it.2. We can have stable knowledge of it.3. Our very concepts and forms of reason are characterized not by our bodies and brains, but by the external world in itself. It follows that scientific truths are not merely truths as we understand them, but absolute truths. Obiviously, we accept (1) and (2) and we believe that (2) applies to the three findings of cognitive science we are discussing on the basis of converging evidence. But those findings themselves contradict (3).

George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

[wordshaveteeth]

In making a statement, we make a choice of categories because we have some reason for focusing on certain properties and downplaying others. Every true statement, therefore, necessarily leaves out what is downplayed or hidden by the categories used in it.

- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, ‘Truth’, Metaphors We Live By

[waitineedaname]

the fun thing about getting into an academic niche is that when you're doing research, the same names start popping up like recurring characters

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Robin Lakoff - Language and Woman's Place - Harper Colophon - 1975

[worktheraft]

thinking about how if Discovery is the equivalent of Hal's body then after the Pod Bay Doors incident, Dave's ejecting himself forcefully into the vessel (in a Floridian way) would be viewed as an involuntary violation of bodily autonomy and integrity, an act of violence and a breaching in the body's outer boundaries and This Could Mean Things

[butchratchettruther]

Studying language and gender is so embarassing on the behalf of linguistics. It’ll be like in the 1970s this researcher concluded that women’s speech is inherently inferior and that they don’t actually think when speaking. His research is based on post cards and his own experience. He wrote a book on it and everyone believed it. 

[evonflow]

Sometimes I am caught in the trap of spending, wasting or saving time like it is money. When I find myself ensnared, I try to be mindful of its pressure and passage. I try to imagine its shape. It's always too massive to hold. I sit in the flow.

[fade-out-lights]

Language uses us as much as we use language. As much as our choice of forms of expression is guided by the thoughts we want to express, to the same extent the way we feel about the things. Two words can be synonymous in their denotative sense, but one will be used in ease a speaker feels favorably toward the object the word denotes, the other if he is unfavorably disposed. Similar situations are legion, involving unexpectedness, interest, and other emotional reactions on the part of the speaker to what he is talking about. Thus, while two speakers may be talking about the same thing or real-world situation, their descriptions may end up sounding utterly unrelated.

<...>

If a little girl "talks rough" like a boy, she will normally be ostracized, scolded, or made fun of. In this way, society in the form of a child's parents and friends, keeps her in line, in her place. This socializing process is, in most of its aspects, harmless and often necessary, but in this particular instance - the teaching of special linguistic uses to little girls - it raises serious problems, though the teachers may well be unaware of this. If the little girl learns her lesson well, she is not rewarded with unquestioned acceptance on the part of society; rather, the acquisition of this special style of speech will later be an excuse others use to keep her in a demeaning position, to refuse to take her seriously as a human being. Because of the way she speaks, the little girl - now grown to womanhood - will be accused of being unable to speak precisely or to express herself forcefully.

<...>

So a girl is damned if she does, damned if she doesn't. If she refuses to talk like a lady, she is ridiculed and subjected to criticism as umfeminine; if she does learn, she is ridiculed as unable to think clearly, unable to take part in a series discussion: in some sense, as less than fully human. These two choices which a woman has - to be less than a woman or less than a person - are highly painful.

– Language and Woman's Place by Robin Tolmach Lakoff (edit. by Mary Bucholtz)

[novelhater]

finished metaphors we live by by george lakoff and mark johnson

this is the book i mentioned in my hill house post. it's well written for an academic text - even as someone with fairly basic knowledge of linguistics and philosophy i found it easy to understand and i finished it pretty quickly (about a week), although i did occasionally yawn (forgive me, lakoff and johnson). neither of these fields are my area of expertise so i'll refrain from commenting too much on the actual theories because i know i'll just end up showing my ignorance. but i made margin notes.

okay i'll indulge myself briefly. you can definitely tell that this is a work that spawned conversation rather than finishing one that was ongoing. and (forgive me, lakoff and johnson) something in its tone reminded me of a long-form tumblr vague post that tells you all about what evils other people are up to, and when you go "golly, does anyone really think that?" it goes "yeah just trust me bro they totally do." okay.......

moving on.

there is a section in the very last pages of the book that struck me as odd because they suddenly write that "...theories based on [this model] turn from the pathetic to the evil..." in all seriousness about an oppositional view. they break out the strong language to talk about the way (for example, they say) governments collect data on a large scale and assign meaning to it free of context. yep, that's evil! we're in agreement! but why is this just a single-sentence long "example".... they don't go into any further detail and immediately end the section. it's a very short paragraph. which is part of why i find it so weird that the line appears. "evil" is one thing, but i think "pathetic" is somehow more cutting and derisive, particularly since they're associating it with a baseline belief that then degrades into evil when applied on a large scale. this strikes me as deeply personal somehow, and i'm furious that they refused to elaborate. who are you calling pathetic?? in what sense are you calling them pathetic? is it pathetic as in "sad and pitiable" or is it pathetic as in "loathsome and vile?" you can't leave me hanging here! tell me more! "turn from the pathetic to the evil" is like a descriptor from a gothic novel. what are you doing in my linguistics book and how do i find the gothic novel buried underneath???

if they didn't want to have ungenerous, nosy, and vulgar readers like me, they shouldn't have written "pathetic" and "evil" in the first place.

anyway, in my quest to embody the professor whose course texts are all pdfs of terrible, illegal scans of books they've marked up, i'm attaching a scan of a three page chapter that highlights my interest in this subject. it's impossible to upload it as a pdf, but given that tumblr is the new pdf all on its own, i figured a jpg would be close enough.

(i lied it's actually a pretty high quality scan.)

[wavecorewave]

poetry

[nextwavefutures]

Changing the ‘toxic’ discourse on migration

Changing the ‘toxic’ discourse on migration requires building a completely different set of narratives. New post on The Next Wave

The Rethinking Migration and Mobility report that I co-wrote for the International Organisation for Migration has been published. My fellow authors are my SOIF colleagues Paul Raven and Iman Bashir. It’s a thinkpiece which is intended as a contribution by the IoM to the United Nations Summit of the Future As I think I have mentioned here before, Iman and I facilitated a workshop with a group of…

[bookwyrminspiration]

person who has done almost nothing for three weeks shows up day before its due to add entire paragraphs to essay. violence may occur

sisyphus moanin about that boulder when he doesn't even have to write a research essay with three strangers

[benchowmein]

Do any of you lovely people know much about Judith Butler and whether they've ever published on women using questions and fillers in speech...or know which linguists makes this claim?

[viragfold]

Bloomság és metaforák

A hétköznapi közlésben sokszor az absztrakt fogalmakat konkrétabbakkal próbáljuk érzékletesen megvilágítani. A mindennapos beszédhelyzetben is elhangozhat bármikor például ez a mondat; 'úgy gondolom, elakadt a beszélgetésünk', ebben az esetben a kommunikációt egy járműhöz hasonlítjuk. Mint általában, úgy ebben a metaforában is van egy forrástartomány, ami a közlekedéshez, a helyváltoztatáshoz köthető (pl. jármű, utasok, út, akadályok, stb.), s van egy céltartomány, ami egy elvontabb fogalmi szintre, esetünkben a kommunikációs folyamatra vonatkozik (pl. gondolatmenet, megértés, stb.). Összefoglalva tehát a metafora a gondolkodást irányító szerkezet, s önkéntelen következtetésekre vezethet rá, tehát kognitív szereppel bír. A kognitív nyelvészet, Johnson és Lakoff munkássága fókuszba helyezte a metaforák szerepét a megismerésben és a gondolkodásban. Sőt, Lakoff ennél is tovább megy: a metaforákat úgy kezeli, mint a nyelv működésének legelemibb módjait, melyekben visszatükröződnek az ember megismerési és gondolkodási folyamatai, s és minden nyelvhasználó a metaforák segítségével kommunikál. Lakoff és Johnson metaforaelmélete testközpontú, ezért leginkább a „megtestesült elme” fogalmával írható le. „Johnson és Lakoff modellje szerint tehát az elvont emberi gondolkodás bizonyos alapvető sémák újrahasznosítására épül (ezért metaforikus). A gondolatnak nem a nyelvi forma ad jelentést, hanem az átvitt tapasztalat, amely lényegétől elválaszthatatlanul testi jellegű - akciókra, sikeres és sikertelen cselekvésekre, elszenvedett hatásokra, az organizmus és a környezet struktúráinak közös működéseire vonatkozik. Arra az élményre, amelyet az egyed testi benyomásainak együttese alkot. A mentális tartalom ennek a képe, a nyelvi jel pedig a címkéje” (Kampis György: A gondolkodó test - Evolúciós pszichológia, Magyar Tudomány 2002./1.) Ebből adódóan metaforák által működtetett kognitív folyamat úgymond a testi hatásokra képeződik le. Lakoff modellje nyomán a végső metafora, a metafora metaforája maga a neuronhálózat. Én ezzel úgy vagyok, hogy a metaforáknak a kognitív szemlélet által sugallt végső leképezhetősége nem kalkulál a bizonytalansággal (és a véletlennel), a nyitottsággal, az alkotással, s a cselekvéssel, s cselekvést megélő személyességgel, aktivitással. Saját bloomságomban azt tapasztalom meg, hogy a metaforaalkotásban rejlő produktivitás és cselekvés a maga tervezhetetlenségével, nyitottságával releváns alakítója, a tevékeny motorja lehet az aktivitásnak (melyet nagyképűen alkotási folyamatnak is nevezhetünk) - azáltal, hogy energetizál, kísérletezésre indít, a tágabb értelemben vett cselekvést állítja fókuszban. Másfelől néha új perspektívákat ad, rálátást hoz valami eddig érdektelenre; ugyanakkor önteremtő folyamatként működik, mely további cél- és forrástartományokat von be, így újabb metaforaalkotáshoz vezet. Egyébként nálam messze nem valaminek a leképezéséről, hanem sokkal inkább a kiterjesztéséről, dolgok, ügyek, emberek és eszmék, stb. permanens bevonódásáról van szó. Foto: WIKIPEDIA