Head, Heart, Guts and Gonads: Getting Down and Dirty in the Rhetoric War - HuffPo

[WillyT]

Head, Heart, Guts and Gonads: Getting Down and Dirty in the Rhetoric War
Robin Lakoff - Professor of linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
Posted: December 17, 2010 04:17 PM

<snip>

It is pretty obvious that progressives will not fight for their beliefs. The very fact that we have jettisoned "liberal" in favor of "progressive" (because some people made fun of the former term) illustrates the point. But what is even more unfortunate is that, even when progressives fight, we cannot do so effectively. There are some crucial facts about what constitutes an effective rhetorical strategy that progressives seem not to be aware of, and that unawareness is deadly.

There are four places in the body to which speakers can direct their case: the head, the heart, the guts, and the gonads. The left likes to argue to the head; conservatives know that the further down you go, the more persuasive you will be.

The head is the seat of logic; when we argue to the head, we use the language of science and rationality: studies show; the facts demonstrate; statistics prove. We avoid expressions of involvement or feeling as somehow tainted, so we adopt the passive voice: It has been suggested. Our vocabulary is heavy with Latin, and our examples are abstractions. Head-directed arguments tend to focus on impersonal concepts, ideas distant from hearers' own daily experience, so when progressives talk about "morality," their examples have to do with bankers and corporations -- not most people's daily lives.

The heart is the locus of feeling: sentimentality and compassion. Arguments directed to the heart are about the things we feel strongly about, that tug at our identification as members of a group -- Americans, Christians -- without our clearly knowing what those connections really are. Talking to the heart involves the use of words like loyalty, democracy, freedom, and patriotic. Progressives can appeal to the heart, too: the most effective arguments about the dangers of global warming make use of photos of cuddly polar bear cubs and waddling penguins, which also tug at the heart. But conservatives use heart-language to better effect.

<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-lakoff/head-heart-guts-andhead-h_b_797985.html

:shrug:

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Professor Lakoff made a great argument...

but it might be that one can not make logical arguments from the gonads.

[WillyT]

2. It's A Rather Muffled Argument

:hide::evilgrin::hide:

:yoiks:

[LWolf]

3. Not just conservatives.

How many Democrats voted for Obama, a center-right neoliberal, because he gave eloquent speeches directed toward the heart?

[starroute]

4. We have to come to grips with the guts and gonads arguments

The head alone doesn't do it -- and trying to give head-based arguments broader appeal will never work. But there are alternatives.

For example, one of the strongest arguments for gay marriage is based on the right to spend your life with the person you love -- which is using the heart to trump the gonads.

Guts-based arguments evoking the fear of "communism" can be countered by equally guts-based arguments asking who you trust to make decisions that affect your life -- faceless corporations and their billionaire CEO's who see the little people as disposable, or the members of your own community.

(It's actually a pity the word communism got so thoroughly trashed, because government by the "community" is a lot more appealing than government by a larger and more impersonal "society" as implied by the word socialism.)

Beyond that, there are certain guts-and-gonads arguments liberals seem to feel it would be beneath them to make -- which may be half true but is also self-crippling. When the Republicans voted down the legislation to oppose child marriage this week, most of the comment I saw on it here was along the lines of the GOP being so greedy that they can't stand seeing money spent on anything that doesn't benefit them personally. But if we were more like the GOP, we'd be accusing the bill's opponents of being objectively in favor of ten year old girls being married against their will to sixty year old men. And it would get a lot further on that "ik" level or argument that targets the gonads than anything we're actually likely to use.

The point is that we don't have to cede the guts and the gonads to the Republicans. We have very real fears to work with -- like being destitute in old age -- that trump the phony fears of the the conservatives. And we have very real areas of moral revulsion. So why are we too nicey-nicey to use them?

[Odin2005]

6. The "heart" rules the "head". Real "Descartes' Error" by Antonio Damasio.

We can only make decisions because our "emotional brain", the Limbic System, puts non-rational value labels on things (the most important being the classical Buddhist triad of Pleasure, Pain, and Indifference), without such non-rational valuations making decisions would be impossible. People with damage to the anterior cigulate cortex have trouble deciding to do even mundane tasks for that very reason.

[felix_numinous]

5. The methods of propaganda

aim to divide and conquer, both psychologically and socially. People have to be divided from within first before society becomes divided. Fear, shame, guilt, anger, betrayal, grief and confusion each work on different levels of our existence, causing a disassociation between our inner aspects, and breaking up our wholeness.

This is a profound concept to grasp, and perhaps is the key to heal our society, that in order for us find common ground and strengthen our communities, we must first reintegrate all the inner parts of ourselves. We do this by resisting all the methods of propaganda--and commit to empowering ourselves and each other so we can create a better future.

Propaganda creates paralysis by short circuiting our systems with damaging messages about ourselves. All of us are vulnerable, and we have to continually recognize these influences and learn how to separate ourselves from being disempowered by them.

I am always amazed at the power of propaganda, and how low these methods go toward disempowering our society.

[Odin2005]

7. We continue fooling ourslves into thinking that we can win people over with reason.

Things do not work that way, all people are irrational at their core and most apparently "logical" arguments are rationalizations of non-rational sentiments.

[WillyT]

8. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said !!!

EXACTLY !!!

:kick:

:hi: