Metaphors of Morality and Governance

Host: Chris Mooney

George Lakoff is a cognitive linguist at the University of California at Berkeley. But unlike many of his scientific peers, he's known as much for his work on politics as for his research.

Lakoff the famed author of many books on why the left and right disagree about politics, including Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant, Thinking Points, and most recently, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain. 

Throughout these works Lakoff has applied cognitive and linguistic analysis to our political rifts, and his ideas about "framing," "metaphor," and the different moral systems of liberals and conservatives have become very widely known and influential.