Politics In George Lakoff's Theory Of Moral Politics

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Moral Politics When people see things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad (Lao Tzu). There exists a division of moral and political models for reasoning about politics which George Lakoff tries to highlight using analytic techniques from cognitive linguistic to establish. The main argument of Lakoff was that the division between the liberals and conservatives is based on how they conceptualize the world which could be termed metaphorical thought for the benefit of this paper. Conceptual metaphor shapes not just our communication, but also shapes the way we think and act (Lakoff). This metaphoric thought explains the profound differences between the fold on all sorts of issues …show more content…

The mother has the day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father’s authority. It assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father as a moral authority supports and defends his children tells his wife what to do and teaches his children right from wrong. Once children are mature, they are on their own and must depend on their acquired self discipline to …show more content…

The Liberals value protecting and helping those who cannot for themselves, promotes fairness likes nurturing and strengthening oneself in order to help others. Project this into nation we see how the liberals hold the view that it is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual human rights. In other words Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve problems while conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individuals to solve problems. Conservatives value self discipline, responsibility and self reliance, upholding of established moral order then use of punishment to establish respect for authority. This serves as the basis of the view that government role should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own

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