Bill Mitchell — More public infrastructure means higher taxes – False, go to bottom of the class

Metaphors! They are more than a fancy way of emphasising some point – that is, their power goes beyond meagre linguistic construction. The research suggests they are part of our deep mental or neural capacity, which we draw on to sort out facts and ideas. They are conceptual devices intrinsically linked to the way we think abstractly. Metaphorical language reinforces our ideology (worldview) and so it is no surprise that political parties have become very interested in framing their messages using simple and common metaphors which resonate with the way we feel about things. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, considers we do not make our political choices on the basis of rational dissection of competing facts and arguments but rather respond to central (or grand) metaphors with reinforce our worldview. We thus consider facts or argument within that framework of thought. I am doing a bit of work in this area as a way of understanding why central Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) propositions (which are so patently obvious and have strong explanatory capacity) evade acceptance among people, even those who express liberal perspectives (in this context meaning – are open to new ideas).

In the 2012 book written by Anat Shenker-Osorio – Don’t Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy – we learn that language is a tool that conservatives use to limit what we might consider to be possible. They construct the “economy” in such a way as to distort the way we comprehend economics.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
More public infrastructure means higher taxes – False, go to bottom of the class
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia