Few in the communications field spend much time delving into the works of cognitive linguists like George Lakoff (georgelakoff.com) or Noam Chomsky. That’s understandable, but unfortunate. The material is dense. However, it can be extremely useful when mapping-out a communications strategy. Research into how our brains are wired to use language and how we understand new ideas is key to effective communications, particularly in times of crisis.

If my years in politics taught me anything, it is this: There are a lot of people in the world who believe everyone thinks exactly as they do. And if they don’t share your belief, it’s because these people haven’t been given enough facts. This is sometimes referred to as the “rational person theory”. You try to influence people with piles and piles of facts, thinking they will be convinced to believe the same thing you believe. Unfortunately, this yields a predictably dull and ineffective communications strategy that doesn’t persuade people to consider embracing your point of view. It doesn’t entice or engage people into grappling with your ideas. To engage people, you need to better understand how language and the brain work.

When confronted with a new abstraction, say a new government policy or a new HR rule at work, we use conceptual metaphors as we attempt to understand this new thing. Put more simply we try to match something we don’t understand with something we do understand, usually beginning with the sentence “it’s like….”

You see examples of this in our conversations every day. Life is a journey, we’re in a rat race or we’re staying on track during the uphill battle that is our career. Conceptual metaphors for politics range from war to games to wargames.

This is particularly important when attempting to communicate something as part of a broader communications strategy. You need to engage people emotionally. You have to nudge them along as they move from the abstract notion to the concrete. Once that is achieved, they can begin grappling with your idea.

What some fail to appreciate is how important word choice is when attempting to help people along the way. As Mark Twain wisely observed, the difference between the right word and the almost-right-word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug. The American political consultant Frank Luntz (https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz) made a similar observation in one of his books: Whether you call it a rabbit or a bunny makes a huge difference to people. Bunnies are cute. Rabbits destroy gardens. It makes a big difference.

I was reminded of this important when listening to an interview with Anat Shenker-Osorio on the Amicus podcast. The words you choose can make a huge difference. The entire show can be found here:

https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2021/02/incitement-impeachment-inevitable-acquittal

Shenker-Osorio is a communications consultant, researcher and author. She also has her own podcast dedicated to politics and language called Words to Win, which can be found here: https://wordstowinby-pod.com . The podcast delves deeply into language, messaging and politics.

Shenker-Osorio suggests a lot of political communications misses the mark in that it focuses and problem identification. She says that’s not an effective approach, since most people are not shopping around looking for new things to worry about. Presenting yourself in opposition to what others are doing seems to invoke a freeze response and “cements the sense that doing anything is futile”. By focusing complaints on others, you give those “others” oxygen (prime example: Donald Trump. As Lakoff said the best strategy is to just ignore him)

Shenker-Osorio gave a fascinating example from her work with economists on the huge difference word choice can make when it comes to influencing people’s perceptions:

“So, let me just give you a super-particular for instance. In an experiment we did a number of years ago, we brought people into a lab and we asked them to think about economic inequality. And we presented them with the facts the way that economists do—this quintile has this much, this quintile has that much, this quintile has that much, ect. We liken this abstraction which is a financial difference to a physical difference, a chasm—like the Grand Canyon. And, wealth is over here, and poor people are over there.“

“And for the other half of the sample, we said the economy is increasingly off-balance. Then we asked everybody “Is inequality a problem for the economy over-all. For our “gap” people, 80 percent of them said no, it’s not a problem for the whole economy. Twenty percent said ‘yes’ ”.

“The exact reverse proportion was true of our “off balance” people. Eighty percent said it’s a problem for the whole economy, 20 percent said it wasn’t.

So why is this? In reality, inequality is neither a gap nor an imbalance. And it’s also both. Because any time we need to refer to abstractions we default automatically and unconsciously to a conceptual metaphor. That’s just how we talk, right?“

(Amicus Podcast, Slate.com, 13 February 2020)

Echoing George Lakoff, Shenker-Osorio believes facts bounce off frames. Each of us has a conceptual metaphor that compares ideas to objects. She says this is the way we make sense of the world.

Telling people just the straight facts and then hoping they will arrive at the right conclusion is hopelessly misguided. To quote Shenker-Osorio, that’s just not the way the world works. People are sense-making machines that use language and their built-in conceptual metaphors to make sense of the world around them.

And you’d better be absolutely certain about the words you choose.

Saying something is part of a “gap” or saying the system is “off balance” can be the difference between a rabbit and a bunny.