Don't Buy It: A conversation with communications consultant and author Anat Shenker-Osorio

Last Sunday, Daily Kos published a review of communications maven and newly annointed author Anat Shenker-Osorio's thought-provoking (and conversation-stimulating) book, Don't Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy. During this past week, the author and I carried on a further email discussion about the issues raised in her work about communicating on the economy. That discussion is reproduced below, and she is also making herself available in comments for users to ask questions. Enjoy! And please join in!

Anat Shenker-Osorio How do you view your book as differing from Drew Westen's or from George Lakoff's work? What does it bring to the table that they don't, in terms of focus, expansion of ideas or different views?

I owe a great intellectual debt to George and Drew'both for specific analytical approaches and more generally for introducing the application of what are academic modes of analysis to real, live, political debates. Although their insights come from different fields, one essential critique they both bring is a long overdue call to stop trying to appeal to Enlightenment era reason and persuade via facts, figures and logic.

I take up aspects of what they've offered, in terms of appealing to emotion and recognizing the power of words to evoke and convey unconscious notions at odds with our best intentions. Then, I push these insights into the very concrete realm of advice for advocates struggling with how to convince a confused, overwhelmed and dejected public that progressive economic policies are the only way to improve things for our nation.

So, one difference is topical'this book is about how to talk about the economy. And another is that the findings here emerge from over 3 years of in the field research into how people make sense of and come to judgements, based on analysis of reams of written data, expert interviews and focus groups.

How many people do we need to get to adopt consistent use of a metaphor before it goes mainstream? What seems to be the crucial mass?

That's a tough one! Short of massive, longitudinal, psycho-linguistic experimentation'I'm not sure we could ever say for sure. To my knowledge, this hasn't been measured.

This said, the well-proven idea behind conceptual metaphor is that we all have access to any one of the set of them that exist for a concept. As members of a shared language community, the simplifications we rely upon for a complex concept like the economy are the same. The differences lie in our defaults'whether I (for example) am more likely to think and talk about the economy in comparing it to an object in motion whereas you (again, for example) tend to call upon natural elements for your comparison.

In a sense, all of the accessible metaphors are "mainstream"'understandable to all of us. But, repetition is what makes one more top of mind and that's what we need to have happen. With the better metaphors, of course'we have way too much repetition of the unhelpful ones.

Obviously media and politicians are necessary to bring on board if you want to change the language and the metaphors. Anyone else? (And sometimes even media and politicians aren't enough, correct?)

Yes, economists. Because there's a well-established tendency for people to assume they can't understand economic concepts and our lack of education on these topics (as I note in the book) makes them seem even more mysterious, Americans are more likely to believe in and turn to minted experts. In this case, that means economists.

Further, because pocketbook issues are so much on all our minds and thus tongues, the more people we have taking conscious pains to get the words about them right the better. When advocates are arguing for whatever particular policy is up for discussion, wage hikes, tax levels, regulations, if they do so grounded in a better model for what the economy actually behaves like, not only would their immediate argument make more sense, they'd bolster other ones up in the process.

Obviously, I'd like to see Hollywood screenwriters, journalist and other makers of mainstream discourse brought up to speed as well.

(Continue reading below the fold.)