Linguist George Lakoff breaks down Trump's "tropes"

Reliable Sources

CNN

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3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Renowned linguist George Lakoff joins Brian Stelter to discuss how Trump uses speech as a technique to manipulate audiences. "The media is not doing its job," Lakoff argues. He urges the press to not just repeat or negate what the president says about topics like the "caravan," but to come up with new framings that put facts first.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fake, rude, terrible enemy.
0:06.1	President Trump's words about the press
0:09.5	require some dissection.
0:11.7	So today, we are bringing in a linguist. Welcome to this
0:17.3	week's Reliable Sources Podcast. I'm your host Brian Stelter and this weekly
0:21.8	podcast is our chance to go in depth with media
0:25.1	leaders and newsmakers. George Lakoff is someone I've turned to in the
0:30.6	past to understand the president's rhetorical techniques.
0:35.0	And now, in the wake of the midterm elections,
0:38.0	we're continuing to hear dehumanizing dangerous language from the president against members of the media as well as other groups.
0:46.7	So let's talk over it with Lakoff. He's the professor emeritus at UC Berkeley and the co-host of the Frame Lab Podcast and he's joining me now from Berkeley.
0:55.0	George, thanks for coming back on with me.
0:57.0	My pleasure, Brian.
0:59.0	What has this week been like for you? We're taping on Thursday, the midtermsterms were on Tuesday the run-up to the
1:04.8	midterms were all about the caravan and a politically charged language like
1:10.1	that what have you observed in all this midterms talk? like that
1:13.2	what have you observed in all this mid-terms talk?
1:14.4	Well, I've observed a lot as you can imagine.
1:18.3	Among the other things I've observed are what I'll call Trump's tropes, that is the way he tends to think and talk
1:25.9	about things.
1:27.7	And there are certain very common things that he does that might be missed by ordinary folks but linguists would notice. For example, he
1:38.7	uses a gesture of struggling with rising intonation.
	...

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