6
Lakoff’s essential argument can be summarized as follows: first, human beings naturally
apply metaphors from their every-day lives when trying to understand complex phenomena (for
more on this, also see Popkin 1991). Thus, when conceptualizing the stuff of politics – proper
power relations between citizens and their government -- people reflexively call to mind power
relations that hit closer to home: the nuclear family. That is, many people reflexively apply a
“nation as family” heuristic (i.e. cognitive shortcut)
4
, applying their visions of a well-functioning
family to the nation (or perhaps the world) as a whole, where the government is the figurative
parent and citizens are the figurative children.
5
This heuristic has the potential to be quite
powerful, since nearly everyone in society remembers some sort of relationship with a parent or
guardian (for good or for ill), as well as some sort of affective reaction to that relationship.
Furthermore, it is logically improbable that the causal arrow connecting visions of parental
authority and visions of governmental authority would run from the latter to the former,
considering that the relationship between child and parent is the earliest of all relationships, the
ramifications of which become cemented long before one has any political awareness whatsoever.
Simply put, while politics may be confined to “a sideshow” in the great circus of life (Dahl 1961),
family life often occupies the center ring.
Family Values: Prioritizing Either Discipline or Nurturance
Of course, the “nation as family” heuristic would not take us very far if there was no
variance in individual visions of ideal family life. According to Lakoff, there are currently two
4
See Kahneman, et al. (1982) for the classic treatment on the role of heuristics in cognition. For
an explicitly political focus on the role of heuristics, see Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock (1991).
5
It is important to note that Lakoff does not contend that this is a conscious process. He does not
envision citizens sitting down and thinking in this way. Rather, the process is more akin to the
automatic processing of chronically accessible constructs described by scholars such as Lau
(1989), Popkin (1991) and Bargh (1994).
Convention