George Lakoff, a linguist and a left-wing activist, has been pushing Democrats to adopt more effective “frames” for their policies for years
from the Scottish National Party, wrote to Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions on behalf of some incensed pensioners in his constituency. Pensioners are often incensed, but these complaints were not about inflation-indexing or retirement ages; they were linguistic. The irate retirees did not want their pensions to be called a “benefit”.
This is where teachers of English might helpfully note the difference between denotation and connotation . In Britain, “benefits” carry a strong connotation. For many people, a benefit is money handed out by the state, often to the undeserving. Consider “Benefits Street”, a documentary series on Channel 4 that was widely accused of portraying recipients of benefits as scroungers.
A lot of thought goes into the names of policies, which politicians naturally want to resonate in a positive way. Sometimes that means rebranding old ideas, or borrowing words from another domain. Democrats who say the state should pay for every American’s health care are a case in point. “Universal health care”, one way of expressing that goal, has a whiff of socialism about it.
But rebranding and renaming policies gets you only so far. Even upbeat words with positive associations can be tarnished and discredited. After all, “socialism” has the same root as the friendly concept of “society”. Even more starkly, “communism” is a relative of “community”, but no amount of etymology can make up for the ideology’s complicity in the deaths and immiseration of millions.
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