Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
Iksoo Kwon
Ling 290
Term Paper (Spring 08)
Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race
Abstract
This paper argues that Obama’s rhetorics in his recent speech on race are designed to
neutralize constraints that he faced and to negate conservative frames effectively. The
devices in his speech are double negation, rhetorical questions, and ironies. They are
utilized in his efforts to reframe conservative frames in three steps: to recognize what
their frame is, not to use their terms, and to undermine the frame by abusing their terms
in his own frame, after his frame is established solidly. These devices did not only help
him cope with the constraints, but also went well with Obama’s personality, which is
very controlled, morally stronger, and not assertive (108 words).
1. Introduction
Obama’s speech seems to be very well organized with relevant frames and
properly selected frame evokers, which enables him to face the pointed attacks and
loaded arguments which kept nagging him. Since the pointed attacks and the loaded
arguments from the other side are made out of well-organized frames and conspiracies,
it would not be a good way only to defend against what they claimed against him: it
would strengthen their frames, as Lakoff (2006, 2004, and 2002 [1996]) points out,
since negating what they claimed is nothing better than accepting their frames. For the
last couple of decades in U.S., this has been cycled viciously so that progressives only
failed to recognize conservative’s manipulated political frame traps and thus failed to
win them, let alone overwhelm them.
As pointed out by Lakoff (2008), Obama has not a few constraints on his courses
of action to deal with what he faces and he has to negate their frame itself, rather than
negating what they claim against him. This paper argues that from a linguistic
perspective, his efforts to break their frames can be accounted for in his recent speech
on race. That is, his rhetorical devices in his speech show, whether they are intended or
not, purports that he is to free himself from the presuppositions that they made against
him. The devices that I found in his speech with regard to negating frame strategy are as
follows: double negations, rhetorical questions, and ironies. This paper explores how
these devices can not only go well with Obama’s personality, but also help him
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
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dramatically cope with what he is facing and his constraints.
2. Backgrounds
2.1 Theoretical Perspective on Negativity
In general, it is well known that negativity always presupposes that there should
be some proposition to be negated (Lakoff 2004, 2002 [1996]; inter alias). That is,
negativity cannot be construed without presupposing its affirmative alternative, since it
is not licensed without any contents to be negated. Borrowing terms from the Mental
Space theory (Fauconnier 1997), we can account for the automatic evocation of its
affirmative alternative proposition: negativity space cannot be created without
grounding its corresponding affirmative space. This also conforms to Sweetser’s (In
preparation) observation that a negative expression always evokes its affirmative mental
space which is to be selected among numerous possible mental spaces. As soon as one
uses negativity, he will get access to its alternative space and utilize it.
This has been studied by not a few linguists and now, it is crucial for politicians to
know how they make use of them in a relevant way. Simply negating the opponent’s
criticism could strengthen the criticism more and more. That is, if one simply negates
criticism against him/her, the negation takes place based on its affirmative that the
opponent created and thus, negating based on their affirmative presupposes that he/she
accepts their presupposition. In order to argue against the criticism effectively, one has
to break their frames and he/she embodied the tactic into the following three steps: First,
he/she needs to recognize what they created and trapped, i.e. he/she needs to figure out
targets to attack back. Second, if recognizing their frames, then he/she should not use
the terms which belong to their frames so that using them automatically evokes their
frames. Rather, negate the whole frame and use his/her own frame evokers. Third, in
order to attack back, if one succeeds to make people feel familiar with his/her own
frame evokers, he/she has to use their terms in his/her frames where their usages are
obviously for progressives so that their frame structure would be determined.
In Obama’s speech, he seems to be well aware of these three steps: Since he
recognized how his opponent and media criticize against him, he did not use any
terminology which might evoke their frames; He tries to break their frames, not by
negating their criticism directly, but by negating whole frame where they criticized
against him. These efforts can be evidenced by the fact that his speech abnormally
contains many negative expressions, including cases where both of the main clause and
the embedded clause contain negative morpheme simultaneously; Then, in some of his
sentences, he tries to make use of their frame evokers in his own frame, which
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
undermines their frame structure. In this vein, this paper argues that frequent usage of
negation in Obama’s speech is never to be coincidence, but it is intended to break their
frames efficiently as a smart tactic.
2.2 What He Faced at that Point (Based on Lakoff’s Analysis)
The rhetorical devices that Obama used in his speech do not only fit to breaking
his opponent’s frame structure, but also fit to obviating other constraints that he faced.
As Lakoff (2008) explicated, it is unambiguously true that Obama has lots of constraints
on what he can do against the criticism. This paper argues that his rhetorical devices
were crucial for him to obviate them. Let us look at some of the constraints that Lakoff
investigated, which are to be dealt with effectively by these rhetorical devices:
(1) Racial divisions and identity politics had been injected into the campaign by his
opponents and the media. The effect was to position him, as an African-American,
as opposed to the interests of whites and Hispanics.
(2) A repeatedly shown film clip of his long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who had
married him and his wife and baptized his daughters, making embarrassing
remarks taken as Anti-American and anti-Semitic.
Facing constraints (1) and (2), he did not negate their criticism directly at all, but he
utilized complex sentences which contain more than one negation so that he tried to
avoid mentioning his opinion against their criticism directly and to negate their frame
itself by creating a meta-frame so that the whole domain may shift to his own frame.
The other constraints on what he can say against the criticisms can also be shown as
follows:
(3) He could not explicitly go negative and still continue to campaign on civility and
unity. He could only go positive and evoke implicit negatives.
(4) He could neither accept his opponents framing of him, nor argue explicitly
against that framing.
(5) He could not go on the defensive; that would just encourage his detractors. He
had to show leadership.
(6) Though he might have felt frustrated or even angry, leadership demanded that he
be his usual calm self, embracing not attacking even those who opposed him.
Against constraints (3) and (4), he made use of negative rhetorics that are not to be
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
regarded as explicit negative, but to be as implicit and polite negatives and that deny
their whole frames, obviating their frame traps. Recognizing constraints (5) and (6), he
used rhetorical questions, where he could express his anger in a most vigorous, but very
controlled way and used ironies, where he implicitly criticizes against what the
opponents did against him, not by explicitly blaming them, but only by mentioning what
they did explicitly and what he will do to them, which magnifies the gap between him
and them, saying “Not this time”—this trap does not work any more.
This paper argues that his rhetorical devices are intended to penalize all the
constraints mentioned above and furthermore, that they also conform to his image
which is very controlled, polite, and non-aggressive. Now, let us take a look at what
kind of expressions Obama had in his speech on race.
3. Reframing Tactics
Since he knows that his opponents have already occupied a high ground position
in coining terms, which would automatically activate conservative frame in people’s
mind, and in disseminating the terms through media, he knows better than anyone that
he needs to attack preemptively. However, as mentioned above, he has constraints on
actions that he can take, which are to be non-aggressive. In this situation, the best way
that he can take is to pretend to defend himself from what the opponents say against
them and to implicitly reframe their frames through which they attacked him. By doing
this, he can obtain his objective of reframing in an efficient way due to the following
reasons: First, he does not have to labor himself to create whole new frames again, and
Second, he does not have to risk contradicting his public image by recklessly attacking
their frames.
This section explores what he utilized in his speech in detail: negating frames,
ironies, and rhetorical questions with selected salient examples.
3.1 Negation
3.1.1 Negating a Whole Frame
Utilizing negatives more than once in a single sentence is a smart tactic in that he
does not need to specify anything about the utterance; he does not have to attack the
opponents, either; he may just open possibilities and implicitly induce people’s attention
and inferences toward what he originally intends to claim. However, the way he induces
people’s inferences implicitly includes shifting a meta-frame which contains the
opponent’s frames. Let us take an example.
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
(7) This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign.
This sentence implies that what he has achieved so far does not automatically mean that
everything, especially issues on race, is perfect. He would like to negate what they
claimed against him, but he chose to detour the claim: he tries to say that it is true that
race has been an issue in the campaign. However, it is so, not because of what the
opposite and media are claiming, but because of America’s own limitation as a whole. It
is noted that even though he did not claim anything explicitly at all, the utterance is
interpreted as if he were asserting that race issue gets worse because of what they did.
Now, we can learn that this sentence seems to show his effort to break his
opponent’s frame without negating or even using the opponent’s frame because of the
obvious reason discussed so far. He is well aware that they brought race issue on the
board to take him down: This is the first step that he might have taken, to recognize
their attack and what frame their attack belongs to. The prototypical scenario might be
like this: Since Senator Obama is an African-American and since it would be an
unambiguous truth that he does not deny it, they intend to make race issue public and
try to trap his supporters in their frame of racism. Within this scenario, even though they
negate the frame, they are never free from the frame. As for those who do not recognize
their deep frames, they are doing exactly what the opponents want them to do.
The second step is that he does not accept their frames and does not use its
evokers. In this context, how can he defend himself from the attack? The sentence in
question provides us a hint: In order to argue against what his opponent says, he needs
to obviate the proposition in one way or another that race has been an issue in the
campaign. However, if he took a muzzle-to-muzzle tactic by directly negating the
proposition, he will never fail to be trapped in their frames (assume that he uttered race
has not been an issue in the campaign!). Rather, he needs to negate their frames as a
whole: This is the function of the first negative in the sentence. By using a negation
morpheme that has a wider scope over the embedded sentence, he changes a whole
domain or a meta-frame. As a result, he can negate their whole frame. This can be
schematized as follows:
(8)
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
P
~P
A
A
Let us assume that a proposition P is claimed in frame A, as can be shown in the
sentence race has been an issue in the campaign. Let us assume that Barack negated the
proposition directly and said, race has not been an issue in the campaign. It would be
disastrous. He would accept their frames, since the negation of the proposition ~P still
presupposes the existence of frame A, which is the opponent’s frame. This clearly
shows us that establishing frame A first is taking a high ground in the argument.
However, Obama did not accept their frames by adding another negation to the
sentence as can be shown in sentence It is not to say that race has not been an issue in
the campaign. This sentence can be schematized as follows:
(9)
P
~P
~P
A
A
B
As shown above, frame A as a whole is negated and shifts to frame, let us say, B. If we
call P as a certain frame, the bigger frames A and B are to be called meta-frames.
Consequently, the proposition is negated in another frame. This process has two major
effects: First, by having another negation, the speaker can use the same sentence form as
the direct negation of the sentence (race has not been an issue in the campaign)
explicitly, since apparently, it is about the negation of the proposition in meta frame B,
not in A. Second, by having another negation, the speaker can reframe what they
claimed and make backfire against them: The speaker can mean something like “Yes,
what you claimed against me is partly right in some sense. But, the thing is that race has
been an issue that is to be discussed thoroughly in our deep frame, but what you claimed
about race cannot be an issue in your frame.” Even though he did not specify which
frame the alternative frame would be, it is obvious that another frame would be the
frame of progressive values, which can take great care of racism: empathy and
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
responsibility.
The third step, which is utilizing the opponent’s frame elements, is already
involved in the process: The moment the speaker utilizes the directly-negated
proposition that race has not been an issue on the surface, it seems that the utterance
utilizes the opponent’s frame. However, since the utterance belongs to the shifted metaframe, it does not evoke their frame, but it conveys what the speaker truly wanted to say
in his own frame, thanks to the multiple negations.
In this vein, this single utterance shows us that Obama took the three steps in
order to argue back against what they claimed and in this vein, making use of two
negations in a single sentence is a smart tactic to obviate their argument, to reframe it as
his own frame, and to undermine their frame structure that was originally targeting
against him and now is backfiring against them.
Let us take another example, which also shows his reframing tactics:
(10) I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more
disown him than I can my white grandmother…
Basically, this utterance conveys a very loud and clear message that he will not deny the
relationship with Reverend Wright as the opponents and media pressures on him to do,
because the relationship is nothing wrong at all: It could be viewed negatively only
when being viewed from their perspective, but it could not when viewed from his frame.
However, its semantic structure which is utilized in order for him to deliver the message
appropriately is not simple. The utterance utilizes a complex structure including
sentential negation with regard to its scope, irony, and comparative construction.
However, these conspire to obtain a single goal: to get rid of the constraints that his
opponents put on him and to reframe and undermine their frames implicitly. The
construal of the utterance involves the following processes:
First of all, he faced the situation where his opponents and media keep making
pressure on him with his personal relationship with Reverend Wright. He took the first
step, namely to recognize that the pressure is his opponent’s frame trap. He could not
accept it nor deny it, since either way will evoke their frame. In other words, he could
not say simply, “I can disown him” nor “I cannot disown him.” On the one hand, he
cannot use the former utterance, intending to say the relationship is nothing, because
that is not what he wants to say, not to mention evoking their frame. On the other, he
cannot use the latter, either: otherwise, he would use their frame and would be blamed
in their frame.
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
In order to avoid this dilemma, he chose to blend the original proposition
sentence with comparative construction: I can disown him no more. The interesting
thing is that this sentence does have ambiguity. One of the readings can be obtained
when the scope of negative covers the whole sentence and the other when it covers only
adjunct phrase (adjunct-focus). This can be shown as follows:
(11) a. no [I can disown him more].
b. I can disown him no [more].
As shown in (11a), if the semantic scope of the negative is the whole sentence and if it
affects the clause, we come to construe the sentence as “It is impossible that I can
disown him.” In contrast, as shown in (11b), if the scope is limited only to its following
adjunct more, the sentence is construed as “I can disown him less than now, but not
more.” These construals are still activated in their frame.
It is not over, however. In addition to this construction, he specified the compared
case after the comparative marker than. That is, he can disown the black community. On
the surface, it is to be an irony, since it is definitely true that he cannot disown the black
community. Regardless, he mentioned it after than as if it were to be a cognitive
reference point with which he can compare his choice. This added part specifies the
degree indicated by more in the sentence. Now, we obtain the sentence meaning
structure as follows:
(12) a. no [I can disown him more than I disown the black community].
b. I can disown him no [more than I disown the black community].
In (12a), the scope of negation covers the whole sentence, whereas it covers only part of
it in (12b). Eventually, however, it seems that there is no difference in meaning and
structure of the utterances between (12a) and (12b). If remembering that he cannot
disown the black community and that his utterance is ironical, the sentence is not
ambiguous any more: The probability that he disowns the black community is zero. It
would impossible that he disowns the pastor according to (12a). (12b) also indicates that
it would be possible that he disowns the pastor, but the degree would be no more than
zero. In either way, the utterance means messages that he will not disown his pastor and
that he thinks of Reverend Wright as much as he thinks of the black community. Finally,
in order to emphasize unity and empathy, he repeated the same construction with his
white grandmother.
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
He did not mention anything about the relationship with Reverend Wright directly
nor did not accept or deny what they claimed against him. However, the utterance
delivers what the speaker intends to say clearly, without using their frame trap. He
might have used conservatives’ frame evokers in the sentence somewhere, but the
important thing is that even though he might have used some of them, they do not
belong to the same frame any more. In this utterance, the speaker replaces
conservatives’ frame with his own frame by setting up a path with multiple negations in
which hearer’s inference can go. Then, he implicitly induces the hearer’s inferences to
never fail to follow the path, which will lead to what he ultimately intends to mention
eventually. The efficacy of detouring way of assertion also seems to be observed by
Lunts (2006: 93): “[B]y all means, show. don’t tell… reveal your personality … be the
message rather than narrating it, but above all, be authentic.”
In this way, he draws the hearer’s attention in an implicit, but never-failing way.
The way he used in his speech is effective in following reasons: It fits Obama’s public
image in that he should be empathic and unassuming, not authoritative nor arrogant.
Multiple negations cannot be too good in that it reduces directness of asserting a
proposition or avoid face threatening acts by using negation.
3.2 Ironies
It is well known that irony is a powerful rhetoric device in that by maximizing
cognitive gap between what is talked about on the surface and what is meant underneath
it, the speaker can convey what he/she wants to claim effectively. In this vein, this
rhetoric goes well with Obama. In addition, it goes well with Obama, because it
conforms to his public image, which is polite and decent, but not aggressive. The
appearance of irony in his speech conforms to Lakoff’s (2008) observation of his
constraint with regard to the fact that he could only go positive and evoke implicit
negatives.
Reducing directness in assertion is one of the most important cues in measuring
politeness cross-linguistically. If that is the case, irony is a good tactic to allude to his
politeness in his speech, because the speaker can claim what he wants to claim without
directing any assertion toward the hearers. In this vein, it is natural that irony goes well
with Obama’s face, since his public image is implicit, indirect, polite and nonaggressive. Let us take a look at an example:
(13) We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk
about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or
sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a
Hilary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate
on whether white men will all flock to john McCain in the general election
regardless of his policies
As shown in (13), the world shape that is described here is what exactly his opponents
want: conservative media keep airing things against him in a biased perspective and his
opponents keep wanting to make race issue public, rather than to talk about policies. In
addition, they gave him only restricted choices by questioning ‘Do you believe him or
not? Yes or No.’ Then, why did he describe them repeating what they said? Is he helping
their frames pervade in his speech?
This paper argues that since the speaker has already established his own frame, he
can use their terms on purpose. The purpose is to imply that the described situation is
never to occur, using a modal can, which opens possibility that anything can happen.
Even though he does not establish a meta-frame to negate their frames explicitly, people
believe and expect that what he said is not about what the opponents said against him,
but the opposite. Thanks to his implicit framing, the trust on these belief and expectation
enabled him to deny the whole situation simply by saying as follows:
(14) We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be
talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one.
And nothing will change.
We can do that: The modality evokes a possibility where he could counterattack them as
what they did to him. However, it is noted that this utterance is still ironic: the modal
evokes a possibility, which is never to occur in his world.
He never argued that he should not do as what the opponents did to him nor
emphasized that he is the one who embraces them. Imagine that he said, “I will not do
that.” That would “assert” that I, Barack Obama, would be the one that will not do that,
in a direct and authoritative manner, which would not conform to his public image.
Instead, he described what they claimed in a calm and sound tone and predicted what
that would be like if we take their frames. He did not assert anything, but with four
tokens of utterance in (14), he expressed his opinions in a non-authoritative and indirect
manner, which conforms to his polite and caring public image.
In addition, these ironies imply something related with moral accounting. He
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
knows about moral strength: He believes that the stronger moral strength will be out of
an action which embraces the opponent’s criticism. Embracing needs empathy and
understanding. Empathy and understanding presupposes that the person who embraces
the opponent is morally stronger than the other who is embraced. Without cost of
tolerance, which is the core value of the person of moral strength, one cannot embrace
his opponent. Rather, he would be engaged in a fight and things are getting worse and
never to change. Obama knew this. He knew that moral strength is not directly out of
winning an argument, but out of embracing the opponent and shifting the frame into a
frame where he and his opponent coexist. Regardless of what they said against him, if
he embraces them, it would be a better way for him to show that he has more moral
strength than his opponents.
Now, let us look at a model example that is used as the third step, namely,
reframing their frames and using their terms in his own frames. Remember that no child
left behind is what conservatives have used as their education policy:
(15) The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not
let them fall behind in a 21st century economy.
Since he has been reframing the opponent’s frames in his speech, he now can use their
terminologies in his frame as if they were originally the terms for his frame. If there
were no previous reframing process, it would never be efficient to say like (15): it
would evoke and strengthen the opponent’s frame. However, no one expects that in the
middle of his speech, he abruptly uses the opponent’s frame. Rather, people will expect
that he is talking about something in his own terms. If the term is used in a similar
context frequently, it would belong to the progressives’ frames. In this way, Obama tries
to undermine their frames by shifting the polarity of their terminology.
3.3 Rhetorical Questions
Rhetorical questions are the best way and the only way, I think, for him to erupt
his anger against the opponents in a very vigorous, but controlled way. As mentioned
before, Obama is not supposed to express his anger since Obama has a constraint which
is repeated here in (16):
(16) Though he might have felt frustrated or even angry, leadership demanded that
he be his usual calm self, embracing not attacking even those who opposed him.
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
However, tolerating the anger at all times would not be a good way to him, since solely
tolerating anger is likely to be regarded as his weakness and indifference. Thus, he has a
dilemma: He had to express his anger in order to show his moral strength, but he must
not express his anger, since his public image is calm, decent, and polite. This dilemma is
a tough one: the two choices contradict each other.
He chose a rhetorical question for the dilemma. Rhetorical question is a question
which does not seek an answer. Instead, it triggers indirect speech acts such as assertion,
emphasis, blaming etc. Thus, he can use this rhetoric in order to assert what he wants to
say against them and to emphasize it in order to express his anger in a controlled way.
Since he wants to ask them back against what the opponents claimed against him, “what
about it? What’s wrong with it?” and since he does want to answer them back in order
to show that there is nothing wrong about it if he answered them back even within their
frame, he took rhetorical questions in his speech, which can be shown as follows:
(16) Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and
foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be
considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with
many of his political views? Absolutely—just as I’m sure many of you have heard
remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
He casts questions—three in a row, with his own answers. Since he asks a question and
answers the question at the same time, we can learn that the question that he casts is not
a normal question, but a question whose answer is obvious. Then, why he put the
tautological questions in this speech?
Considering what he asked to himself and what he answered them back, we can
learn that they are not new information at all, which are frequently aired in media. If
neither the questions nor the answers are new information, then why does he mention all
the questions and answers by showing his reasoning process explicitly? By doing that,
he tries to put much emphasis on the fact that the questions that the media brought are
nothing and the questions can be answered back with the following two words even in
their frames: So what?
By implicating this, he would be able to free himself from being constrained by
the Reverend Wright case. It is noted that he means that he is also one of normal people
like you and that based on the value of empathy, what the media and the opponents
claimed against me is nothing but a happening which might occur to him as well as
you—a normal person.
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Kwon, Iksoo. 2008. Rhetoric of Frame Negation in Obama’s Speech on Race. Ms. University of
California, Berkeley.
In this vein, rhetorical questions are good chances for him to get rid of his
dilemma between moral strength and his public image, by expressing his anger in a
controlled way toward his opponents and the media which pressures on him by
repeating the opponent’s frame and strengthening it. Against them, he can counterpunch
them with his ambiguous, but obvious questions, which would give him both moral
strength and reasonable justification that will work even in their frames.
4. Concluding Remarks
This paper explored Obama’s rhetorics in his recent speech on race and argued
that they are designed to negate and break conservative frames effectively. The devices
that I found in his speech with regard to negating frame strategy are double negation,
ironies, and rhetorical questions. These devices are utilized in his efforts to reframe
conservatives’ frames in three steps: to recognize what their frame is, not to use their
terms and frame evokers, and to undermine the frame by abusing their frame evokers in
our own frame (after his frame is established solidly). In this vein, this paper argued that
these devices did not only help him dramatically cope with conservative frames but also
go well with Obama’s personality, which is very controlled, morally stronger, and not
assertive.
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Lakoff, George and Rockridge Institute. 2006. Thinking Points: Communicating Our
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