Week 9 ETHICS & SUSTAINABILITY p.3

Cultural Values & Cognitive Frames in Environmental Communications


Lectures
The central of our sense as well as the concept of ourselves are constructed by human identity and human influences . Our cultural values and the way we express them through communication frames contribute to how we understand ourselves and our behaviours  in relation to others and many environmental contexts. Desire and individualism go together inside ourself. When we want to express that by narrating, or re telling them to others, it will create the identity of yourself. Therefore, we can say human identity is a narrative construction. Our knowledge, thinking and talking makes use of frames and frames form the systems of relations.

The significant thing here is many frame-circuits directly connect with the emotional regions of our brain. The fact is you cannot think rationally without emotions. If there is no emotion and you have to face something, you cannot make rational decision to choose the right thing.

Therefore, from all the frames we got in our mind, we should primarily try to influence other people by beautiful acts. Work on their inclinations rather than morals. It helps to construct other people 's frames.

Reading 

 Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment

Keywords: Framing; the Real; Messaging; Enlightenment Reason; Hypocognition; Global Warming

According to scientists, people think in terms of typically unconscious structures called "frames". Frames contain semantic roles,  relations to other frames and relations between roles. Because many frame-circuits connect directly to the emotions, so emotions are an inescapable part of normal thought. Without emotion, your choices would be meaningless to you and you cannot make rational decisions.

Political ideologies are also characterised by systems of frames, ideological language will activate ideological system, so the repetition of ideological language will strengthen the circuits for that ideology in a hearer’s brain. That is the reason why language is repeated very often and becomes ‘‘normally used’’ language.

Introducing new language is not always possible and of course not easy. The new language have to make sense in terms of the existing system of frames which are available in people brains. And it must work emotionally. Typically, it must be introduced in a communication system that spreads over the large population as well as enough repetition and trust in the messengers [1].

We should get out of the old view which is called "Enlightenment Reason". Because it claimed that conscious, abstract, universal, unemotional, logical, and imagined concepts and language are directly able to fit the world. But this view is false because the real reason is unconscious and accounts for almost 98%. It requires emotion and uses the ‘‘logic’’ of frames, narratives and metaphor. It also is physical and flexible in many different contexts. The brain is set up to run our body, ideas and language. It cannot directly fit the world but it must go through the body [2].

All the facts must make sense in terms of their proper frames system. To understand something complex, people must have frame systems which can make sense of those facts to them. For example, global warming, many people who do not have frame system in the conceptual systems in their brains, they will ignore and have no action to improve this issue [3].

However, in fact, environmental frames are the conceptual structures that people unconsciously get in their brain circuitry to understand environmental issues. Therefore, understanding global climate change, people need the right conceptual structures in their brain circuitry which are communicated by via language and visual imagery. However, most people do not really have the frame system to understand ‘‘what is global climate change?". Therefore, we need to simplify a few words and slogans to at least construct simple frames in their brain [4].

There are conservative and progressive moral systems. The conservative moral system consists of ideas of working against environmentalism and global warming [5]. However, the progressive moral system are empathy, personal responsibility and social responsibility, and the ethic of making the world better, starting from yourself. Indeed, the ethic calls on us to make the world better at least knowing how to preserve it.

The awareness of environment is called environmental hypocognition which is now lack of ideas that we need. Because the environment is not just about the environment. It is intimately linked to other issue areas: economics, health, trade, energy, food, and security. And we have to know we are an inseparable part of Nature.

We are now missing the political action. Obviously governmental action outweighs and shapes individual actions. We should be thinking of political involvement first before acting to help the environment. But the real is politics is not in the Environment Frame [6].The world leaders should see the threat and have actions to those things. We need some understanding of the cognitive and brain sciences. We need it to counter the powerful conservative forms of resistance effectively [7].Another thing is addressing everyday concerns. Avoiding technical jargon, visualising matter, using words people can understand and trying to use body language matters [8].

Tutorials

We talked about how we see things and what frames in our mind will appear to react those things. People definitely have their own frame to communicate to every single objects, things, problems,… And people know how to communicate effectively by using the frames they have.

As a designer, we all think about the products we design and how it communicates to consumers. The important thing here is the audiences must know what designer want to talk about their products, what the product is for,… It means we have to step by step build up the frame about the product we made in people brain. In order to associate with what their frame have had. From there, they will understand our product. We want to create something new to them, so we think about how that new is accepted and become a frames in people mind. 

Writer: Jungkook

[1]George Lakoff, "Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment", 71.
[2]Ibid., 72.
[3]Ibid., 73.
[4]Ibid., 74.
[5]Ibid., 76.
[6]Ibid., 77.
[7]Ibid., 79.
[8]Ibid., 80.

Bibliography

George Lakoff, "Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment", Environment Communication, 4:1, 70-81.