Lakoff starts off with the example of asking or telling someone not to think about elephants. Of course, the listener is going to have a hard time not thinking about elephants. He then points this out as framing- but a very coercive framing.

Actually that sort of injunction is known as a double bind, such as ordering someone, "Be spontaneous!" Basically it's a self-contradictory statement that offers no exit. It's common to pathological communication in schizophrenics as Bateson and Haley sought to demonstrate in "The Pragmatics of Communication." I really can't see it as hitting the nail on the head when it comes to framing within the debate.

Lakoff's framing appears to me to be a petition of principle. It's an error in logic but perfectly acceptable in rhetoric in so far as it is efficacious (especially in an audience that is not aware of this rhetorical device). Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca give the simple example of a maid who has broken a vase and tells her employer that bad things like that always happen to her on Friday. Her employer replies that the vase was broken on Thursday.

How is this a petition of principle? Well, the employer is not contesting her superstitions, that is her premise, but is simply accepting it a priori to counter her own statement. In other words he accepts the way she framed it whether or not he is superstitious. In this case we have an argumentum ad hominem in so far as the verbal exchange is based exclusively on her personal frame. He's talking to her on her grounds. Were there a larger audience perhaps he might have pointed out her superstition, shared it with the audience, or to put it plainly, changed the framing.

But changing the frame can be problematic when there's a surreptitious trap. Take for example the invention of emotionally charged neologisms that are hard to counter. Such terms as "pro-life" or "the unborn" carry strong emotional contents that make it difficult to debate abortion. By qualifying the fetus as "unborn", the fetus surreptitiously acquires the status of a human being in potenzia that may be denied a right to be born. The word itself instils a bias in the debate, a petition of principle. Without flat out contesting arguments loaded with crafty neologisms one has to resort to a different vocabulary, such as countering with neologisms like "pro-choice". But in the end there is no debate, no common ground, no common vocabulary, on which to turf. What counts is who has the louder voice. Which brings me to another consideration.

Mass communication. A means of framing "discourse" that has little to do with rhetoric. Communication means giving a message, a slogan or a jingle maximum exposure. It's done with props, staging, the sheer domination of the means of communication. Citizens become spectators- consumers who get to play at the opinion polls. Pocinko! And cheap thrills.

A famous Bush jingle was launched in September 2002. One morning Judy Miller invented the "mushroom cloud" metaphor to falsely accuse Saddam of vying for nuclear weapons. Con delizia Rice repeated it at breakfast time. Before the day was over Cheney had used it too. An emotionally charged new brand was on the opinion market itching to sway Congress to grant war powers. All was needed was a Bernay front cashing in on the reputation of the New York Times front page, plus two seemingly independent authorities aping objective dialogues with the press. Whatever rational dissenting voice there was, it had no place to express itself outside of its designated function as a target for derision and outrage.

It's a frame you really can't deal with. It's the media that decides for you. Step in line or shut up. Did a single American news source, for example, carry the protests of the Niger government on Christmas eve 2002 against State's base innuendo that they were selling yellowcake illegally?

In effect winning American consumers to war was a culinary event: mushroom clouds with a generous side of freedom fries. Too bad they spilled all that good wine.

In conclusion it appears to me that Lakoff points out at least two types of framing: one that involves double binding, a psychological inhibitor, and another based on the petition of principle as used in rhetoric. Framing in mass communication depends on who's manipulating the control booth. But just as well the capacity of spectators to act as citizens and turn the damned tube off, frame and all.