No matter which side of the debate you’re on, at this point in the election cycle, most likely your social media feeds are flooded with people telling you why certain presidential candidates are wrong or right, good or evil. If you think about which of those articles you’ve clicked on or statuses you’ve liked, I’ll bet that most of them aligned with your own political beliefs. If that’s true, you are not in the minority: most people tend to only pay attention to or take seriously people and ideas that agree with their own. This tendency is called confirmation bias, and it makes sense — listening to people with vastly different opinions than one’s own can be frustrating, and trying to see their reasoning can create a cognitive dissonance; however, at the end of the day, not exposing oneself to the other side does more harm than good.
Sociolinguists are linguists who study dialect differences and the social reasons that cause them. One sociolinguist, William Labov, has done extensive research on what happens when different groups of people minimize contact with each other. In his book "Dialect Diversity in America," Labov discusses the speech differences across the boundaries of race, class, and politics — boundaries that can cause people on one side to rarely encounter people on another other side — and in all of these case studies, one thing is clear: when people don’t talk to each other, their languages become increasingly divergent. So, by not clicking those links and engaging in conversation with people who are voting for opposite candidates from you, you are helping to increase that divide between your language and theirs; that is, you are worsening your already questionable ability to effectively communicate with these people who disagree with you.
Having opinions on the far left or right, it can be difficult to believe that people on the other side are human too, that they also believe their ideas for the country will help America become the best it can be, that they also have some sort of logical thought process, that they, too, believe themselves to be good people. Another linguist, George Lakoff, proposes a model for understanding the different thought processes of liberals and conservatives in his book Moral Politics. Lakoff writes that all Americans think of the government as being like a parent to American citizens, who are, in turn, children.
According to Lakoff, Conservatives believe that the government should be a strict parent that helps people become self-disciplined through a system of punishment and reward. They also believe that there is a consistent dichotomy of right and wrong, and children should be taught that dichotomy as soon as possible. Conservatives think that people are naturally bad, so if people are left to their own devices without some sort of guiding authority, they will become lazy and self-indulgent — vices considered worse than any others. They believe that nature itself acts as an authority, punishing the weak and rewarding the strong, so, according to this system, the people who are the strongest or wealthiest or most successful are that way because they deserve to be so: they were the most self-disciplined and self-reliant. This belief in a natural punishment and reward system is why conservatives are such big supporters of the free market. Additionally, conservatives oppose abortion, because they believe that people who have sex for anything other than procreation are being self-indulgent and not practicing self-discipline. A woman getting an abortion clearly has not had procreative sex. These sorts of women should be punished so that they can be incentivized to improve and become more disciplined in the future. An unborn child, however, has not yet had the opportunity to sin, so it is not fair for the child to be punished (i.e. aborted).
Liberals, on the other hand, believe that the government should be a nurturant parent. The best sorts of people in this system are those who are kind and helpful to others. Liberals believe that people are naturally good and even children (i.e. citizens) should be trusted to know what is best for themselves. There is no moral dichotomy, and children can grow up best by being exposed to different kinds of people and ideas so that they themselves can learn to nurture a variety of people. Liberals believe that everyone equally deserves to succeed in life but some are unfairly disadvantaged and don’t get to live up to their full potential. These sorts of people should be given an extra boost to help them get all they deserve. This belief in aiding the weak is why liberals support social welfare programs — liberals believe that poor people are often just as hardworking and intelligent as wealthy people but have not been as lucky. Giving these people extra money can help compensate for that lack of luck. Additionally, liberals are pro-choice, because they believe that a woman who wants an abortion is the sort of woman who needs nurturance — she has clearly either made a mistake or been forced into having sex when she didn’t want to — so the woman’s autonomy is valued over an unborn baby that is really only a clump of cells at this point.
These outlines I have given of the strict and nurturant parent models are far from complete. There are many fine details Lakoff presents that I do not have the space to expound on here. To understand the models better, I would highly recommend reading the full book.
In this day and age, politics are more partisan than ever, and it shows in these models: clearly, liberals and conservatives disagree on more than economics and climate change, rather, they come head-to-head in their views on morality and human nature itself. It may not be possible to converge these different opinions, but at the very least, we can prevent them from drifting farther apart. On a purely selfish level, people are more likely to listen to and try to understand you if you listen to and try to understand them. On a higher level, if we as a country don’t talk to people because they disagree with us, our languages and thought processes will move farther apart, which is the opposite of what the country needs to happen. It is truly amazing that the human mind can be so widely varied. Such beautiful diversity should be studied and appreciated — not ignored.
