George Lakoff

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The metaphor thesis, introduced in his 1980 book Metaphors We Live By has found
applications in a number of academic disciplines and its application to politics,
literature, philosophy and mathematics has led him into territory normally
considered basic to political science. In the 1996 book Moral Politics, Lakoff
described right-wing voters as being influenced by the "strict father model" as
a central metaphor for such a complex phenomenon as the state and left-wing
voters as being influenced by the "nurturant parent model" as the folk
psychological metaphor for this complex phenomenon. According to him, an
individual's experience and attitude towards sociopolitical issues is influenced
by being framed in linguistic constructions. In Metaphor and War: The Metaphor
System Used to Justify War in the Gulf, he argues that the American involvement
in the Gulf war was either obscured or was put a spin on, by the metaphors which
were used by the first Bush administration to justify it. Between 2003 and 2008,
Lakoff was involved with a progressive think tank, the now defunct Rockridge
Institute. He is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundación
IDEAS (IDEAS Foundation), Spain's Socialist Party's think tank.