---
title: "Frames, scripts, scenarios, models, spaces and other animals:"
subtitle: "Bridging conceptual divides between the cognitive, social and computational"
author: "Dominik Lukeš, @techczech"
outline_version: 2
auto_title_slide: false
auto_thanks_slide: false
---

## Frames, scripts, scenarios, models, spaces and other animals: Bridging conceptual divides between the cognitive, social and computational
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-001} {title}

Dominik Lukeš, @techczech

[http://metaphorhacker.net](http://metaphorhacker.net)

## Caveats
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### Caveats
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-003} {notitle}

Avoid **reduction through redescription**. I.e. Don’t call things in other disciplines a frame and claim to have solved their problems.

### Caveats
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-004} {notitle}

Differentiate between **hermeneutics** and **heuristics**. I.e. principles of understanding are distinct from methods of arriving at that understanding.

## What is a frame?
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### What is a frame?
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- “Structure of expectation” Tannen, 1993
- “frames are basic cognitive structures which guide the perception and representation of reality”
- Interpretation of Goffman
- [http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/publications/frameanalysis/](http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/publications/frameanalysis/)

## Mostly overlapping concepts
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### Mostly overlapping concepts
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- **Frame** (Goffman, Lakoff, Schon)
- **Idealized Cognitive Model** (Lakoff)
- **Mental Model** (cognitive pscyhologists)
- **Mental Space** (Fauconnier)
- **World** (text world, possible world) - (Werth)

## Partially overlapping concepts
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-009}

### Partially overlapping concepts
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- Schema
- Script
- Scenario
- Domain
- Footing (Goffman)
- Prototype (psychology)
- Exemplar (phonology)
- Presupposition
- Metaphor (Outward bound)
- Gestalt (psychology)
- Construct (as in constructivist psychology)
- Case (as in "case-based reasoning")
- Stereotype
- Perspective
- Ability to see something in a ____ way

## Concepts relying on something like a frame
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-011}

### Concepts relying on something like a frame
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-012} {notitle}

- Discourse (as in "dominant discourses")
- Narrative (as in "prevailing narrative", "fit into a narrative")
- Family resemblance
- Episodic memory
- Priming
- Identity
- Cognitive dissonance
- Contestation
- Construction
- Historical memory
- Folk theory
- Theory
- Paradigm
- Metanarrative
- Foucault's archeology of the mind
- Culture
- Grammar (as in “grammar of schooling”)
- Archetype (psychology)
- Persuasion
- Prejudices
- The Other
- Historical Imagination
- Myth
- Role model

## Disciplines using frame-like concepts
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-013}

### Disciplines using frame-like concepts
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-014} {notitle}

- Artificial Intelligence
- Ethnography/Anthropology
- Art history
- Cognitive psychology
- Social psychology
- Linguistics
- Sociology
- History of science
- Therapeutic psychology
- Logic
- Political theory
- Behavioral economics
- Media theory

### Disciplines using frame-like concepts
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-015} {notitle}

- Rhetoric
- Law
- Pedagogy
- Organization studies
- Policy studies

## What is a frame?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-016}

### What is a frame?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-017} {notitle}

**Fundamental non-atomic element** of mental, social, emotional and physical action susceptible to mental operations similar to those intuitively described as reasoning.

### What is a frame?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-018} {notitle}

- Fundamental basic-level unit of mental representation.
- Both conscious and unconscious.

## What does a frame look like?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-019}

### What does a frame look like?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-020} {notitle}

- Idealized Cognitive Model is not a bad start.
- Enriched by episodic memory, discursive psychology, social anthropology, and corpus linguistics

### What does a frame look like?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-021} {notitle}

- Propositional aspects
- Image aspects
- Figurative aspects
- Meronymic aspects
- Metacognitive aspects

### What does a frame look like?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-022} {notitle}

- Definitions
- Narratives
- Rich images
- Image schemas
- Metaphors
- Analogies
- Collocations
- Links to related concepts
- Awareness of social links

## What does a frame do as part of reasoning?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-023}

### What does a frame do as part of reasoning?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-024} {notitle}

Something like blending theory is a good start but needs input from discursive psychology and social psychology.

## What does a frame do as part of human action?
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### What does a frame do as part of human action?
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- Construction grammar is a good start.
- Frames are the semantic poles of meaning/form links in symbolic units.

## What is missing from most frame theories?
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### What is missing from most frame theories?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-028} {notitle}

- Notion of an inventory of frames and inventory only properties
- Hypostasis and negotiation (frame negotiation)
- Social as well as psychological dimension
- Variation in accessibility
- Acquisition

## Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-029}

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-030} {notitle}

> Since 2002, it has been the official practice at Fox News to refer to attacks like the one at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport this week, in which a bomber blows himself up along with his victims, as **“homicide bombings.”** In adopting the terminology, Fox took its cues from the Bush White House, which felt the more commonly used **“suicide bombings” gave undue attention to the fate of the bomber**.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/01/26/fox-news-cant-keep-its-made-up-propaganda-words-straight/](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/01/26/fox-news-cant-keep-its-made-up-propaganda-words-straight/)

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-031} {notitle}

**bombing**

Killing of people. Done at a distance. Unlawful connotation unless by military.

**suicide**

Killing of self. Usually in private by individual means. For personal reason. Connotations of sadness and grief.

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-032} {notitle}

**suicide bombing**

Killing of people. Done by an individual carrying a bomb. Likely to die in the attack. Associated with people belonging to movements. Negative connotations.

Associated with discursive practices not inherited from those of suicide. The homicide aspect of bombing takes over.

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-033} {notitle}

**homicide bombing**

Removes explicitly possibility of recovering frame aspects (discursive practices) blended away in suicide bombing.

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-034} {notitle}

> inside the structure of military rhetoric, a 'suicide mission' occupies a place of honor: to sacrifice one's life for the cause is regarded as noble, by the partisans of 'war.' Think of the Alamo, or the 300...
>
> A suicide bomber partakes in some of the "Lost Cause" nobility.
>
> Whereas a "homicide" bomber may (must?) be regarded merely as a murderous psychopath. There is no chance that the act could be thought "noble." A "homicide" bomber cannot be a martyr...

[http://thewell-armedlamb.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/homicide-bomber-vs-suicide-bomber-whats.html](http://thewell-armedlamb.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/homicide-bomber-vs-suicide-bomber-whats.html)

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-035} {notitle}

What knowledge is required to make sense of frame blends?

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-036} {notitle}

- I teach civil war
- I teach public policy
- I teach French
- I teach shooting
- I teach guns

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-037} {notitle}

What is the nature of knowledge necessary to interpret framing.

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-038} {notitle}

![Four photographs of dumplings, arranged in a two-by-two grid: filled dumplings on a plate, fruit-filled dumplings, sliced pale dumplings beside meat and sauce, and yellow sliced dumplings beside meat and cabbage.](assets/pages/page-38.png)

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-039} {notitle}

- fruit dumplings
- meat dumplings
- bread dumplings
- potato dumplings
- cheese-curd dumplings
- hairy dumplings

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-040} {notitle}

![A plate of roughly rounded, pale dumplings with golden patches.](assets/media/img-c907dfc61100a7e3.jpeg)

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-041} {notitle}

Interplay of propositional knowledge, force dynamics, scale schemas, rich images.

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-042} {notitle}

- The Normans conquered Britain
- The Browns conquered Britain
- The Beatles conquered Britain

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-043} {notitle}

- Nazi Holocaust
- Jewish Holocaust
- Hungarian Holocaust
- Spanish Holocaust

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-044} {notitle}

> I drink too much, last time I gave a urine sample, it had an olive in it.
>
> Rodney Dangerfield

### Examples of framing and frame analysis
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-045} {notitle}

> I learned this summer that peeing in the pool and peeing INTO the pool are very different things.
>
> Demetri Martin

## Conclusion: Why are frames useful?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-046}

### Conclusion: Why are frames useful?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-047} {notitle}

Non-reductionist analysis of issues in the humanities

### Conclusion: Why are frames useful?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-048} {notitle}

Remind us what else to look for in the conceptualizations. E.g. schemas have associated rich images, narratives, and propositional content.

### Conclusion: Why are frames useful?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-049} {notitle}

Prevent debates about questions assuming traditional concepts requiring logical operations are at play. For instance definitions.

## Further research needed?
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### Further research needed?
{id=pptx-233128a2692a-051} {notitle}

- Cognitive psychology of framing
- Memory of frames
- Priming
- Habituation and embodiment
- Individual variation
- Frame negotiation