through my talk with hammet last week, i was introduced to a new theoretical term that i have subconsciously & intuitively been working with…for a long, long time. The idea of “framing”.
FRAMING: “It is an inevitable process of selective influence over the individual’s perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases. A frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others.”
When one seeks to explain an event, the understanding often depends on the frame it is referred to. Individuals constantly project into the world the interpretive frames that allow them to make sense; we only shift frames, or realize that we have habitually applied a frame, when incongruity calls for a frame-shift. In other words, we only become aware of the frames that we automatically use when something forces us to replace one frame with another.
My choice of frame would be of the necessity to look closely, wonder liberally and to pay attention non-discriminatorily. By placing this frame onto the realms of the expected, I am encouraging an alternate way of looking at the world, or in essence an alternative world that bears reason to be looked at.
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One Comment
Funny how concepts span disciplines, but vocabulary can differ. “Framing” in my professional world (education) is an essential component of constructivism as discussed by Piaget and countless other cognitve theorists. We construct a cognivie shema, an understanding, until encountering a cognitive conflict, thus resulting in creating a readjusted schema which is subject to continued reconstruction.