Framespotting

I've finally got round to reading the book I got at the book launch at Booth's before Christmas.
And it's very good. Seriously - it's worth getting hold of a copy.
The idea is that the way words are used to describe things 'frame' the way you think about them, and it's very easy to manipulate people into thinking a certain way. Sometimes arguments have been going to and fro for so long that even the people making the arguments don't realise how they're being manipulated by the language - "economic growth", for instance - growth's a good thing, isn't it? Or could it be looked at in a different way?
I've certainly started to become more critical of stories in the news since I read this - and it also links in with some discussions I've been seeing on the web about films and TV shows - how the stories that are told shape the way the viewers look at the world. That's why Joss Whedon was being so subversive when he cast a dainty blonde girl as Buffy the vampire slayer, when film after film has the dainty blonde girl as one of the first victims of a vampire. He got people thinking that maybe girls weren't so helpless after all.
We're coming up to a major election this year, and politicians will be 'framing' the debate in the ways they want them to go for all they're worth. This book can help us see through their debating tricks and maybe look "behind the scenes" at the real issues we need to tackle.