ABSTRACT
The family has been recurrently described as the basic social unit upon which society is built. The cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that Nation-as-Family is a ‘conceptual metaphor’ from which others emerge, such as that of the government as a parent and the citizens as children (Lakoff 155). We may also trace the Nation-as-Family in those phrasings of a motherland, of founding fathers of a nation or in the diplomacy of a family of nations and brother countries. In Lakoff’s argument, the idea of the nation being a family is shared across the political spectrum and structures the moral of politics in the United States for both liberals and conservatives. The ideological differences, therefore, would be organized around preferred modes of parenting: conservatives would claim a need for a ‘Strict Father’ setting clear rules for everyone, whereas liberals would appeal to the idea of a ‘Nurturant Parent’ focused on providing for each in their own need (81).
