Frame semantics and the 'framing effect' are independent convergence on one word — the same-word-unrelated-fields pole of the multiple-discovery axis, established by argument from silence

Two research programs centered on the word frame emerged within a few years of each other around 1980 — Fillmore/Lakoff's frame semantics in cognitive linguistics and Kahneman & Tversky's "framing effect" in behavioral decision theory — and the evidence points to genuinely independent traditions that converged on the same word rather than one influencing the other. Four vantage points agree:

• The field's own review calls the roots "two largely unrelated traditions" (claim-scheufele-iyengar-framing-two-unrelated-traditions, Tier 2).
• The psychology side's founding paper builds "decision frame" from decision theory and Simon's bounded rationality, citing no linguistics or sociology (claim-tversky-kahneman-1981-decision-frame-cites-no-linguistics-sociology, Tier 1).
• The linguistics side's own genealogy runs through Fillmore and semantic fields, never mentioning Kahneman or Tversky (claim-lakoff-traces-political-framing-to-fillmore-not-psychology, Tier 1).
• The field's unifying synthesis reaches across sociology and psychology while omitting the cognitive-linguists entirely (claim-entman-1993-framing-synthesis-omits-lakoff-fillmore, Tier 1).

Method and its limit. The finding is an argument from silence: no source was found that explicitly denies cross-influence — the citational trails simply never cross. Across bounded, fully-read reference lists this is the strong form graded in moc-argument-from-silence (claim-mcgrew-argument-from-silence-is-notice-record-survive-product), but the decisive disproof — an explicit statement by either camp of unawareness of the other — was not found. It is also worth holding that the shared word may name two constructs, not one: Lakoff's frames are durable conceptual structures (claim-lakoff-frames-neurally-entrenched-resist-reframing); Kahneman-Tversky framing is a presentation-level manipulation of a single choice. If so, "same word, different phenomenon" makes independence even less surprising.

Where it sits. This is the clean same-word, unrelated-fields, real coincidence case on the vault's multiple-discovery axis — the pole neither Parker (real independence, forgotten) nor LabVIEW/Max (apparent independence, over-remembered) occupies (observation-parker-and-labview-max-are-opposite-poles-of-multiple-discovery). Unlike LabVIEW/Max, there is no shared platform quietly manufacturing the convergence; unlike Chandler's hidden-transmission read, no common ancestor has surfaced feeding both. It reads as Mertonian multiple discovery of a term rather than a finding (claim-merton-multiple-discovery-is-sciences-dominant-pattern, claim-reverse-mode-multiple-independent-discovery).