Persuasion Engineering ©1996 0-916990-36-2 Meta Publ 95010 (408)

Sales & Business / Language & Behavior

Richard Bandler and John La Valle

MILTON MODEL
The first set of language patterns is the inverse of the META MODEL.

The additional other important language patterns include:

PRESUPPOSITIONS
INDIRECT ELICITATION PATTERNS
PATTERNS IN METAPHOR

MILTON MODEL
Indirect Elicitation Patterns page 9.

Embedded Commands:
Embedded directives within a larger sentence structure.
“You can begin to relax”

Analogue Marking:
Set the directive apart from the rest of the sentence with some nonverbal analogue behavior.

Embedded Questions:
Embed questions within a larger sentence structure.
“I’m wondering what time it is.”

Negative Commands:
Stating what you do want to occur and preceding this statement with the word “don’t.”

Conversational Postulates:
Yes/ No questions that typically elicit a response rather than a literal answer:
“Do you know what time it is?”

MILTON MODEL
PRESUPPOSITIONS: P.11

Subordinate Clauses of Time:

Before, after, during, as, since, prior, when, while, etc.

Ordinal Numbers:
Another, first, second, third, etc.

Use of “Or”:
The word “or” between the given choices.

Awareness Predicates:
Know, aware, realize, notice, etc.

Adverbs and Adjectives:

 Deeply, easily, curious about, etc.
Change of Time Verbs and Adverbs:
Begin, stop, start, continue, proceed, already, yet, still, anymore, etc.

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs:

Fortunately, luckily, innocently, happily, etc.

INDIRECT ELICITATION PATTERNS p.13

Ambiguities

Phonological Ambiguity:
Words that sound alike but have different meanings.
I, eye; write, right; weight, wait; their, they’re, there; read, red; etc.

Syntactic Ambiguity:
Take a transitive verb, add “ing” after it, and place it before a noun.
“They were milking cows.”

Scope Ambiguity:
Occurs when it is unclear how much of the sentence an adjective, verb, or adverb applies to.
“They went with the charming men and women.”

Punctuation Ambiguity:
Put two sentences together that end and begin with the same word.
“I’m speaking clearly to make sure that you can hear you are, in the process of…”

PATTERNS IN METAPHOR p.15

Selection Restriction Violations:

The attribution of qualities to something or something which by definition could not possess those
qualities.
“The rock is sad.”

Quotes:
Making any statement you want to make to another person as if you are reporting in quotes what
someone else said at another time and place.

META MODEL
DELETION, DISTORTION, GENERALIZATION
And the Linguistic Patterns of Information Gathering

DELETION
Information Gathering: p.19

Simple Deletion:
Statement with missing or deficient information.
Comparative Deletion:
Missing standard of evaluation.

Lack of Referential Index:

Unidentified pronoun.

Unspecified Verb:
Verbs that delete specifics about: How, When, Where.

META MODEL
DISTORTION p.21
Semantic Ill-Formedness

Nominalization:
Verbs made into a noun (thing or event) thus obscuring the process or action.

Cause / Effect:
A specific stimulus causes a specific experience.
X causes Y.

Mind Reading:
Assuming you know what the other person thinks, feels, etc.

Complex Equivalence:
Conclusion based on the belief that outcome will always be the same.
X=Y

Lost Performative:
Value judgments or opinions in which the source of assertion is missing.

GENERALIZATION
Limits of the Speakers’s Model p.23
Univesal Quantifiers:
Generalizations that preclude exceptions or alternative choices.

Modal Operators of Necessity / Possibility:

Words that require particular action or imply no choice.

Presuppositions:
Something implicitly required in order to understand a sentence.