Linguistic Giveaways!
We experience the world only through our senses. If we didn’t see, hear, taste, smell, touch or feel any physical sensation, we would have 100% sensory deprivation and would have no experience of the world whatsoever. In fact we would probably die, because there would be no physical feedback telling our brain to make our heart beat with a certain rhythm, or telling our lungs that they needed to fill.
So for us, “reality” is based firmly on what our physical senses tell us because we can only know the world through the senses we use to experience it. Whenever we attempt to describe our reality (ie communicate, even to ourselves) we display the senses we have used to process our experience, via the very words we select.
These words are called predicates, and are the linguistic cues which alert us to which representational system someone is using. It can be most helpful to recognise and pace these in order to build and maintain rapport, and in fact if you do not pace these you may find your client or colleague has difficulty in trusting you or even understanding you.
Take a look at the lists of predicates below and notice how easily you can now understand how language betrays someone’s internal processing!
Visual Predicates Auditory Predicates Kinaesthetic Predicates see hear feel look listen touch appear sound grasp view make music get hold of show harmonise slip through illuminate tune in/out catch on clear be all ears tap into focus rings a bell make contact imagine silence throw out picture resonate turn around catch a glimpse of deaf hard dim view overtones concrete get a perspective on attune get a handle on eye to eye outspoken touch base in light of tell boils down to make a scene clear as a bell come to grips with mind's eye call on connect with pretty as a picture clearly expressed cool/calm/collected showing off describe in detail firm foundations take a peek earful get a load of this well defined give me your ear get in touch with vivid word for word slipped my mind clarity orchestrate hand in hand You might also from time to time hear some predicates which could be described as gustatory or olfactory: yummy, leaves a bad taste, tasteful, tasteless, stinks, soft buttery fabric, peachy! Most NLPers tend to lump these together with kinaesthetic predicates.
Some words don’t seem to be attributable to any particular representational system: consider, think about, believe, calculate etc. This type of language is often used in technical or academic reporting and is considered to be “auditory digital”.
Clash of the Predicates Because we generally have a preference for using one particular sensory system to process our “reality” it logically follows that our language predicates will be from that same sensory system. Thus someone might have a preponderance of visual predicates, while someone else might have mostly auditory predicates.
If we fail to recognise that, and fail to adapt our own language to suit the person we’re communicating with, we risk not being understood, but more importantly, we risk that person feeling that we don’t understand them!
Check this scenario:
Customer: I can see difficulties with this. I just can’t picture it working.
Salesperson: Let me walk you through the specifications again and maybe you can get a better handle on the way it would work.
Compared with this scenario:
Customer: I can see difficulties with this. I just can’t picture it working.
Salesperson: Let’s take a look at the specifications again and see if we can get some clarity on how it would look to you if it did work.
The following exercises are designed to help build an awareness of the language predicates that people use, as well as a high level of skill in adapting your own language to theirs.
Exercise - Heightened Awareness of Predicates and Breathing Cues Breathing cues can alert us to the type of sensory representational systems (V, A, K) a person is using. When a person is breathing high in the chest (see shoulders moving) then they may be processing pictorially. When a person is breathing mid chest (abdomen not moving) they may be processing auditorially. When a person is breathing fully (abdomen moving in and out) they may be processing kinaesthetically.
In groups of 3 or more, A talks to B about a situation, and every time A uses a predicate, B raises his/her hand, breathes in a V, A or K way, and names the word to which he/she was responding and which representational system he/she was modelling. C observes and comments on accuracy.
Exercise - Gaining Facility in Switching to Other People’s Language In writing, describe the same sales proposal 3 times, using first visual, then auditory, then kinaesthetic predicates. Take about 4 lines of writing each time.
What sensory preference do you think you have? Hint: In the sentence work above, one of the sentences may have seemed very easy, and the others more difficult.
Be more aware of your clients’ language, and adapt your own appropriately, and you’ll greatly influence the quality of the connections that you make.
This article has explained some of the more basic NLP communication strategies.
Watch Your Language or You'll Be Watching Your Customers' Backs as They Walk Away - To learn more about this author, visit Christine Sutherland's Website.
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