Advanced Language Cards Vol2

 Ad  A d v a n c e d L a n g u a g e Pattern Mastery Flash Cards Vol II: Sleight of Mouth

Matt Caulfield

© 2012 Matt Caulfield

This entire document is copyright to Matt Caulfield. The right to sell it as a book or ebook is strictly reserved.

 Acknowledgements

These cards would not exist without the hard work and insight of some of the geniuses and forerunners of NLP. In particular Richard Bandler, who’s argumentative skills these patterns are based on, and Robert Dilts who modelled and codified those patterns.

I must thank above everyone else Doug O’Brien who’s hard work in this area has made the sleight of mouth patterns accessible and easy to understand, learn and apply. If you wish to learn sleight of mouth, I highly recommend Doug’s books and audio programmes, which you can purchase at www.ericksonian.org.

Introduction

I produced the original set of “Advanced Language Pattern Cards” for myself and then for the attendees on my NLP Practitioner trainings. The plan was always to expand this deck into a second volume to cover the Sleight of Mouth Patterns, and finally here they are.

To use these cards, print them out onto card (or print them on paper and stick them to card), I have included a handy card back for you to use on them if you wish! If you really want to you could even laminate them...

The secret is to use them every day, even if it is just one card for 5 minutes. If you do that you will be surprised how quickly you master these patterns.

The great thing with having them as a pdf, rather than a hard copy, is if you lose a card or your set becomes a bit tatty, you can just print out a new one!

I hope enjoy them and find them useful,

Matt Caulfield

Sleight of Mouth: A History

“Sleight of Mouth” is a system of language patterns for persuasion. The story goes that Robert Dilts devised the patterns by modelling the argument and persuasion skills of Richard Bandler. By breaking down the methods used by Bandler, Dilts came up with 14 patterns.

The name "Sleight of Mouth" comes from the phrase "Sleight of Hand" which refers to a magician's skills in making things happen which appear im possible. Sleight of Mouth helps you change (or reinforce) peoples beliefs as if “by magic”.

The Structure of Belief

Sleight of Mouth focuses on influence by challenging, changing or reinforcing beliefs.

Sleight of looks at the two Meta Model Patterns of beliefs in more detail:

Cause-Effect: X causes Y, for example “if I eat chicken (CAUSE), it will make me sick (EFFECT)”. Complex Equivalence: X=Y, or X is equivalent to Y (the meaning a word or statement has to you). For example:

“You're late again, which means you don't love me”. (Note that this is not just "I believe you don't love me", but rather there is something that leads to that outcome.) “I am not going to do that, [because] I am not that kind of person!”

Polya Patterns and the Structure of Beliefs

George Polya was a mathematician (much the same as Alfred Korzybski, the developer of General Semantics) at Princeton who was curious about how people came to believe something if it wasn’t provable. He referred to this ability to believe in something as ‘plausibility’, he wanted to see how things became so plausible, that at some point it becomes ‘true’ for that person.

He described five patterns of plausibly (We have simplified the description to remove the complex mathematics. If you love maths feel free to dig out a copy the book these came from: “Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning Vol II”):

1. The Meta Pattern: Probability

The likelihood that something will occur again based on its past performance. The more something occurs the more we will tend to believe it will occur again (the sun coming up for example).

 Also, if something which is not very probably occurs it tends to validate the case-effect belief which predicted it (pressing the button more often gets the lift to come quicker)

2. Verification of a Consequence

If a particular belief (B) implies a particular consequence and we verify the consequence (C) than it makes the belief more plausible.

>>> If B implies C and C is true then B is more credible. > If B presupposes C and C is true then B is more credible. > If B is analogous to A and A is true then B is more credible.