Lost Performative

In addition to gathering information and gaining specificity and clarity in linguistic communication, the Meta Model questions are useful in other ways which include:-

• Challenging the content and boundaries of a person's model of the world
• Encouraging a person to reconnect their model of the world with the world of sensory experience i.e. sights, sounds, body sensations
• Encouraging a person to reconnect their model of the world with the original Reference Structure - the world itself

In the absence of regular review and maintenance a person's model of the world can, over time, become outdated and impoverished through the processes of deletion, distortion and generalisation.

Meta Model questions can encourage a person to update and even expand and enrich their world model by reconnecting it with and reviewing it against the original Reference Structure of shared experience.

In this way a person can often come to new insights and new understandings which were not available to them previously based on their impoverished world model.

A Lost Performative is an example of a distortion which makes reference to an act of speech where the performer of the act is left out, as in:-

• 'It's wrong to cheat'
• 'Everyone deserves a second chance'
• 'People like me never make it big'

What these examples share in common is that they are all value judgements and no mention is made as to who or what is making those judgments.

In order to make a useful evaluation as to the validity of these value judgments we need to recover their source. We can do this using the Meta Model question:-

'According to who?' or 'Who says X?', where X represents the original statement i.e. the appropriate Meta Model response to the second example above would be:-

'Everyone deserves a second chance according to who?', or 'Who says everyone deserves a second chance?'.

In order to answer these questions and identify 'who says', the person we're communicating with has to find examples in their world model. If no examples exist in the person's world model they have the option of enriching their model by reconnecting with the world of experience and their original Reference Structure i.e. the world itself.

If the person can identify from the world of experience examples of 'who says', that person's world model can be enriched by the inclusion of these examples.

On the other hand, if examples cannot be found the world model can still be enriched by the removal of inaccurate or unfounded data.

A third way in which the world model can be enriched is by the inclusion of differing examples, some of which prove the value judgment to be true and some of which prove it to be false. This particlar type of enrichment is especially useful for a person who's choices are being limited by very strongly held beliefs which are not necessarily completely 'true' or completely 'false'.

Lost Performative makes reference to a performative speech act, but the person who is the source of it, and sometimes the speech act itself, is unspecified. This often takes the form of a value judgment without acknowledgment of the fact that a person is the source of that value judgment.

Example 1:

• Client: "Her book was highly acclaimed."
• Challenge: "Acclaimed, by whom?" or "How do you know that?"

Example 2:

• Client: "Disobeying the government is wrong."
• Challenge: "Wrong, according to whom?"

Example 3:

• Client: "An apology was given"
• Challenge: "Who gave the apology and to whom was it given?"

It's important to know about these structures, because it's often necessary to deliver Presuppositions indirectly. These types of phrases contain at least one judgement or evaluation of which we can't identify the source.

• It's important to learn language patterns.
• It's essential to have fun learning all this stuff.
• It's good that we are all here tonight.
• The speaker doesn't state exactly who thinks these things are good, necessary or important.

Examples:

Sources: http://nlpglossary.blogspot.com/search/label/Lost Performative http://home.earthlink.net/~nlper999/miltmod.html#nom http://www.microdot.net/nlp/precise-communication/

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