THE META-MODEL
Do you know that there’s magic in language?
Do you know that magic lies the words we speak and the symbols that we use to convey movies for the mind and frames for those movies?
The Meta-Model
C As a model, the Meta-Model is a set of linguistic distinctions and questions. The structural distinctions give us specific questions for exploring a person’s experience.
C A description about the structure of language which enables us to think about the words we use everyday and the clarity (or lack of it) in the movies that it evokes in our minds.
C The Meta-Model describes the surface words and sentences that we utter and the deeper level meanings or references that they allude to. This gives us different levels. We have the level that’s on the surface, and we have the level behind or underneath that gives us a fuller map of the person’s meanings.
C By using the distinctions of the Meta-Model we can question linguistic and semantic structures that are not well-formed. Doing this elicits more well-formed expressions giving the speaker the opportunity to create a more complete mental map and mental movie. This enriches his or her inner world creating new capacities and skills. This is the “magic” of language and of the NLP communication model.
C What can we do with this model?
1) Gather high quality information, gather more precise and accurate information.
2) Hone in on the limits of the person’s mental model of the world and identify precisely where and how a person has boxed him or herself in and how to expand that person’s mapping.
3) Clearly identify the techniques to use to positively influence someone.
4) Invite the expansion of a person’s mental mapping and therefore experiencing.
C Language as a mapping process only “makes sense” if it connects some movie for us or if
we can use the words to create a movie in our mind. Communicating with precision refers to being able to translate our higher level abstract words and concepts into more sensory specific referents so that the listener can create a similar picture.
CCCC Summary:
The Meta-Model is a model about language. The model is made up of Distinctions and Questions. As a model, it enables us to think about the form and structure of the language we use and the clarity of the movie that the words enable us to make. We use the Meta-Model to question ill-formed linguistic and semantic structures so that we can elicit from someone more well-formed expressions.
The Basic Meta-Model Questions for Precision C How do you know?
C Says who?
C How specifically?
C When specifically?
C How does what I am doing cause you to ...?
C What would happen if you did or didn’t?
C What stops you from ...?
C Compared to who or what?
C Does is always happen? What about Y event?
C What does that mean to you? What do you think that is?
C What are you assuming?
C How do you know that we should evaluate it as bad?
Representational Tracking
Representational tracking is the primary tool for using the Meta-Model effectively. This refers to the ability to hear statements and to take only what we hear and track it into the theater of our mind to create our representations of the other person’s mental movie. If we can track from the word directly and immediately to our own internal movie and it makes sense, then the words are well-formed. If not, then the words are vague and fuzzy and we need to ask some questions about them in order to gather more information.
What happens when you representationally track the following statement.
“Management has recently decided that it is required that the empowerment initiative begin by May 1.”
What pictures and sound track did you create for your inner movie? Compare that with this one:
“The brown dog ran across the green grass in the backyard chasing a brown rabbit who appeared suddenly from under a bush, and he ran across the cement that has only been set a few minutes before.”
Do you have pictures of that? Did the movie begin playing almost as soon as you read the words?
C Sensory-based words enable us to track them directly from the page or from a speaker’s mouth to our mental screen.
C Evaluative words that are non-sensory based invite us to either hallucinate or to ask for more precise information. If we do the later, we are meta-modeling.
As we step back, we can now explore the results of any given conversation to begin noticing if we communicate by hallucinating, jumping to conclusions, filling in the gaps, or if we ask questions to identify the speaker’s messages and inner movie.
C How rich is my client’s movie?
C What are the map rules for my client?
C Is there any value or fluffy process?
C What parts of their words do not allow us to create a clear representation?
Meta-Model Structuring and Modeling of Experience
As a model the Meta-Model identifies three central ways that we create our linguistic maps about things. We delete information, we generalize, and we distort. These are mapping or modeling processes. Accordingly, we organize the Meta-Model using these three processes.
C With deletions in our words and sentences, we seek out to fill in the details by asking questions that help us to paint a fuller picture of what the other person is saying.
C With generalizations, we will want to seek to explore the rules and conclusions to understand what they are and how they work, and how the person came to those generalizations.
C With distortions, we will seek to identify them and then to straighten out the distortions.