subject: How To Exploit The Most Commanding Set Of Language Designs For Persuasion And Influence [print this page] There is a near secret set of language patterns that when used correctly will have a profound effect on your ability to persuade others, both through conversation and through your writing. People use these patterns all the time, but most people use them unconsciously, and without any thoughtful effort on how to best put them together.
The technical name for these language patterns is "Linguistic Presuppositions," and despite their power, you will not find too many search results on Google. The best way they work is that through their grammatical organization. Sentences are created in such a way that when you use them, in order to make sense from the sentence you must assume quite a lot of things that are true.
Suppose for example I said something like "I have a red car." Not very breathtaking to be sure. To create sense from the sentence, you have to accept at least three ideas. One is that it is possible to have a car. Second is that there are these items called cars. Third is that some cars may be red. Not exciting, right?
But what if I added some information to the sentence, and said, "My red car is the fastest car around the world." Now it takes on some additional assumptions. My car is fast, there are more cars within the world, and you can measure their speed, and my car is quicker than all the others. This also presupposes there is certainly some method of comparing the speech of my car to the speed of others, either through straight contest, or by comparing recorded statistics.
Up to now, pretty uninteresting and obvious, right? Let's take it a step further, and make some sentences that take as fact things that are not so understandable. How about if I said, "My work out program is the most effective for losing weight quickly." You may claim that my particular exercise program is maybe not the top within the world, but you wouldn't suspect if you can actually lose fat through exercise.
Suppose, for instance, you happen to be an individual trainer, and you sell supervised exercise plans. People will naturally wonder if your services are worth the money. People might wonder if they actually work better than simply showing up and exercising on your own. When you structure your communication effectively, all their curiosities are going to be presupposed by your language.
You could say, for instance, "Everybody who has signed up for this exercise plan has lost, on average, 20% more weight than the common person who just shows up and exercises on their own." What does this presuppose? Other people have signed up, and they've, on average, lost more weight than those that didn't. This provides valuable social proof to your message.
You will discover 28 separate linguistic presuppositions that should be considered for powerful persuasive effects on your listeners. If you understand them and use them consciously, you can make more friends, sell more products, and be considerably more attractive to the alternative sex. Stay tuned for more articles here.
