| By :
George Hutton
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 won't find too many search results on Google. The way they work is that through their grammatical structure. Sentences are constructed in such a way that when you use them, in order to make sense of the sentence you must assume several things are true. Let's say for example I utter something like "I have a red car." Not to breathtaking to be sure. To make sense of the sentence, you need to accept at least three ideas. One is that it is possible to have a car. Second is that there are these things called cars. Third is that some cars can be red. Not exciting, right? But what if I added some information to the sentence, and said, "My red car is the fastest car in the world." Now it takes on some additional assumptions. My automobile is quite fast, and there are other cars on the planet, and my particular car is faster than all the rest. This also presupposes there is some method of comparing the speech of my car to the speed of others, either through direct competition, or by comparing recorded data. Thus far, this isn't so groundbreaking, right? Let's take it a step further, and make some sentences that presuppose things that aren't so obvious. How about if I said, "My exercise program is the best for losing weight quickly." You might argue that my particular exercise program is maybe not the best in the world, but you wouldn't question if you can actually lose weight through exercise. Suppose, for example, you are a personal trainer, and you sell supervised exercise plans. People are likely to question if your services are worth what you're asking for them. People might wonder if they actually work better than just showing up and exercising on your own. If you structure your communication effectively, all their curiosities will be presupposed by your language. You could say, for example, "Everybody that has signed up for this exercise plan has lost, on average, 20% more weight than the average person who just shows up and exercises on their own." What does this presuppose? Other people have signed up, and they have, on average, lost more weight than those that didn't. This lends an incredible amount of social proof to your message. There are 28 separate linguistic presuppositions that can be used for powerful persuasive effects on your listeners. When you understand them and use them consciously, you will make more friends, sell more products, and be much more attractive to the opposite sex. Stay tuned for more articles here.
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