Meta model (NLP)

The Meta-model of Neuro-linguistic programming or Meta-model for Therapy is a set of specifying questions or language patterns designed to challenge and expand the limits to a person's model of the world. It is designed to respond to the distortions, generalizations, and deletions in someone's language. It forms the basis of Neuro-linguistic programming as developed by then assistant professor of linguistics, John Grinder and Richard Bandler.

The meta model draws on transformational grammar and general semantics, the idea that language is a translation of mental states into words, and that in this translation, there is an unconscious process of deletion (not everything thought is said), distortion (assumptions and structural inaccuracies) and generalization (a shift towards absolute statements). Likewise in hearing, not everything said is acknowledged as heard.

These language patterns were based on the work of family therapist Virginia Satir, gestalt therapist Fritz Perls and linguistic patterns from Transformational syntax. It is claimed that the Meta-model "yields a fuller representation of the client's model of the world - the linguistic Deep Structure from which the client's initial verbal expressions or Surface Structure, were derived" by offering challenges to its limits, the distortions, generalizations or deletions in the speaker's language. The reverse set of the meta-model is the Milton-model; a collection of artfully vague language patterns elicited from the work of Milton Erickson. Together these models form the basis for the all other NLP models.

The following examples were derived from therapeutic contexts. The developers state that these patterns can be identified in all human communication.

Discussion
Definition of the meta-model:
 * "People respond to events based on their internal pictures, sounds and feelings. They also collect these experiences into groups or categories that are labeled with words. The meta-model is a method for helping someone go from the information-poor word maps back to the specific sensory-based experiences they are based on. It is here in the information-rich specific experiences that useful changes can be made that will result in changes in behavior." (Steve Andreas, 2003 )

Language patterns

 * 1) Simple deletion
 * 2) Comparative deletion (best, worst)
 * 3) Unspecified referential index
 * 4) Unspecified verbs
 * 5) Nominalization
 * 6) Universal quantifiers (all, every)
 * 7) Modal operators of possibility (can, might, may)
 * 8) Modal operators of necessity (have to, must, should)
 * 9) Complex equivalence
 * 10) Presupposition
 * 11) Cause-effect (x means y, x makes me y, or x makes y happen)
 * 12) Mind-reading
 * 13) Lost Performative (people, women, men, jerks, families, ...)

Example 1: Presuppositions

 * Speaker: My son is as Lazy as my Husband
 * Challenge: Am I to assume that your Husband is Lazy??

Example 2: Cause and Effect (x means y, or x makes me y)

 * Speaker: That news makes me angry
 * Challenge: How, specifically, does the news make you angry?
 * Challenge: If the news didn't exist, you wouldn't be angry?

Example: Lack of Referential Index (people, women, men, jerks, families, ...)

 * Speaker: Nobody pays attention to anything I say.
 * Challenge: Who specifically doesn't pay attention to you?

Example: Comparatives and Superlatives (best, worst, ...)

 * Speaker: That was the best plan
 * Challenged: Compared to what?

Its roots can be traced back to the work of Noam Chomsky Transformational Grammar and even further to the nominalistic tradition of William of Ockham.

An effort unrelated by origin but going in the same direction of improving clarity of communication is the constructed language Loglan (and its close cousin, Lojban).