NOTE: In Ericksonian Hypnotic Language patterns, sometimes we are purposely vague in order to be more hypnotically communicative. When we do that we are “reversing the meta model.”

Today we present you with THREE Presupposition categories, each regarding Questions. In each category you presuppose through the asking of a question

Questions

Who learned the most?

When did you stop beating your wife? (I haven’t done that!)

Negative Questions

Aren’t you interested in taking your skills to the next level?

So you say you haven’t stopped beating your wife?

Rhetorical Questions

Who cares whether you work out or not?

What can we really do to make our lives better?

By the way some of you politically astute readers will recognize this use of questions from what is know in politics as “push polling.” This is where a “pollster” (who is really a campaigner) asks questions that are actually delivering information that will influence the voter. Sometimes the information supplied would be slanderous in any other context because it is flatly untrue.

Kave Rove was famous for using this tactic in the 2000 GOP primaries with George W Bush against John McCain. McCain was winning in the run for the Republican nomination at this point in the campaign, so before the South Carolina primary “pollsters” working for the Bush campaign called voters and asked “Does it bother you that John McCain fathered a black child out of wedlock? Do you think such a person would be a good President?” (McCain and his wife had adopted a girl from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa.)  Many consider Bush’s defeat of  McCain in South Carolina to be the  turning point of the campaign.

Reminder: The meta model is a way of questioning a speaker about their communications to us to retrieve more specific information. People will always be distorting information, deleting information or generalizing about it. The Meta Model helps us to clear that up.

In Ericksonian Hypnotic Language patterns, sometimes we do that distorting, deleting or generalizing on purpose in order to be more hypnotically communicative. When we do that we are purposely “reversing the meta model.” Presuppositions are a big part of that.

Another Presupposition category is the Selection Restriction. In these sentences what is being presupposed is the restricted group that you can select from. In the following sentence, the selected group is females.

If my professor gets pregnant, I’ll be disappointed.

You’d assume that I’m presuming that my professor can not be a male. You’d be right.

The kicker split the uprights in the final seconds to win the game.

The athlete was not a baseball player. (or soccer either)