Reality Reconstruction

You Know What They Say

This is a continuation of the series on presuppositions, and how you can use them to powerfully enhance all of your persuasive efforts to mindboggingly amazing levels of influence.

Today’s pattern is another one in the “simple presupposition” group. Names and pronouns. Similar to the noun pattern, (as names are of course nouns) they presuppose existence when they are used.

Consider the following sentence:

Mr. Jones decided that this product was the best among all that he considered.

You may wonder about why he made that decision, you may be curious about all the other products he considered, but you wouldn’t likely wonder whether or not Mr. Jones existed.

How about this one:

Shelly mentioned that this summer is going to be really hot.

Once again, you may dig into your memory for your own references regarding summer predictions, or your own experiences during hot summers, but you wouldn’t likely question whether or not Shelly exists.

On the other of the coin are pronouns. Pronouns like he, she, they, refer to people, either mentioned before, or assumed to be understood. Simply by using them, people will presuppose some person or group of persons exists. And once you’ve got an imaginary person or group of people, you can attribute all kinds of things to them.

Consider the following:

They say the best way to make money is to provide real value to people.

You would probably search for similar “truisms” in your memory, or you may consider how you can give value to people so that you could make money, but you wouldn’t likely question whether or not “they” exist.

This pattern, specifically using pronouns, doesn’t do much by itself. For example if you said, out of the blue:

He says that the best time to invest in the stock market is right before an election.

You wouldn’t likely be thinking about the markets, or elections, rather you’d probably be wondering who “he,” was. And after that point, “he” would be the focus of your thinking, which would defeat the purpose of using covert persuasive techniques.

Once we start getting into more complex presuppositions, and start combining them together, you can see how powerful they can be.

Check back for more updates, and please leave a comment if you have any questions, or requests. I’d be happy to oblige.

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