Conversational Persuasion With Presuppositions – Selection Restriction
Those In The Know Already Know This Stuff
Here we are with another lesson in linguistic presuppositions, those powerful language patterns you can use to covertly and conversationally persuade and influence others to your way of thinking.
Today’s pattern is the Selection Restriction pattern. This particular pattern has a wide variety of applications, both good and bad. Anytime you take a group of things (ideas, time periods, people, etc) and categorize them into sub groups, and assign one “sub group” a characteristic, you are implying that the other subgroups do not have this characteristic.
Lawyers make excellent politicians.
Although according to the rules of logic, this statement says nothing about people who aren’t lawyers and their ability to be politicians, the listener will assume that is the meaning of the statement, that lawyers are the best politicians.
Women have excellent communication skills and can talk about many subjects at once.
While not stated explicitly, this implies that men don’t have excellent communication skills, and can’t talk about more than one subject. (I’ll leave the actual truth of that for you to decide.)
He’s the guy I see walking every morning.
While “that guy” you see walking every morning may do a variety of things during the day, he is only “the walking guy” in your mind, as described in that statement above.
Anytime you give somebody, something, some event any sort of “label” you are effectively defining it only in those terms, and are using this pattern, for better or for worse.
So how to use this persuasively, in a positive way?
Simple
Separate out groups of “pretend” people into two groups. Attribute some genuinely desirable characteristic to one group, and phrase it so they achieved that “desirable” trait by doing whatever it is you are persuading your listener to do. Be careful not to put the “other” group into any sort of “bad” light, as that will diminish your persuasive power, according to the laws of Karma.
Some examples:
Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight.
Plenty of people have tried plenty different weight loss techniques, and those that have had the most success have discovered that the best way to lose weight is through simple daily exercise.
So here you have a group within a group. The first group is people in general. The second, sub group, is people who have tried to lose weight. The group within that group are the ones that have successfully lost weight. And they lost weight because they exercised.
Idea = dollar cost averaging is a great way to make money.
Many people have tried many different investment strategies over time, but the people that are now happily retired will tell you that the easiest way to get there is through simple, dollar cost averaging.
The selected group is happily retired people (which presumes a group of unhappily retired people), and they got there through dollar cost averaging.
Now, I don’t know exactly where you are in your sales career, or your particular skill level when it comes to persuasion. Some people like to study persuasion and persuasion techniques as a hobby, while others use it on daily basis to make a significant amount of income.
Those that do are either naturals, meaning they were born to sell, and have been persuading people as long as they could walk, or those that learned the techniques consciously, and perfected the art of persuasion over a period of time.
Those that have learned to become masters of persuasion through the study of specific techniques and language patterns will tell you, hands down, that presuppositions are likely the most powerful, most effective, and most useful set of language patterns to use conversationally that exist.
No other set of patterns will allow you to carefully lead the mind and emotions of your listener to better and more empowering places, so that everybody benefits.
