Reality Reconstruction

Are You Not Aware Of The Massive Flexibility Of Presuppositions?

This is an article in a series on linguistic presuppositions, those powerfully effective language patterns that you can use conversationally to persuade your listeners and readers.

Today’s pattern is called the “Spurious Not,” and is similar in structure to both the rhetorical question pattern and the negative question pattern.

You can use it as follows. Take any negative question, separate the contraction (e.g. aren’t you à are you not) and simply make the question. When you separate the “not” out like that, it takes a little bit more brain processor time to make sense of the question.

If you’ve ever see a TV show when the lawyer had some poor witness on the stand, and kept firing away with questions like:

“Were you not there that night that…”
“Did you not see the defendant…”
“Are you not aware that you are under oath?”

These are intended to throw the witness off guard, and make them more susceptible to tell the truth, (or less resistant to cover something up) or in the case of les than ethical attorney’s, answer the questions in a way that throws their client in a better light, or confuses the jury, so that they will have a harder time coming back with a verdict against the attorney’s client.

In order to persuade, it’s best to phrase these like you are asking a question of yourself, and then follow up with a more “leading” statement.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight

I wonder if you are not already aware that exercise is the best way to lose weight, because when you realize that you can save a lot of money by not buying all those diet pills and mail order meal plans.

I wonder if you are not already aware that many people have already discovered that exercise is not only the best way to lose weight, but also a great way to improve the quality of your sleep and boost your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market

I wonder if you are not already aware that dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market, and can save you lots of time and worry.

I wonder if you are not already aware of many people who are now happily retired simply because they decided before that the simplest and most effective way to consistently make money in the stock market is through simple, dollar cost averaging.

Idea = presuppositions are a great way to persuade people

I wonder if you are not becoming more and more aware that with these simple language patterns, you can easily persuade your friends and family to vastly improve their lives by opening up a world of possibility around them.

I wonder if you are not starting to realize that presuppositions are not only a powerfully effective way to conversationally persuade others, but they will make it virtually impossible for others to manipulate you, as you will be able to clearly see their intentions beneath their language.

I wonder if you are not already seeing the benefit of not only reading this blog on a daily basis, but also of emailing a link to all your friends, so they too can benefit from these powerful language patterns?

Share this: