Glossary of Commonly Used Terms
A-C |
D-L |
M-Q |
P-R |
S-Z |
Accessing Cues - Behaviors that are correlated with the use of a particular representational system; e.g. eye movements, voice tones, postures, breathing, etc. (see Representational Systems.)
Analog - All aspects of the communication which are not words: voice tone, tempo, body posture, etc.
Analog Change - A change which varies along a spectrum; e.g. a volume control, dimmer control for lights or a shift in body position. (contrast with “Digital Change.”)
Analog Marking - Emphasizing a part of a sentence using nonverbal means; e.g. a louder tone, a hand gesture, etc.
Anchor - A cue or trigger that elicits a response, similar to the stimulus-response of classical conditioning.
Associated - Being in an experience or memory as fully and completely as possible (with all the senses); looking out from one's own eyes, hearing from one's own ears, feeling one's own feelings. See also First Position.
Auditory - The sense of hearing. (See “Representational Systems.”)
Backtrack - A spoken or written review or summary of information, usually to build/maintain rapport and to invite revision or correction.
Break State - To change a person's state dramatically. Usually used to pull someone out of an unpleasant state.
Behavioral Flexibility - The ability to vary one's behavior in order to elicit a desired response from another person (in contrast to repeating a behavior that hasn't worked). Calibrate - To “read” another person's verbal and nonverbal responses and associate specific behaviors with specific internal processes or states.
Calibrated Loop - An ongoing interaction between two or more people in which specific behaviors of each person trigger specific responses in another.
Chaining Responses - Eliciting experiences sequentially in order to connect them into an automatic sequence. (Compare with “Integrating Responses.”)
Channel - One of the five senses. (See “Representational Systems.”)
Chunk Size - The size of the object, situation or experience being considered. This can be altered by chunking up to a more general category, chunking down to a more specific category, or chunking sideways or laterally to others of the same type of class. For example, beginning with “car,” you could chunk down to a Ford or to a carburetor, chunk up to a “means of transportation,” and chunk sideways to a plane or train.
Collapsing Anchors - See “Integrating Anchors.”
Complex Equivalence - The complex set of experiences that equal a certain meaning in a person's map of reality; e.g. the specific set of behaviors that indicate that someone loves you. Congruent - When all of a person's internal strategies, behaviors and parts are in agreement and working together coherently.
Contrastive Analysis - To determine the differences between two representations, particularly submodalities.
Context - The environment within which a communication or response occurs. The context is one of the cues that elicit specific responses.
Context Reframing - Placing a “problem” response or behavior in a different context that gives it a new and different—usually more positive—meaning.
Conversational Postulates - Questions which only ask for a yes/no answer but which typically elicit a behavioral response; e.g. “Can you shut the door?” The person shuts the door.
Criteria - Standards for evaluation; qualities that can be applied to a wide range of specific behaviors or events. Examples: fun, exciting, inexpensive, interesting, high-quality, bold, practical, new, etc.
Critical Submodalities - The submodalities which are most powerful in determining a person's response. (See “Driver.”)
Cross-over Mirroring - Matching a person but with a different type of behavior; e.g. pacing breathing with hand movement.
Deep Trance Identification - (See “Switch Referential Index”, “Other Position.”)
Digital Change - A change which is all-or-none, on-or-off with no continuous steps or positions in between the extremes; e.g. a light switch is on or off. (Contrast with “Analog change.”)
Dissociated (Disassociated) - Experiencing an event or memory from any perspective other than seeing out of your own eyes (e.g. outside one's body).
Dovetail - To fit together more than one outcome, story, etc.
Driver - The most crucial submodality in a given context; changing it automatically changes many other submodalities, and “drives” the response.
Ecology - Considering the effects of a change on the larger system instead of on just one isolated behavior, part, or person.
Embedded Command - Nesting a command in a sentence so that it is grammatically not a command but is marked out as a command by analog behavior; e.g. “I wonder how soon you will HAVE FUN LEARNING NLP!”
Eye Accessing Cues - Movements of a person's eyes that indicate the representational system being used. (See “Accessing Cues.”)
Firing an Anchor - Repeating the overt behavior—touch, gesture, voice tone, etc.—that triggers a certain response.
First Position (“Self”) - Experiencing the world from your own perspective; being associated into yourself and your body.
Flexibility - Having more than one behavioral choice in a situation. (See “Behavioral Flexibility.”)
Future-pace - Rehearsing in all systems so that a specific behavior or set of behaviors becomes linked and sequenced in response to the appropriate cues, so that it will occur naturally and automatically in future situations.
Generative or Evolutionary Intervention - An intervention that solves the presenting problem and also generates other changes that make the person's life better in many other ways. (Contrast with “Remedial Intervention.”)
Guided Search - The process of searching back through one's memories to find experiences that are similar in some way—usually in feeling response. Often used to identify important early formative experiences that continue to affect the person.
Gustatory - Referring to the sense of taste. (See “Representational Systems.”) Hallucination - An internal representation of, or about, the world that has no basis in present sensory experience.
Incongruent - When two or more of a person's representations, parts, or programs are in conflict. Being “of two minds,” or “torn between two possibilities,” etc.
Integrating Responses/Anchors - Eliciting responses simultaneously in order to blend the experiences. (Compare with “Chaining Responses.”)
Installation - Teaching or acquiring a new strategy or behavior, generally by rehearsal or future-pacing.
Kinesthetic - The sense of feeling. May be subdivided into tactile feelings (Kt = skin sensing physically feeling the outside world), proprioceptive feelings (Kp = movement, internal body sensations such as muscle tension or relaxation), and meta feelings (Km = “emotional” responses about some object, situation or experience). (See “Representational Systems.”)
Lead System - The representational system initially used to access stored information; e.g. making a visual image of a friend in order to get the feeling of liking him/her.
Leading - Guiding another person in a specific direction.
Lost Performative - A linguistic pattern in which the person performing the action or judgment is missing from the sentence; e.g. “It's important to know this."
Map of Reality - A person's perception of events. (See “Representational Systems.”)
Mask - (See “Perceptual Filter.”)
Matching - (See “Mirroring” and “Pacing.”)
Meaning Reframing - Ascribing a new meaning to a behavior/response with-out changing the context, usually by directing attention to deleted aspects; e.g. “You thought he was just slow; you didn't notice how thorough and reliable he is.”
Meta-model - A set of language patterns that focuses attention on how people delete, distort, generalize, limit or specify their realities. It provides a series of outcome specification questions useful for making communication more specific, recovering lost or unspecified information, and for loosening rigid patterns of thinking.
Meta-outcome - The outcome of the outcome: one that is more general and basic than the stated one; e.g. “getting my self-respect back” might be the meta-outcome of “insulting that person.”
Meta-person - The observer in an exercise, who has the task of giving sensory feedback to Guide (and sometimes also to the person in the “Explorer” role) in order to improve performance.
Metaphor - A story, parable or analogy that relates one situation, experience or phenomenon to another.
Meta-position - (See “Observer.”)
Milton-model - A set of language patterns useful for communicating directly with the unconscious, influencing and delivering messages in such a way that others readily accept and respond to them. Usually vague and therefore inclusive language.
Mirroring - Matching one's behavior to that of another person, usually to establish rapport, sometimes preparatory to leading or intervening. (See “Cross-over Mirroring.”)
Modal Operators - Literally “Mode of operating.” A linguistic term for one or more of four broad categories of acting: desire, possibility, necessity, choice.
Modality - One of the five senses. (See “Representational Systems.”)
Modeling - Observing and specifying how something happens, or how someone thinks or behaves, and then mapping or demonstrating the process for others so that they can learn to do it.
Negative Command - An embedded command that is marked out with analog behavior, although it is grammatically stated in the negative; e.g. “Don't READ THIS TOO QUICKLY!” (A subcategory of “Embedded Command.”)
Nest - To fit one thing (outcome, story, etc.) within another. (See “Dovetail.”)
New Behavior Generator - A step-by-step process for electing and installing specific new responses and behaviors for use in contexts that have been problematic in the past.
Nominalization - A linguistic term for the words which result from the process of taking actions (verbs) and converting them into things (nouns), which actually have no existence as things; e.g. you can't put them in a wheelbarrow. Examples of nominalizations are “love,” “freedom,” “happiness,” “respect,” “frustration,” etc. (See “Complex Equivalence.”)
Observer Position - A dissociated meta-position from which you can observe or review events, seeing yourself and others interact.
Olfactory - The sense of smell. (See “Representational Systems.”)
Organ Language - Idioms that refer to specific body parts or activities; e.g. “Get off my back,” “pain in the neck,” etc.
Other Position - To step into someone else's experience fully. Outcome - Desired goal or result. (See “Well-Formed Outcome” and “Meta-Outcome.”)
Pacing - Matching or mirroring another person's nonverbal and/or verbal behavior. Useful for gaining rapport, sometimes preparatory to leading or intervening. (See “Mirroring.”)
Parts - A metaphoric term for different aspects of a person's experience. Parts are distinct from the specific behaviors adopted by the “parts” in order to get their positive outcomes.
Perceptual Filter - An attitude, bias, point of view, perspective or set of assumptions or presuppositions about the object, person or situation. This attitude “colors” all perceptions of the object, etc.
Polarity Response - A response which reverses, negates, or takes the opposite position of a previous statement.
Predicates - Process words: words that express action or relationship with respect to a subject (verbs, adverbs and adjectives). The words may reflect the representational system being used or they may be non-specific; e.g. “That looks good,” “Sounds right to me,” “That feels fine” or “I agree.”
Preferred Representational System - The representational system which a person habitually uses to process information or experiences; usually the one in which the person can make the most detailed distinctions.
Process Words - See “Predicates.”
Quotes - A method used to express a message as if someone else said it; e.g. “And then Fred said to me ‘Read on!'” (A variety of “Embedded Command.”)
Rapport - A condition in which responsiveness has been established, often described as feeling safe or trusting, or willing.
Reframing - A process by which a person's perception of a specific event or behavior is altered, resulting in a different response. Usually subdivided into Context Reframing, Meaning Reframing and Six-Step Reframing.
Remedial Intervention - An intervention that solves only the specific presenting problem. (Contrast with “Generative Intervention.”)
Representational Systems - The internal representations of experience in the five senses: seeing (visual), hearing (auditory), feeling (kinesthetic), tasting (gustatory) and smelling (olfactory).
Resource State - The experience of a useful response: an ability, attitude, behavior, characteristic, perspective or quality that is useful in some context.
Second Position (“Other”) - To “become” someone else fully by taking both the perspective and the criteria and history, etc. of someone else.
Secondary Gain - The positive intention or desired outcome (often obscure or unknown) of an undesired or problem behavior.
Self Position/Index - Experiencing the world from your own perspective; being associated into yourself and your body.
Sensory Acuity - The ability to make sensory discriminations to identify distinctions between different states or events.
Sensory-based - Information which is correlated with what has been received by the five senses. (Contrast with “Hallucinations.”)
Separator State - Eliciting a neutral state between two other states to prevent them from combining or connecting with each other.
Shift Referential Index - To take only the perspective of someone else, while keeping your own criteria with which to evaluate and respond to events. “If I were you…”
Six-Step Reframing - A process in which the “part” responsible for an un-desirable behavior is contacted directly, the positive intention driving the behavior is uncovered, and new choices to satisfy that intention are created.
Sorting Polarities - Separating tendencies or “parts” that pull a person in opposite directions into cleanly defined and organized entities, preparatory to integration.
Stacking Anchors - Using the same anchor for a number of resources, integrating them. (See “Integrating Anchors.”)
State - A state of being, or a condition of body/mind response or experience at a particular moment.
Stealing an Anchor - Identifying a naturally-occurring anchored sequence (stimulus-response) and then firing that anchor— rather than establishing an arbitrary “ad hoc” anchor for the response.
Stimulus-response - The repeated association between an experience and a particular response (Pavlovian conditioning) such that the stimulus becomes a trigger or cue for the response.
Strategy - A sequence of mental and behavioral representations which leads to a specific outcome; e.g. decision, learning, motivation, specific skills.
Submodalities - The smaller elements within a representational system; e.g. a visual image can be bright, dim, clear, fuzzy, moving, still, large, small, etc.
Swish - A generative submodalities pattern used to change habits and responses.
Switch Referential Index - To “become” someone else fully by taking both the perspective and the criteria and history, etc. of someone else. (Contrast with “Shift Referential Index.”)
Synesthesia - A very close and quick overlap between a sequence of two or more representational systems such as “see/feel” (feelings overlap with what is seen) or “hear/feel” (feelings overlap with what is heard).
Tag Questions - Negative questions tagged onto the end of a sentence in order to diffuse polarity responses; e.g. “don't you?” “can't you?” “aren't you?” etc.
Tape-editing - A process of reviewing past behavior and then selecting and rehearsing or future-pacing new behavior and responses in order to alter future responses in similar situations. (See “New Behavior Generator.”)
Third Position (“Observer”) - A dissociated meta-position from which you can observe or review events, seeing yourself and others interact.
Transderivational Search - (See “Guided Search.”)
Translating - The process of rephrasing words from one representational system into another, useful in bridging understanding between two people.
Universal Quantifier - A linguistic term for words which are applied to all cases and all situations without exception; e.g. “all,” “every,” “always,” and negations such as “never,” “none,” etc.
Visual - The sense of seeing. (See “Representational Systems.”)
Well-formed Outcome - A goal that is appropriately specified, obtainable, chunked-down and contextualized, and either helps satisfy, or does not interfere with the person's other outcomes.
