Meta-Model: Introduction

“But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.”

– Abraham Maslow

The NLP meta model of language creates questions that clear up deletions, generalizations, and distortions in speech. Done wrong, these are called violations of well-formed syntax. In grammar, syntax means the proper order of words in a sentence. In NLP, syntax means the proper laying out of concepts in speech. The NLP meta model is important for everyone to know, because these violations of well-formed syntax cause all sorts of problems, from everyday relationship problems to tremendous political problems. But by asking meta-model questions that clear up these violations, we also clear up our thinking. They also help us see when another person’s thinking is affected by these violations, so that we can be more in control of our own mental maps; our own sense of reality. With the meta-model, we are much less vulnerable to manipulation. Here is part of a speech with a lot of deletion:

Back in the day, they started our country so everybody could be free. Now everybody’s fighting and it could all go down the toilet. That was a little vague. Who started our country? Free in what way? What is the fight he’s talking about? What could all go down the toilet; what does that really mean? Now here’s that piece as written by Abraham Lincoln: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. Now that was a lot more specific. But let’s say that instead of a speech, it was a paper about constitutional law. When the word liberty came up, it would require a lot more explaining. What exactly is liberty, and for whom, and what are the circumstances? Needless to say, around the world, countless court cases, government documents, and materials from civil rights activists expand on the meaning of liberty every year.

The meta-model helps us analyze speech by showing us the difference between two kinds of structure: deep structure and surface structure. Surface structure is what you say, and deep structure is all that you know that is relevant. For example, if I say I can’t get a decent salad in this town, I might mean that the salads they serve are too high in calories. I might mean that I have only been to three restaurants in my neighborhood in order to form this opinion. That would be part of my deep structure. If you don’t know my deep structure, you might use your own. Let’s say my friend likes a salad with lots of croutons soaking of a lot of oily salad dressing, and plenty of chunks of cheese and bacon. My friend would send me to a restaurant with that kind of salad. I’d be horrified by all the calories and wonder what my friend could have been thinking. Well, if we had both used the meta-model, we would have figured out what each other was thinking. The whole thing would have been cleared up in a matter of seconds.

The other thing about deep structure is that, at its deepest, it is a collection of sensory representations that come together a lot like a chemical reaction. They bubble up and come together to form thoughts, opinions, and decisions. Then we put those thoughts, opinions and decisions into words. That’s when we have the surface structure. Those words cannot possibly contain all the impressions that led you to speak the words. This is why you must have habits, or strategies, for deleting, generalizing, and distorting them into something that you can say efficiently; something that will make sense and not take too long to say. People who are very manipulative will hide the deep structure in bad deletions, generalizations, and distortions in order to be manipulative. If someone wants their government to be based on their religion, but they know that would not be popular, they can delete the Bible and creationism, and distort it into something that sounds scientific, such as intelligent design. This way, they can pursue a religious agenda that gets ignored by some people. In the United States, high courts know how to ask meta-model-like questions in order to analyze legal arguments. When they did this in the case of intelligent design, they stopped certain schools from forcing their science teachers to say that intelligent design was science. The science teachers were very relieved to know that someone was paying attention and asking the right questions. If someone’s girlfriend starts accusing them of looking at other women, and becomes very jealous, meta-model questions may reveal that the girlfriend didn’t really have evidence, but her mind subconsciously collected some impressions that led to the jealousy. 

The deep structure may have really been a need to escape some internal pain and to get more attention. Accusing someone of something definitely gets their attention. Unfortunately, in addition to badly formed syntax, the accusation also creates attention that is not very rewarding, and may even stress the relationship to the breaking point.If the boyfriend uses the meta-model, the girlfriend may begin to see that she was really in need of something else. If the boyfriend knows Neuro Linguistic Programming, he will give her attention that does not reinforce her jealous behavior, but instead helps to create a constructive relationship. However, if the boyfriend does not have constructive strategies, and his deep structure references negative experiences, he may just get angry and act superior. Here, I’ll give you meta-model questions for all the major types of syntactic violations, that is, poorly formed syntax.