Slight of mouth, a tool for persuasion, was created in the 1970s by the founders of neurolinguistic programming. It involves 14 ways to respond to others, often questioning the rationale for beliefs to gain a foothold in a debate. Examples include equivalent statements and cause and effect statements. The 14 formats include challenging consequences, emphasizing other findings, and rephrasing the original comment in a more whimsical way.
Slight of mouth, a vernacular cousin of the magician, was created in the mid-1970s by the founders of neurolinguistic programming – a tool for persuading people to change their beliefs and do what others want them to do. Comprised of 14 precise ways to respond to others, the swear word is often used by politicians, business owners and therapists who want what they say to actually happen. Often this involves questioning the rationale for someone’s beliefs in an attempt to gain a foothold in a debate quickly.
The magic of levity of mouth involves decomposing a person’s claims into two main categories. First, a person can argue that since one thing is true, then something else should be true: an equivalent train of logic that may or may not be valid. This will follow an “A = B” format in formal logic, with A and B as two separate ideas. For example, “You were the last person to turn in the test, so you were probably the least prepared in the class.”
Another goal of the mouthful is the statement of cause and effect. These are made when someone wants to convey that one thing causes, or was caused by, something else. For example, the patient may tell a psychiatrist, “I am very depressed because it seems to me that no one ever listens to me.”
There is a slight retort of the mouth to any statement made in these two veins. Employing them, however, does not guarantee victory in a debate or argument. These answers aim to breach a person’s armor of resolve by illustratively pointing to the often hidden and obvious logical fallacies in a person’s beliefs.
The first model of light mouth involves the intent of the speaker. In response to the first equivalent statement about taking the test last, a respondent may say, “You were always looking for me.” When stating cause and effect about being depressed, the psychiatrist may alter the patient’s perspective by asking, “What are you doing to make better friends?”
A complete description of each of the 14 light hand formats, with examples, is readily available online. They include challenging consequences, emphasizing other findings, offering a counterexample, applying the statement to the speaker, challenging the truthfulness of the statement, pointing out incorrect metaphors, and changing the scale of the statement. Other categories include upping the logical ante, pointing out specific errors, going one level general from the specific, offering an example to illustrate the error, and rephrasing the original comment in a more whimsical way. The rest of the 14 are uprooting the statement from its current place in history and shifting focus by asking what moral or logical belief led the speaker to make such a comment.
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