NLP Glossary of Terms*

Accessing Cues:
Subtle behaviors that will both help to trigger and indicate which representational system a person is using to thing with. Typical types of accessing cues include eye movements, voice tone, tempo, body posture, gestures and breathing patterns.

Analogue:
Continuously variable between limits, like a dimmer for a light. Different than digital, which is “on & off”.

Anchoring:
The process of associating an internal response with some external trigger (similar to classical conditioning) so that the response may by quickly, and sometimes covertly, reaccessed. Anchoring occurs every day in 1:1 interpersonal situations, families, groups, and through mass media. Learning NLP allows us to have more control over the anchors in our world, and ultimately how to be more effective in our communications with others.

As-If Frame:
Pretending that some event has happened; so thinking “as if” it has occurred, encourages creative problem solving by mentally going beyond apparent obstacles to desired solutions.

Associated:
Being associated refers to being or experiencing ones-self inside an experience—seeing through your own eyes, seeing through your own ears. Is referred to often in submodality work and perceptual positions.

Auditory:
Relating to hearing or the sense of hearing. One of the five ways we experience and process information in the world.

Backtrack:
To review or summarize, using the other person’s key words, phases and tonality.

Behavior:
The specific physical reactions through which we transact with the people and the
environment around us including thought processes.

Behavioral Flexibility:
The ability to vary one’s behavior in order to elicit or secure a response from
another person.

Beliefs:
The generalizations we make about the world that we trust as true and “how
things are”.

Calibration:
The process of learning to read another person’s unconscious, nonverbal
Responses in an ongoing transaction by pairing observable behavioral cues with a
specific internal response.

Calibrated Loop:
Unconscious patterns of communication in behavioral cues of one person trigger
specific responses from another person in an ongoing transaction.

Chunking:
Organizing your perceptions or experience into bigger or smaller pieces. Chunking up involves moving to a larger, more abstract level of information. Chunking down involves moving into a more specific more concrete level of information. Chunking laterally involves finding other examples at the same level of information.

Complex Equivalence:
Two statements that are considered to mean the same thing, e.g. “He is not looking at me, so he is not listening to what I say.” Complex equivalence is one form that people use to determine beliefs: (this = that) or (This means that).

Congruence:
When all of a person’s internal beliefs, strategies, and behaviors are fully in agreement and oriented toward securing a desired outcome. Congruence is characterized also by a state of being unified and completely sincere.

Conscious:
Anything in present moment awareness.

Content Reframing:
Taking a statement and giving it another meaning, by focusing on another part of the content, asking, ‘What else could this mean?’

Context:
The framework surrounding a particular event. This framework will often determine how a particular experience or event is interpreted.

Conversational Postulate:
Hypnotic form of language, a question that is interpreted as a command.

Criteria (or Criterion):
The values or standards a person uses to make decisions and judgments; what is important to one in a particular context.

Cross-Over Mirroring:
Matching a person’s body language with a different type of movement, e.g. tapping your foot in time to their speech rhythm.

Deep Structure:
Complete representation of the logical semantic relations in a sentence: what is seen, heard, felt, etc… as the sensory experience.

Deletion:
In speech or thought, leaving out a portion of an experience. A simple example is if someone were to ask: “How was your day?” and you respond by saying “Great!”… you have in essence left out every detail of what made your day great.

Digital:
Varying between two different states like a light switch that must be on or off. See analogue above.

Dissociated:
Not in an experience, seeing or hearing it from the outside.

Distortion:
The process by which something is inaccurately represented in internal experience in a limiting way.

Downtime:
In a light trance state with your attention inwards to your own thoughts and feelings.

Ecology:
A concern for the overall relationship between a being and its environment. Also used in reference to internal ecology; the overall relationship between a person and their thoughts, strategies, behaviors, capabilities, values and beliefs. The dynamic balance of elements in any system.

Elicitation:
Evoking a state by your behavior. Also gathering information either by direct observation of non-verbal signals or by asking Meta Model questions.

Eye-Accessing Cues:
Movements of the eyes in certain directions which indicate visual, auditory or kinesthetic thinking.

Four Tuple (or 4-Tuple):
A method used to notate the structure of any particular experience. The concept of the four tuple maintains that any experience must be composed of some combination of the four primary representational classes- A,V, K, O – A= Auditory, V= Visual, K= Kinesthetic, O= Olfactory/Gustatory.

Frame:
Set a context or way of perceiving something as in Outcome Frame, Rapport Frame, Backtrack Frame, etc.

Future Pacing:
The process of mentally rehearsing oneself through some future situation in order to help ensure that the desired behavior will occur naturally and automatically.

Generalization:
The process by which one specific experience comes to represent a whole class of experiences.

Gustatory:
Relating to the sense of taste.

Hypnosis:
The practice of intentionally focusing ones own (self hypnosis) or another persons attention inward, utilizing trance in the relationship to achieve desired results.

Identity:
Your self-image or self concept. Who you take yourself to be, The totality of your being.

Incongruence:
State of having reservations, not totally committed to an outcome, the internal conflict will be expressed in the person’s behavior.

Installation:
The process of facilitating the acquisition of a new strategy or behavior. A new strategy may be installed through some combination of the NLP™.

Intention:
The purpose, the desired outcome of action.

Internal Representations:
Patterns of information we create and store in our minds in combinations of images, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes.

Kinesthetic:
Relating to body sensations. In NLP™ the term kinesthetics is used to encompass all kinds of feelings including tactile, visceral and emotional.

Leading:
Changing your own behaviors with enough rapport for the other person to follow.

Lead System:
The representational system that finds information to input into consciousness.

Logical Level:
Something will be on a higher logical level if it includes something on a lower level. Also refers to “logical levels” as described by Robert Dilts (www.nlpu.com) in regard to experience: environment, behavior, capability, belief, identity and spiritual.

Map of Reality:
(Model of the World) Each person’s unique representation of the world built from his or her individual perceptions and experiences.

Matching:
Adopting parts of another person’s behavior for the purpose of enhancing rapport.

Meta:
Existing at a different logical level to something else. Derived from Greek, meaning over and beyond.

Meta Cognition:
Knowing about knowing: having the skill and the knowledge about it to explain how you do it.

Meta Model:
A model developed by John Grinder and Richard Bandler that defines syntactic environments by which one can detect and challenge deletions, generalizations, and distortions.

Metaphor:
Stories, parables, and analogies.

Meta Program:
A process by which one sorts through multiple generalizations simultaneously. As such, Meta Programs control how and when a person will engage in any set of strategies in a given context.

Milton Model:
The inverse of the Metal Model, using artfully vague language patterns to pace another person’s experience and access unconscious resources.

Mirroring:
Precisely matching portions of another person’s behavior.

Mismatching:
Adopting different patterns of behavior to another person, breaking rapport for the purpose of redirecting, interrupting, or terminating a meeting or conversation.

Modal Operator of Necessity:
A linguistic term for rules (should, ought, etc.)

Modal Operator of Possibility:
A linguistic term for words that denote what is considered possible (can, cannot, etc.)

Model:
A practical description of how something works, whose purpose is to be useful. A generalized, deleted, or distorted copy.

Modeling:
The act of creating a calculus which describes a given system. The process of discerning the sequence of ideas and behaviors that enable someone to accomplish a task. The basis for accelerated learning. Two people who teach modeling currently are David Gordon and Robert Dilts.

Model of the World:
Also referred to as “map of reality”. Each person’s unique representation of the world built from his or her individual perceptions and experiences as well as the sum total of persons operating principles.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)?:
The study of the structure of subjective experience. (See NLP)

Neurological Levels:
Also refers to “logical levels” as described by Robert Dilts (www.nlpu.com) in regard to experience: environment, behavior, capability, belief, identity and spiritual.

New Code:
A description of NLP that comes from the work of John Grinder and Judith
DeLozier in “Turtles All The Way Down” and later in the work of John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St. Clair “Whispering in the Wind”. (2004)

Olfactory:
Relating to smell or the sense of smell.

Outcomes:
Goals or desired states that a person or organization aspires to achieve.

Pacing:
A method used by communicators to quickly establish rapport by matching certain aspects of their behavior, words, and beliefs to those of the person with whom they are communicating—matching or mirroring behaviors.

Parts:
A metaphorical way of talking about independent programs and strategies of behavior.

Perceptual Filters:
Perceptual filters start with our human biochemical filters: our eyes, ears, skin, etc... that allows us to perceive the worlds as well as filtering out other information. Other perceptual filters are those unique cultural experiences; our beliefs and language, etc… that shape our model of the world.

Perceptual Positions:
The viewpoint we are aware of at any moment can be our own (First Position), someone else’s (Second Position), or an objective observer’s (Third Position). See “Perceptual Positions” article in Jim’s NLP Tips Newsletter, volume one (LINK)

Phonological Ambiguities:
Two words that sound the same, but have a different meaning: I/eye, see/sea, what/watt, you/u/yew, mean! I currently have hundreds of documented ambiguities, show me yours, if I gain new ones, I will send you my complete list!

Physiological:
Having to do with the physiology.

Predicates:
Process words (like verbs, adverbs and adjectives) that a person selects to describe a subject. Predicates are used in NLP to identify which representational system a person is using information in or from.

Preferred System:
The representational system a person typically uses most to think consciously and organize his or her experience. Much like representational system primacy below.

Presuppositions:
Ideas or statements that have to be taken for granted for a communication to make sense. Presuppositions are a powerful tool used in hypnotic language, as well as the language of influence and persuasion.

Punctuation Ambiguity:
Ambiguity created by merging two separate sentences into one makes sense once one reads them separately.

Quotes:
Using quotes of another is another powerful hypnotic or influence language skill, by using quotes one separates out the statement, thereby reducing the chance for resistance from toward the speaker or the statement. I once heard it said by a brilliant trainer, “Using quotes works well even when people are aware of the tool.”

Rapport:
The presence of trust, harmony and cooperation in a relationship.

Reframing:
Changing the frame of reference around a statement to give it another meaning. Used in much of NLP change work, in the older technique of “6 step reframing” as well as in many of the “Sleight of Mouth” patterns.

Representation:
An idea: a coding or storage of sensory based information in the mind/body.

Representational Systems:
The 5 senses: seeing, hearing, touching (feeling), smelling and tasting. We code information in our minds through our five sensory systems.

Representational System Primacy:
The systematic use of one system over the other to process and organize a given context. Much like preferred system above.

Requisite Variety:
Flexibility of thought and behavior. This follows the presupposition that “choice is better than no choice” and “the element of the system with the most flexibility will be the controlling element”.

Resources:
Any means that can be brought to bear to achieve an outcome or desired goal. Examples of resources are: physiology, states, thoughts, strategies, experiences, fantasies, people, events or possessions.

Resourceful State:
The total neurological and physical experience when a person feels resourceful. Utilized in NLP through anchors to be accessed as needed by the person or the practitioner.

Secondary Gain:
Where some seemingly negative or problematic behavior actually carries out some positive function at some other level. For example, smoking may help a person to relax or help them fit a particular self-image.

Sensory Acuity:
The process or ability to make fine useful distinctions about the sense of information we get from the world.

Sensory-Based Description:
Information that is directly observable and verifiable by the senses. It is the difference between “The lips are pulled taut, some parts of her teeth are showing and the edges of her mouth are pulled higher than the center…” and “She’s happy” which is an interpretation.

State:
The total ongoing mental and physical conditions from which a person is acting. Our state affects are capabilities and interpretations of experience.

Strategy:
A set of explicit mental and behavioral steps used to achieve a specific outcome.

Sub-Modalities:
The special sensory qualities perceived by each of the five senses. For example, visual submodalities include color, shape, movement, brightness, depth, etc… auditory submodalities include volume, pitch, tempo, etc…and kinesthetic submodalities include pressure, temperature, location, etc…

Surface Structure:
An utterance; a linguistic term for the spoken or written communication that has been derived from the deep structure by deletion, distortion or generalization.

Synesthesia:
The process of overlap between representational systems, characterized by phenomena like see-feel circuits, in which a person derives feelings from what they see and hear-feel circuits, in which a person gets a feeling from what they hear. Any two sensor modalities may be linked together.

Syntactic Ambiguity:
Ambiguous sentence where the verb plus “ing” can serve either as an adjective or a verb, for example: Influencing people can make a difference. Or another: managing managers can be challenging.

Timeline:
A perceived place in space that we store information related to the past, present and future.

T.O.T.E.
Developed by Miller, Galanter, and Pibram, the term refers to the sequence Test-Operate-Test-Exit, which describes the basic feedback loop used to guide all behavior.

Trance:
An altered state with an inward focus of attention on a few stimuli. Also referred to as “focused attention”. (SEE HYPNOSIS PAGE)

Transdirivational Search:
The act of locating through meaning(s) which may not be explicit in a surface structure.

Unconscious:
Everything that is not in your present awareness at the moment. Often also used in reference to our unconscious mind, that or those part/s of our mind that operate outside of normal consciousness.

Unified Field:
Reference made here to the unified field theory of Robert Dilts: Referred to by some as a useful framework for NLP: a 3 dimensional matrix of Neurological Levels, Perceptual Positions and Time.

Universal Quantifiers:
Linguistic terms for words such as “every” and “all” that admit no exceptions; one of the Meta-Model categories.

Uptime:
A state where the attention and senses are committed outwards.

Visual:
Relating to sight or the sense of sight.

Visualization:
The process of seeing images in your mind.

Well-Formedness Conditions:
In NLP™, a particular outcome is well-formed when it is: (1) stated in positives, (2) initiated and maintained by the individual, (3) ecological—maintains the quality of all rapport systems, and (4) is testable in experience, sensory based.

* A special thanks to Richard Bandler, creative genius of NLP™, and to John LaValle and Joseph O’Connor for all the work and information they provided and contributed for development of this glossary.