CLEANING UP FLUFF

You can clean up your language and get over a lot of precision by using the Meta-Model of Language and the Representational Model (#13). These precision models inform you how to become more precise and specific in the way you think and then talk. Now within the Meta- Model is a particular distinction that’s especially critical—nominalizations and the skill of de- nominalizing.

This is actually a subject that I speak and write about a lot. And even though I do, I find that most of us, including myself, can so easily get seduced by the hypnotic power of nominalizations. And if you really don’t know how to recognize these great big fluffy words (a nominalization) and deal with it, your language is going to be sloppy— very sloppy. And that means you will not be precise in communicating even though you probably will think you are. That’s one of the seductions of nominalizations. The speaker has details in mind when speaking, but the language form does not convey them. So the speaker will feel as if he or she is being precise even though what comes out of the mouth is vague, indefinite, and fluffy.

So, what is a nominalization? A nominalization refers to an action or a process which has been named, or nominalized. The problem is that when we give a name to an action, it tricks our mind. The “name” (noun) makes the action sound like and seem like as if it were a thing.

One person relating to another person is doing something: talking, requesting, kissing, holding, hitting, smiling, laughing, crying, helping, listening, etc. By relating they now have a relationship. Sounds like a thing. It is not. When you think and value yourself as valuable as a person, you esteem yourself as significant. When you name this action, you create the nominalization, self-esteem. It sounds like a thing. It is not. When a person is leading a group with a vision, he or she is said to have leadership qualities.

Prior to Transformational Grammar which came up with the term, “nominalization,” Abraham Maslow called this process— reification. Others have called it thingification. Nominalizing is the concretizing of a dynamic moving process (which is best described by verbs) as if it is a noun (“a person, place, or thing”). Yet it is not.

As a result of this, it makes the nominalization false-to-fact. What the nominalization presents is not just an over-generalization, not just a idea that’s very fluffy and vague. The nominalization is actually a lie, a deception. The so-called thing is not a “thing” at all!

“My self-esteem these days is really because of the problems in my relationship which makes me feel stressed-out and it’s going to lead to a depression.”

All of the italicized words in the above sentence are nominalizations and they are connected by fallacious cause-effect structures (indicated by the words “because” and “going to lead”). Here is one single sentence and it is full of fluff and vagueness. The person’s languaging here is really sloppy. And the person probably doesn’t have a clue as to how this single sentence is semantically loaded with toxic ideas and how it works as a post-hypnotic suggestion to make life more and more miserable in the future.

If you want to create imprecision, just take some action words, nominalize them, connect them to some cause-effect statements and you can semantically pack a sentence so that it is full of abstract concepts. What you say will seem meaningful to you. And I’m sure you are trying to communicate something. But when you do that you will not be communicating with precision and so those of us listening will typically experience confusion ... or we will hallucinate our own meanings onto the other’s words.

Okay, now for cleaning up our language. The solution is simple: de-nominalize the nominalizations. That is, turn the false-nouns back into verbs and then specify the verbs. If you hear “relationship,” ask “Who’s relating to whom?” “What is X doing in relating to Y?” If you hear the nominalization “self-esteem,” ask “How are you esteeming yourself? By what criteria? In what way?”

Now to turn a false noun back into a verb, you first have to be able to recognize a false noun or nominalization. When I first learned NLP, I was introduced to two tests for a nominalization:

1) The Wheelbarrow Test. Can you put the nominalization in a wheelbarrow? Can you put “relationship” in a wheelbarrow? No. Can you put “self-esteem” in a wheelbarrow? No.

2) The Ongoing Test. If you say, “it is an ongoing ...” and fill in the blank with the word, does it make sense? “An ongoing relationship...” Yes, makes sense.

3) Here’s another test: See if you can make a picture of the word. You can make pictures of real nouns of “persons, places, and things.” It doesn’t work with a false noun. Can see a “relationship” or “motivation.” So ask some more questions until you can see what they are talking about.

Nominalizations have their place especially in doing trance inductions, but not for communicating with clarity and precision. Use them sparingly, if you use them too much your language will be fluffy and sloppy. That’s why we need to clean up our language of them.