Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees, CLEAN LANGUAGE Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds, 2008.
You like stories and metaphors? You like linguistics? You will like this book! Everything simply start with a story… the story of our lives, the story of our friends and loved ones, the story of our world. Stories are indeed part of our everyday life, simply by the fact of using language and words to describe what is really happening. Following the work of David Grove, the creator of clean language, the authors, Wendy and Judy, take us in an exploration of our own metaphors, introducing steps by steps the famous Clean Language questions. Metaphors are everywhere! and this book is about realizing it and learning to take advantages of all these spontaneous metaphors we create without thinking. Mixing exercises, examples and presentation, the book is easy to read, well balanced and definitely engaging. Once finished we simply want to learn more about Clean Language and experiment. We are just seduced by the magic of metaphors and as an NLP practitioner I have to admit I keep coming to those questions and metaphors at nearly every session. With chapter 10, you will even defined your own metaphors as your reading goes along, an activity not to be missed, while chapter 11 and 12 prepare you to work with the client. The end of the book, built as a set of ‘what if’ sections nicely engage the reader to think further.
The basic Clean Language questions as described in the book, and developed by David Grove (where X and Y stands for the person’s words or non-verbal signals):
Developing questions: (And) What kind of X is that X? (And) is there anything else about X? (And) where is X? or (And) whereabouts is X? (And) that’s X is like what? (And) is there a relationship between X and Y? (And) when X, what happens to Y?
Sequence and source questions: (And) then what happens? or (And) what happens next? (And) what happens just before X? (And) where could X come from?
Intentions questions: (And) what would X like to have happen? (And) what needs to happen for X? (And) can X (happen)?
You’re hooked on Clean Language? Go and enjoy their web space http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/.
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