LINGUIST List 3.668

Fri 04 Sep 1992

Qs: Not in German, Elicitation, NLP, French

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. David W. Talmage, NOT again, in German
2. , Elicitation Techniques
3. Ron Smyth, NLP
4. "Wayles Browne, Cornell U.", French publication query

Sorry to bring up the <statement>-NOT question again, but I'm curious.
My friend saw Mozart's "Magic Flute" at Wolf Trap recently. She said
there is a scene with three veiled women. Someone says, in German, the
language of that opera, "They're veiled because they are very beautiful.
NOT."

We talked about NOT as an English phenomenon. Who can tell me if it's
common in German? Was that part of Mozart's original libretto or did
the director here take liberties?

David W. Talmage (talmageluvthang.aquin.ori-cal.com)
"Once more. This is deixis. This is your brain on deixis. Any questions?"

I would be indebted for suggestions about recent works, suited for classroom
use, to teach field methods and informant elicitation techniques to
linguistics and anthropology students.
Mimi Klaiman
English & Linguistics
Indiana-Purdue U., Ft. Wayne
klaimanipfwcvax.bitnet

An acquaintance of mine, an M.D., has spent three heady months studying
Neurolinguistic Programming and plans to use it as a form of psychotherapy
in his family practice (he has no psychology practice; apparently there are
no statutory restrictions on who may practice psychotherapy). Now over the
years I have had many, many inquiries about NLP, but I have had little to
say, except that it is NOT 'neurolinguistics' as we know it. (I have also had
major battles with bookstores -- trying to get 'Frogs into Princes' out of
the linguistics section and into the pop psychology section). Today I glanced
through his numerous books, checking the bibliographies for clinical research
that shows the efficacy of NLP as a therapeutic model and for experimental
work to support its major tenets. There is nothing cited in any of these
books (which all seem to be published by the same obscure publishers).

As I understand it, the major tenet of NLP is that people use different
representational systems (something like cognitive styles) to process
 information
, and that a therapist should be sensitive to this and match the client's
style. There are two main sources of information: eye movements and
lexical choices. The direction in which the eyes move during speech or
thought is supposed to indicate the processing modality (visual, emotional,
verbal, auditory...), as is the choice of lexical items (I *feel* that you're
right vs. I *see* your point vs. I *hear* where you're coming from...).

My reaction to all of this is one of skepticism. Can anyone fill me in on
the scientific basis for the eye movement claims? Do you know of any
work on the effectiveness of matching your lexical choices to that of your
interlocutor? Is there any clinical or experimental work on this that might
put the NLP claims into perspective? Is this a big money-making organization?
Do clinical psychologists view NLP as a valid therapy (e.g., is it taught
in professional programmes at universities?)?

Please send your comments to me at
smythlake.scar.utoronto.ca

I will summarize for the list.

A colleague is seeking an article which was cited as follows:
Leclere, Christian. "Les mots ont-ils une grammaire?" Le Francais
dans le monde, v.supp. (special issue??) Feb-Mar 1989, pages 40-49.
Our library is unable to track this down--can LINGUIST readers working
on French help? Please get in touch with Wayles Browne, jn5jcornella.bitnet
or jn5jcornella.cit.cornell.edu -- Thank you in advance.