Speech Manipulation in Communication

Let’s start by clarifying the term “manipulation.” In most contexts, it means “skilled handling of objects,” like “The juggler manipulated knives.” But in psychology, it refers to “covert influence”—skillfully organized, but often seen as sneaky or inappropriate. In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), “manipulation” also often means covert, subconscious influence. However, here the connotation is more neutral or even positive: manipulation is simply an effective tool, and its value depends on context, goals, and outcomes.

In many interventions, manipulation is necessary because engaging with a client’s conscious mind is not only unhelpful but can even get in the way. Of course, manipulation can also be used in everyday communication to make it more effective or successful, depending on your needs.

So, manipulation: a scary, hidden influence. But it’s only hidden to those who don’t understand it. If the influence is obvious, it’s no longer hidden—and not really manipulation. That’s one more reason to learn about these techniques: if you don’t want someone to manipulate you unethically, you need to recognize it.

This article focuses only on verbal manipulation techniques, leaving nonverbal ones (like anchoring) for another time. So, what counts as verbal manipulation in communication?

• Presuppositions – the axioms of the created reality.
• Reframing – managing the meaning of statements.
• Belief Busting – speech patterns that break down beliefs.
• Verbal Paradoxes – ways to create confusion.
• Embedded Messages – hidden commands within text.

There are more, but these five are the most common.

The Importance of State

Before diving into structure and examples, it’s important to mention something not linguistic, but about your state of mind. Creativity, flow, and drive help you learn these patterns faster and better. It’s not just about memorizing lists—like nine types of presuppositions or fourteen types of belief busting—but about learning intuitively, focusing on the big picture. That’s the approach of this article: a general overview, not a deep structural analysis (though that’s a structure in itself).

Internal Reality

You see a piece of an image and fill in the rest. To recognize a person, a photo of just their face is enough; to identify a leopard, just a part of its muzzle. That’s just one word. What about imagining a whole situation?

We build our understanding from fragments of information. To grasp the meaning of a photo, you need to know what the UK is, who its queen is, what she usually rides, and so on. We all live in an illusory world—even sensory information is processed by the brain, about 99.9% of it.

When we communicate with words, we don’t even transmit that 0.1%—just references to previous experience. Think of a “dog”—everyone imagines a dog, but for some it’s a huge Great Dane, for others a dachshund puppy, or just an abstract mutt. The same goes for situations: “The husband was late for dinner”—everyone imagines something different, from a joke (“the wife has a lover”) to a tragedy (“the wife thought he was with a mistress and shot him when he came home”).

When we communicate, we create a reality. In this reality, the Queen of England exists if we talk about her, a leopard exists if we talk about leopards, or “successful behavior” exists if we talk about problem-solving. This reality may or may not match the listener’s mental map. If there’s a mismatch, what will the person do? Call you a liar, think about it, or adjust their own map? If you want to influence them, your proposed reality must be more compelling. But how?

For example, I claim that a client “can handle the problem,” but the client isn’t sure. I can appeal to their conscious mind with logical arguments, try to motivate them, or I can address their unconscious—which is often much more effective. The unconscious just acts—the person simply comes, simply handles the situation, simply buys what they need.

All verbal manipulation techniques are ways to influence the unconscious. But the conscious mind stands guard, critically checking incoming information. To instruct the unconscious, you need to “turn off” the conscious mind—distract it, lower its criticality, “put it to sleep.”

One well-known way to lower criticality is rapport. Almost all verbal influence techniques work only in a state of rapport. That’s what sets them apart from, say, anchoring techniques. Other methods include pattern interruption or splitting information between the conscious and unconscious—each manipulation type uses its own approach.

One more thing: you can only change a person in a direction they’re ready to go. The change must align with their values. Pure technique without values doesn’t work. Of course, values can be interpreted in many ways.

Presuppositions

Presuppositions are the axioms of the reality created by speech. For the sentence, “The Queen of England rode the train today,” the queen, England, and trains must exist. Otherwise, the sentence is meaningless. So, the existence of the queen, England, and trains are presupposed.

To find a presupposition, put a negation in front of the sentence—whatever remains unchanged is the presupposition.

• The Queen of England rode the train today.
• The Queen of England did not ride the train today—the queen, England, and the train remain.
• Say how much you love me.
• Don’t say how much you love me—the strong love remains.
• When you leave the room, you’ll remember me.
• If you don’t leave the room, you’ll remember me—“you’ll remember me” remains, as do the room, you, and me.

How It Works

Presuppositions create a reality where only the desired choices exist.

• “Do you realize you can handle this situation?”—in this reality, the person is capable, no matter what the situation is.
• “Will you come by tomorrow morning or after lunch?”—in this reality, the person will come by, with a choice of time.

Presuppositions distract the conscious mind, which is procedural and straightforward, using questions, choices, and sequential instructions.

• “How interested are you in reading this article?”
• “You can read the article first and then practice presuppositions, or practice as you read.”

But these tricks don’t work well on people who are more aware or don’t fall for such things. I ask my five-year-old son:

• “Anton, will you brush your teeth before or after the cartoon?”
• “No,” he answers—completely missing the intended choice.

But as he got older, he started falling for similar constructions—though not all of them.

Presuppositions work well, but they need to be used correctly. If your entire speech is made up of obvious presuppositions, listeners may get annoyed. Poor nonverbal delivery—tension, nervousness, etc.—also makes listeners tense and brings their conscious mind to the forefront:

• “Would you like to pay by card or cash?”
• “I wasn’t planning to buy anything at all.”

So, stay calm, maintain rapport, and respect your conversation partner. If a presupposition clashes too much with their intentions—if they’re not planning to buy right now—don’t force that reality. Be gentler:

• “I see you’ve been looking at sofas for a while, and this one caught your eye. Maybe you should take another look and make a final decision.”

Proper use of presuppositions is the foundation of effective NLP communication. Presuppositions define the communicative reality: if you control them, reality goes as planned; if not, it may not. Sometimes, limiting beliefs sneak in, creating a less-than-ideal reality:

• “Only a loser like me could do that!”
• “When you realize you don’t like me, just say so.”

Why should someone believe in a new, bright, beautiful, “correct” reality if you don’t believe it yourself? These are your own limitations coming out in your speech. Effectiveness starts with yourself, your goals, and your understanding of consequences. If someone says you can just learn a couple of tricks and everything will work out—“Just say ‘your place or mine?’ and she’s yours”—they’re lying. Techniques only work if everything else is in place. And everything else is you. If you’re not effective, how can your communication be?

But we know anyone can improve themselves. Strangely enough, speech manipulation is one tool for this. You can control your own speech and, through it, yourself. Most communication problems come not from lack of technique, but from personal limitations. Verbal manipulation techniques help you overcome those.

Conversational Reframing and Belief Busting

The next widely used pattern is conversational reframing—playing with meaning. People react not to the situation itself, but to the meaning they assign to it.

• “I’m not mean, I’m just honest.”
• “A hunger for knowledge is an important skill. If you know what I mean.”

You can change meaning directly—substituting one meaning for another (impulsive = passionate, rude = real man, cautious = coward)—or by changing what the person considers the situation or context. Anger is usually bad, but in sports, it can be useful. That’s the structure: reframing meaning and context. Or you can just look for a different perspective, boldly shifting the frame.

• “My husband cheated on me.”
• “With your best friend?”
• “No, of course not!”
• “With your sister?”
• “No!”
• “What a delicate man.”

Good reframing requires more creativity and drive than structural knowledge or memorized scripts. Reframing should create an “aha!” moment, turning the person in a new direction:

• “Nobody loves me.”
• “You must be a big shot if six billion people don’t love you!”

You can find plenty of arguments “for” and “against” any statement, but you need the one that hits home—and deliver it in a way that resonates. We’re not working with the conscious mind (which wants logical arguments), but with the unconscious, which is better surprised.

• “I eat too much.”
• “You know, there are places where you won’t get to eat that much. Like prison. In our country, it’s easy to get sent to that ‘resort.’”

Reframing doesn’t have to be smart or correct—it has to be unexpected. In a way, it’s a kind of pattern interruption, breaking limitations.

• “Men don’t like me.”
• “That’s a great affirmation. Keep believing it and you’ll definitely avoid close relationships.”

When you apply reframing to beliefs, you get belief busting. The rules are the same. Some belief busting changes the context of a belief, others change its meaning. That’s usually enough to change a belief. You can move it to a different situation (context reframing) or tweak its internal meaning. Sure, you can list all 14 types, but we’re talking about drive and the big picture. Trust your intuition. Just change your perspective, think outside the box. This takes constant practice—on yourself. To create good reframes and belief busting, you need to be flexible. Again, it starts with you.

One more thing: for belief busting to work, it must connect to what matters to the person.

• “You shouldn’t make decisions hastily.”
• “I think it’s more important to focus on making the right decision than on how quickly you make it.”

This only works if “the right decision” is important to the person. If not, it falls flat.

Verbal Paradoxes

Another way to bypass the conscious mind is to break the pattern—with a phrase that throws the listener into a trance. Deeply. The person is conscious, but not really “there.”

Verbal paradoxes are based on one simple principle: things you can say but can’t imagine—black whiteness, free unfreedom, don’t think about your thinking, angry kindness. The phrases sound linguistically correct, but the reality doesn’t “add up.” The person not only goes into a trance but also steps outside their usual thinking. Or vice versa: stepping outside their usual thinking puts them in a trance. The further out, the deeper the trance.

Verbal paradoxes are just one way to break habitual thinking and expand consciousness—without strong drugs. They help break old beliefs and form new ones. This is “changing stability,” or “stable change.”

You’ve probably encountered verbal paradoxes—they’re common in both Western and Eastern cultures. For example, “oxymoron”—a combination of contradictory words (“jumbo shrimp,” “deafening silence”)—is a classic verbal paradox. Many are so common they’re no longer seen as paradoxes:

• “Courageous woman.”
• “I’ll probably definitely come.”
• “Living corpse.”
• “Complete emptiness.”

Movie titles also use them: “True Lies,” “Ordinary Miracle,” “Eyes Wide Shut.”

In Eastern culture, verbal paradoxes appear in Sufi stories and Zen koans: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” And in folk tales worldwide: “You must come neither naked nor dressed, on foot but not on the ground, not barefoot but not shod…”

The presence of verbal paradoxes in almost every culture shows they’re useful—they help us move beyond binary thinking and expand consciousness, all without mind-altering substances.

How to Create Verbal Paradoxes

Let’s break my rule and give some structure. To create verbal paradoxes, the easiest way is to combine opposites: black and white, easy and hard, quiet and loud, high and low, good and evil—oxymorons.

• “Do you love him as much as you hate him?”
• “The truth of this lie is that…”
• “Stop being so loudly silent!”
• “It’s not only bad, but also good.”

Or just use “not”:

• “Do you really understand what you don’t understand?”
• “Your unkindness is probably kinder than someone else’s kindness.”

You can also separate similar concepts:

• “Do you really know what you know?”
• “The more you don’t understand, the less you don’t understand.”
• “It’s not only forbidden, but also not allowed.”
• “A joke doesn’t have to be funny.”

Or use double negatives:

• “Are you really not sure about what you’re not sure about?”
• “Don’t think about what you’re not thinking about.”

Another option is to say something unimaginable—let’s call it sensory impossibility: “the sound of one hand clapping,” “see the invisible,” “black light.”

• “The elevator started going up… down.”
• “Imagine the unimaginable…”
• “It was such a triangular sound…”

Imagination varies—some can picture green warmth, others only blue.

Finally, you can break expectations—twist proverbs or familiar phrases (“the deeper into the woods, the thicker the partisans”), or disrupt linguistic patterns (“it’s not only, but also how much”).

• “We spent the whole Japanese war… in a sushi bar.”
• “A fat penguin hides shyly, a slim one pulls out boldly.”
• “The more you think, the more you think.”
• “Am I right, or am I right?”

Embedded Messages

And now, the jewel of linguistic influence—what Milton Erickson called his main discovery: embedded messages. It’s simple: if you highlight certain words in a message so they form a meaningful phrase, that phrase goes straight to the unconscious as a command.

Take the phrase “You are confident,” and insert it into someone’s monologue:

• “You are now thinking about whether I am confident in my success? Yes, I am. I promised myself that I could do it.”

You can highlight words with intonation, gestures, bold or different font—whatever works. Embedded messages are not just a pattern, but a whole science. It’s easy, but takes a little practice. But it works.

Come up with a command and insert it into your text. You can use a metaphor, a story, or even a newspaper article and practice marking it up to get the message you want.

• “You like me.”
• “I want to tell you something. I know you like France—tell me about it.”

Note that the command phrase doesn’t have to be perfectly grammatical—the unconscious will still get the message.

Conclusion

True creativity and flow, managing your own reality. If you can influence the reality of others, you can certainly handle your own. Go for it!