What is Clean Language?

[phil]

What is Clean Language?

[JamesLawley]

David Grove’s Clean Language has three functions:

• To acknowledge the client’s experience exactly as they describe it.
• To orientate the client’s attention to an aspect of their perception.
• To send them on a quest for self-knowledge.

Clean Language is an extraordinary language because everything you, as the facilitator, say and do is intimately related to what the client says and does. The entire focus of Clean Language is an exploration of the client’s model of the world from their perspective, within their perceptual time and space, and using their words.

Of course Clean Language influences and directs attention -- all language does that. Clean Language does it ‘cleanly’ because it:

• Is sourced in the client’s vocabulary.
• Conforms to the logic and presuppositions of the client’s metaphors.
• Only introduces universal metaphors of form, space and time.
• Only uses nonverbals congruent with a client’s nonverbals.

Each time a clean question is asked it establishes a feedback loop between the client and their internal perceptions. Describing these perceptions encourages further information to emerge, which can also be described, which can be further explored, and so on. As this happens the clien becomes the viewer-hearer-feeler of the (symbolic) content of their perceptions.

Because of their universality, clean questions leave the client free to process, respond and answer with whatever information they consider relevant. There are nine clean questions which form the heart of Clean Language and are used 80% of the time. They can be used in a remarkably wide range of contexts:

BASIC DEVELOPING QUESTIONS

IDENTIFYING ATTRIBUTES

And what kind of [client’s words] is that [their words]?
And is there anything else about [client’s words]?
LOCATING

And where is [client’s words]?
And whereabouts [client’s words]?
CONVERTING TO METAPHOR

And that’s [client’s words] like what?
MOVING TIME QUESTIONS

FORWARD

And then what happens?
And what happens next?
BACK

And what happens just before [client’s words]?
And where does/could [client’s words] come from?
(There are a further 20 or so specialised clean questions used only when the client’s metaphors indicate that a question would be congruent with the logic of their metaphors.)

James Lawley

[Judy]

I'm trying to craft a 30-second answer to "What is Clean Language?"

Here's what I've got so far:

"Clean Language is a simple technique for questioning and listening without interpretation or suggestion. Used well, it can uncover information held just below the level of everyday consciousness. That's great for getting to the truth - in an interview, for example - and it can also be used as a very safe and effective way to facilitiate change with individuals and groups."

[Judy]

I was speaking to Diana Gibbs yesterday about this issue. Her "elevator pitch" includes the elegant phrase "making thinking visible".

[forumadmin]

Good stuff - and a good initiative for when someone says: "So what is this this Clean stuff anyway?".

Diana's phrase makes me think of finding a place for the non-visual sensory domains, adding the word 'tangible' somehow. ' ...making thinking visible, slippery concepts more tangible' - that kind of thing.

Phil

[zannierose]

I like the idea of crafting the 30 second phrase....I am new to the work , but will be experimenting with my own ways of communicating the essence as I understand it

Zannie