Lost Performative

Lost Performative are Evaluative statements. The person making the evaluation is missing (lost) from the sentence is called Lost Performative. Lost Performatives can be a very effective way of delivering presuppositions. We will work this out in our example section.

Some examples of Lost Performative

Here are some examples of Lost Performative: 1. “It’s obvious that everyone knows what they’re doing.” (implies that the speaker believes everyone should know what they’re doing) 2. “It’s been said that the company has some issues.” (implies that someone or a group of people have stated that the company has issues) 3. “It’s important to always be honest.” (implies that honesty is a desirable trait, without stating who considers it important) 4. “It’s obvious that success is the result of hard work.” (implies that success is desirable and hard work is the way to achieve it, without stating who considers it obvious)

And of course an Exercise with Lost Performative

Have fun reading our articles about Semantic Ill-Formdness, the Inverse of the Meta Model and the NLP Milton Model and the exercises we provide you here online.

Last but not Least

Remember, to increase your efficiency as a NLP Practitioner, know your positive intention for the message you want to convey, build rapport and pay attention on what and how you use language. Leave people and business in a better place that where you found them, every day!

About Mind Tools

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