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 © 1980 by Suzette Haden Elgin
First published in the USA in 1980 by Prentice-Hall, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form or by any means without permission in writing
from the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 80-16184

This edition published by Dorset Press,

a division of Marboro Books Corp.,
by arrangement with Suzette Haden Elgin.

ISBN 0-88029-030-7
(formerly 0-13-351080-8)

Printed in the United States of America

19 18 17 16
 Contents

Introduction
The Four Basic
Principles, 1
2
The Five Satir
Modes, 7
3
Propositions of Power
The Verbal Violence
Octagon, 15
V
 Contents

4
Section A Attacks
If You Really ... (I), 27
5
Section B Attacks
If You
Really ... (II), 47
6
Section C Attacks
Don’t You Even
Care ..., 65
7
Section D Attacks
Even You
Should . .. , 86
8
Section E Attacks
Everyone Understands
Why You..., 107
9
Section F Attacks
A Person Who — , 128
Vi
 Contents

10
Section G Attacks
Why Don’t You
Ever . .., 149

111
Section H Attacks
Some X’s
Would . .., 170

12
Supplementary Techniques 1
Body Language, 192

13
Supplementary Techniques II
Being Charismatic, 212

14
Verbal Interaction
Power Networks, 235

15
Special Chapter
College Students, 247
vii
 Contents

16
Special Chapter
For Men, 266
17
Special Chapter
For Women, 278

18
Conclusion
Emergency
Techniques, 295
Index, 307

viii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My grateful thanks go to Virginia Satir, to John Grind­

er, to Richard Bandler, and to the many other scholars and
researchers whose work laid the foundations upon which
mine is based; and to the many people who have offered
comments and suggestions in my classes and workshops
over die years. It would also be appropriate for me to give
a large measure of credit at this point to those individuals
who have offered me the opportunity to hone my personal
skills in verbal self-defense.

Suzette Haden Elgin

lx
 Introduction

The Four
Basic
Principles

1
For every person in this society who is suffering physical
abuse, there are hundreds suffering the effects of verbal
violence. For every person who just got a fist in the face,
there are hundreds who just took a verbal blow to the gut.
And there are major differences between these two kinds
of injury.
The physical attack is at least obvious and unmistak­
able; when someone slugs you physically, you can call the
police. The physical attack hurts horribly and leaves a
mark, but it is usually over fast, and the mark is evidence
in your favor and against your attacker.
Verbal violence is a very different matter. Except in
1
 The Four Basic Principles

rare cases—for example, when someone lies about you

publicly before witnesses and can be charged with slan­
der—there is no agency that you can call for help. The
pain of verbal abuse goes deep into die sell and festers
there, but because nothing shows on die surface, it will
not win you even sympathy, much less actual assistance.
Worst of all, verbal violence all too often goes unrec­
ognized, except at a level that you cannot even understand
yourself. You know that you are suffering, and you vaguely
know where die pain is coming from; but because the
aggression is so well hidden, you are likely to blame
yourself instead of die aggressor, and to add to your own
misery, like this:

“I can’t understand why I feel so stupid when I’m with

her. She’s always so considerate and she’s such a nice
person! There must be something the matter with me.”

There probably is something the matter with you, yes.

Your problem is that you are the victim of verbal violence
and you don’t have the least idea how to defend yourself
against it. When someone looks you right in the eye and
says, “You’re an idiot!” you know that’s verbal abuse and
you probably have ways of dealing with it. But when
someone smiles at you and says, “Even you should be able
to understand why that won’t work!” it’s not so easy—
especially if a few “sweethearts” or “old pals” or “dar­
lings” are scattered around to confuse you.
We get little or no training in verbal self-defense.
Once upon a time anyone who pretended to an education
learned it. It was called rhetoric, and if we really went
back to the “basics,” we would have to put it back in our
curriculum. (Today a “rhetoric class” usually means a
course in writing compositions.) Informal training outside
the school system is given to most men, but not in ade-

2
 The Four Basic Principles

quate measure; women receive no instruction at all, formal

or informal. This is a gap that needs filling.

This book is a manual to teach you verbal judo. Unlike

a number of books now available, it is not intended to
train you to attack others or to be violent yourself. Instead
you will learn how to use your opponent’s strength and
momentum as tools for your own defense. You will learn
to head off verbal confrontation so skillfully that it rarely
happens, and to do so with honor. The person with a black
belt in a martial art is not likely to be a violent person.
Knowing that you are fully capable not only of defending
yourself adequately but also of inflicting harm on others
makes you a very careful person. Far more careful than
you would be if you reacted to every threatening situation
with an untrained panic response.
There are four basic principles of verbal self-defense
that you must master.

FIRST PRINCIPLE

Know that you are under attack.

You must be able to recognize a situation in which
you are in danger or actually under attack. If you contin­
ually assume that the reason you come out of conversations
feeling somehow hurt and depressed is that you are “ov­
ersensitive” or “paranoid” or “childish,” you will not
recognize danger when it exists. If you can always be
taken by surprise because you have no idea what verbal
aggression is or how to spot it, you are an ideal target. The
vast majority of verbal attacks will not even take place if
you are trained in verbal self-defense.
Just as the hoodlum planning a mugging is likely to
back off and change plans at the discovery that the victim

3
 The Four Basic Principles

is not helpless, so will the verbal mugger look for someone

who is not going to be able or willing to fight back. You
must learn to recognize the signs of verbal violence. You
must become so aware of them that you can sense the most
subtle indications, often before any words are spoken
aloud.

SECOND PRINCIPLE

Know what kind of attack you are facing.

You must learn to judge and recognize your oppo­
nent’s weapon(s), strength, and skill. Obvious character­
istics—such as the loudness of someone’s voice or an
unpleasant facial expression or the use of openly insulting
(or openly flattering!) words—are not reliable indicators
of these things. Often a reliance on the “obvious” signs
will mislead you completely and leave you defenseless.

THIRD PRINCIPLE

Know how to make your defense fit the attack.

The response you make must match your opponent’s
move. You must choose an appropriate response and an
appropriate level of intensity. Not only is there no need
for you to waste your energy on a weak opponent with
little skill, it is unethical and cowardly for you to do so.
You don’t go after bunny rabbits with an elephant gun.
And just as it would be foolish to choose a sword as a
weapon against someone armed with a machine gun, the
verbal weapon should be chosen to fit the occasion. The
phrase “Enough is enough” is not a cliche in the art of
verbal self-defense. On the contrary, there is no excuse
for anything more than just exactly enough.

4
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE

Know how to follow through.

You must be able to carry out your response once you
have chosen it. For many people, and perhaps especially
for women, this may be the most difficult part of verbal
self-defense. It is a source of astonishment to many a
policeman to find that the victim of a physical assault in a
marriage is a woman who is actually larger and stronger
than the man. Nevertheless, there are strong cultural
pressures against a woman’s using violence at all. Many
women cannot bring themselves to do it, even when it is
entirely justified. The same problem exists when your
opponent is, in physical terms, smaller or weaker than you
are, no matter what your sex. We have all been taught to
“pick on somebody our own size.” In verbal confrontations
it may be difficult to remember that size has nothing
whatever to do with strength and that some of the most
skilled of verbal bullies are only six years old.
It will help if you keep in mind that verbal self­
defense is a gentle art. It is a way of preventing violence.
When a parent picks up a small child who is just about to
whack a playmate over the head with a toy truck, that act
is interfering with the child’s freedom and is, in a formal
sense, a kind of violence. (Especially if, as is often tme,
the child must be physically restrained from carrying out
his or her plans.) Verbal self-defense is like that; except in
the most extreme cases, if skillfully used, it is a nonviolent
activity and a way of keeping the peace without resorting
to force.
If the Fourth Principle is a problem for you, you had
better be prepared to feel and to work through a certain
amount of guilt. You will be attacked; you will use the
techniques in this book to defend yourself against your
attacker; and then you will feel guilty. Later we will take

5
 FOURTH PRINCIPLE

Know how to follow through.

You must be able to carry out your response once you
have chosen it. For many people, and perhaps especially
for women, this may be the most difficult part of verbal
self-defense. It is a source of astonishment to many a
policeman to find that the victim of a physical assault in a
marriage is a woman who is actually larger and stronger
than the man. Nevertheless, there are strong cultural
pressures against a woman’s using violence at all. Many
women cannot bring themselves to do it, even when it is
entirely justified. The same problem exists when your
opponent is, in physical terms, smaller or weaker than you
are, no matter what your sex. We have all been taught to
“pick on somebody our own size.” In verbal confrontations
it may be difficult to remember that size has nothing
whatever to do with strength and that some of the most
skilled of verbal bullies are only six years old.
It will help if you keep in mind that verbal self­
defense is a gentle art. It is a way of preventing violence.
When a parent picks up a small child who is just about to
whack a playmate over the head with a toy truck, that act
is interfering with the child’s freedom and is, in a formal
sense, a kind of violence. (Especially if, as is often true,
the child must be physically restrained from carrying out
his or her plans.) Verbal self-defense is like that; except in
the most extreme cases, if skillfully used, it is a nonviolent
activity and a way of keeping the peace without resorting
to force.
If the Fourth Principle is a problem for you, you had
better be prepared to feel and to work through a certain
amount of guilt. You will be attacked; you will use the
techniques in this book to defend yourself against your
attacker; and then you will feel guilty. Later we will take

5
 The Four Basic Principles

up ways of handling this, but for now just accept the fact
that it will happen. Healthy people don t enjoy causing
other people pain, even when it is well and thoroughly
deserved,

6
 The Five
Satir
Wtiodles

2
In order to learn any new skill you need a set of words, a
vocabulary for discussing it. In verbal self-defense much
of that vocabulary has already been provided in a different
context and can now be adapted to our use.
Virginia Satir is one of the foremost therapists in the
United States and is famous all over the world for her
work in family and other types of therapy. In her books
she has developed a set of terms for common verbal
behavior patterns. There are five such patterns in her

7
 The Five Satir Modes

system; we will be calling them the Satir Modes.* This

book is not about therapy, but the terms are just what we
need to serve as our working vocabulary. They are:

THE PLACATER
The Placater is frightened that other people will become
angry, go away, and never come back again. The Placater
doesn’t dare admit this, however. Typical Placater speech:

• “Oh, you know me—I don’t care!”

• “Whatever anybody else wants to do is fine with me.”
• “Whatever you say, darling; I don’t mind.”
• “Oh, nothing bothers me! Do whatever you like.”
• "What do I want to do? Oh, I don’t know—what would you
like to do?”

Caution: It often happens in my work that everyone

assumes all Placaters are female. (The women present are
as given to this as the men.) It isn’t so; try listening
carefully to some men and you’ll find that out in a hurry.
Few conversations are as dead-end and hopeless as
two Placaters trying to reach a decision, with a dialogue
like this one:

A: Where shall we go for dinner?

B: I don’t know. Where would you like to go?
A: Oh, you pick. You know me, I don’t care where we go.
B: No, really, you decide!
A: But it doesn’t matter to me at all!
B: It doesn’t matter to me, either, you know that.

•The Satir Modes were furtlther developed by John Grinder and Richard Randler,
ipists, as well as by the associates who have joined them as
who are also theraj
igressed. They then analyzed the modes for use in various kinds
their work prof
of therapy. If you
j are interested in exploring this, please refer to the list of
references and suggesjsted readings.

8
 The Five Saiir Modes

A: Seriously, I’d much much rather you ...

(and so on forever)

Whenever you hear anyone referred to as “Good Old” So-

and-So, there is at least a fifty-fifty chance that Good Old
X is a Placater.

THE BLAMER
The Blamer feels that nobody cares about him or her. that
there is no respect or affection for him, and that people are
all indifferent to his needs and feelings. The Blamer reacts
to this with a verbal behavior pattern intended to demon­
strate that he or she is in charge, is the boss, is the one
with power. Typical Blamer speech:

• “You never consider my feelings.”

• “Nobody around here ever pays any attention to me.
• “Do you always have to put yourself first?”
• “Why don’t you ever think about what I might want? I’ve
had all of this I’m going to take!”
• “Why do you always insist on having your own way, no
matter how much it hurts other people?”

When two Blamers talk to each other, the conversation

is not a dead end, as it is with two Placaters. It is a broad
and rapid road to a screaming match, nasty in every way.

THE COMPUTER
The Computer is terrified that someone will find out what
his or her feelings are. If possible, the Computer will give
the impression that he has no feelings. Star Trek’s Mr.
Spock was—except for the troublesome human side of him
that made him so interesting—an excellent example of a
Computer. Computers talk like this:

• “There is undoubtedly a simple solution to the problem.”

• “It’s obvious that no real difficulty exists here.”
9
 The Rue Satir Modes

• “No rational person would be alarmed by this crisis.

• "Clearly the advantages of this activity have been exagger-
ated.”
• “Preferences of the kind you describe are rather common
in this area.”

Computers work hard at never saying “I” unless they

qualify it heavily, as in “I suppose it is at least possible
that..And they use an extraordinarily limited set of
facial expressions and body positions.

THE DISTRACTER
The Distracter is a tricky one to keep up with, because he
or she does not hold to any of the previous patterns.
Instead, the Distracter cycles rapidly among the other
patterns, continually shifting Satir Modes. The underlying
feeling of the Distracter is panic: “I don’t know what on
earth to say, but I’ve got to say SOMETHING, and the quicker
the better!” The surface behavior will be a chaotic mix.

THE LEVELER
The Leveler is the most contradictory type of all—either
the easiest or the most difficult to handle. The Leveler
does just what Dr. Satir’s term implies; this person levels
with you. When the Leveler is genuine, there is nothing
simpler to deal with—just level back. A phony Leveler,
however, is more dangerous than all the other categories
combined, and very hard to spot. If we assume that we are
discussing the genuine article, what the Leveler says is
what the Leveler feels.

If we had five terrified people trapped in an elevator

that had stopped between floors, one from each of the
Satir Modes, their remarks as the elevator hung there
would be something like this:
10
 The Five Satir Modes

Placater: Oh, I hope I didn’t do anything to cause this.

I sure didn’t mean to!
Blamer: Which one of you idiots was fooling around
with the buttons?
Computer: There is undoubtedly some perfectly simple
reason why this elevator isn't moving. Certain­
ly there is no cause whatever for alarm.
Distracter: Did one of you hit the Stop button? Oh, I
didn’t mean that; of course none of you would
do anything like that! It is, however, extremely
easy to do that sort of thing by accident. Why
do things like this only happen to me?
Leveler: Personally, I’m seared.

You will notice one thing about the descriptions of

these verbal behavior patterns. In every one of them,
except for the Leveler, there is a strong clash between the
inner feelings and the outer verba) behavior. When some­
one is locked into one of these modes and cannot com­
municate effectively in any other way, he or she may be
in emotional difficulty—again, except for the Leveler. The
Leveler is not having trouble communicating.
Although most people seem to have a preferred Satir
Mode under stress, they are not confined to it. And they
can choose, either deliberately or unconsciously, to use
any one of the modes at will, as the situation demands. In
this case—that is, when the communicator is in control of
the pattern used—the classic mismatch between inside
and outside may not exist at all. A person may decide to
use Computer Mode because he or she is in a committee
meeting and it seems appropriate; the choice does not
necessarily indicate that such a person is afraid others will
suspect his or her underlying emotions. A parent who
feels perfectly secure in a position of dominance over a
child may choose Blamer Mode deliberately as a way of
disciplining that child.
11
 The Five Satir Modes

In this book we will not be concerned with the

situation in which an individual has no choice as to which
mode will be used. That is properly left to the expert
therapist. We can, however, adapt the category names to
the art of verbal self-defense, since they appear to repre­
sent the most common types of verbal aggression. Like the
sword, the gun, the stick, and the hatpin, the Satir Modes
are both weapons of verbal conflict and mechanisms lor
forestalling such conflict. You must learn to recognize
them and to use them with confidence and skill.
It’s important for you to remember that a true Leveler
is not likely to be attacking you, in spite of the surface
indicators. For example:

Leveler: You know, you drive me crazy tapping your ball­

point pen on the desk like that. It really bothers
me.

This is not an attack, it’s a simple statement of fact and an

invitation for an equally level response. For example:

You: I know what you mean. It woidd drive me crazy,

too. What’s even worse is somebody who whistles
under his breath all the time.
Leveler: Right. That's worse. I’d just as soon you didn’t do
either one.
You: I’ll try. Okay?
Leveler: Fair enough.

That is not fighting, it’s negotiation. It’s very easy to turn

it into a fight, however. One of the ironies of verbal
interaction is that so many people mistake the statements
of the Leveler for verbal violence and never suspect that
the nice guy (or the nice lady) down the hall is the one
who is really giving them a hard time.
Keep the Satir Modes in mind as we go along; they

12
 The Five Satir Modes

are your basic inventory of stances for self-defense. Learn

to spot them when they are coming at you; learn to use
them consciously when they are needed and appropriate.
In an emergency, when you have no time to think or
when you have not had sufficient training or practice to be
sure of what you are doing, your safest “guess” stance is
always Computer Mode. Assume that stance and maintain
it until you have a good reason to change. Here is a
preliminary summary of die characteristics of Computer
Mode; we’ll return to them again throughout the book.

THE COMPUTER ...

• is never angry or emotional or hurried or upset.
• never talks in the first person singular (“I,” “me,” “my,”
“mine,” “myself”) without a heavy artillery of modifying
sequences.
• always talks in abstractions and generalities.
• says, “It is that. ..for example, “It is obvious
that there is no cause for alarm.”
• says, “One would ..or “Any reasonable person would ...”
• always looks absolutely calm and relaxed.
• usually takes a single physical position early in the con­
versation and maintains it from then on.
• never commits himself or herself to anything.

If you don’t know what to do, the rule is always: SWITCH

TO COMPUTER MODE and STAY there. There is no safer
stance.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED

READINGS

Grinder, John, and Richard Bandler. The Structure of

Magic:!I. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books,

13
 The Rue Satir Modes

Inc., 1976. (For a discussion of the Satir Modes in therapy,

see pp. 47-53.)
Satir, Virginia. Conjoint Family Therapy. Palo Alto, Calif.:
Science and Behavior Books, Inc., 1964.
. Peoplemaking. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior
Books, Inc., 1972.

14
 Propositions of Power

The Verbal
Violence
Octagon

3
Another term that is needed in verbal self-defense is the
“presupposition.” It is a term used in a number of different
ways by scholars in various fields. So that there will be no
confusion, I am going to define it for this book as follows:

A presupposition is something that a native speaker of a

language knows is part of the meaning of a sequence of
that language, even if it is not overtly present in the
sequence.

For instance, every native speaker of English knows

that the utterance “Even Bill could get an A in that class”
15
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

means (a) tliat Bill is no great shakes as a student; and (b)

that the class is not difficult in any way. But notice that
neither one of those pieces of information is present in
the surface structure of the sentence, in its overt wording.
That is, the sentence does not read, “Even Bill, who is
certainly no great shakes as a student, could get an A in
that class, which is not difficult in any way.” Nevertheless,
that is what it means. The two extra pieces are said to be
part of the presuppositions of the utterance.
A major reason why people do not realize that verbal
violence is being used against them is that they have
never been taught about presuppositions. They know
about them, of course, below the level of conscious aware­
ness. That’s why they feel hurt or insulted in response to
something that sounds, on the surface, like a nice thing to
say. But they have never been taught to watch out for
presuppositions, or to pay attention to them instead of the
words that form the surface sequence. As a result, they
cannot express why they feel hurt or insulted.
The illustration in figure 3-1 is a training device that
we will be using in this book to make you aware of
presuppositions. Although there are many other patterns
of verbal violence, the eight shown on the Octagon are
the most basic and the most common. In each section of
the Octagon there is an utterance pattern in which a
particular message can be hidden away as i\ presupposition
of that utterance.
In this chapter we will go quickly through all eight
sections of the Octagon; then, in the chapters following,
we will take up each section in detail and consider strat­
egies for dealing with it
The most important principle at this stage of your
training is to remember always to respond to the presup­
position, never to the sequence it is hidden in. The steps
of your strategy go like this:

16
 The Verbal Violence Octagon
Propositions of Power

//
< /• 8 w
'c>

■ Ktxf'
//

© Suzctte Haden Elgin 1978

Figure 3—1

1. Identify the Satir Mode being used.

2. Identify the presupposition(s) of the sequence.
3. Respond in Computer Mode, with a neutral request for
information about the presupposition or a remark about the
presupposition.
4. Maintain Computer Mode.

Now let’s go around the Verbal Violence Octagon briefly,

one section at a time, with examples of typical utterances
and their relevant presuppositions.

17
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

SECTION A:
• “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t go bowling.”
Presupposition:
“You don’t really love me.”
• “If you really wanted to lose weight, you wouldn’t eat so
much.”
Presupposition:
“You don’t really want to lose weight.”
• “If you really wanted to be promoted, wu wouldn’t go to
lunch with a person like that.”
Presupposi tion:
“You don’t really want to be promoted.”
• “If you really wanted to pass this course, you’d pay atten­
tion to my lectures.”
Pre.ntpposi t io n:
“You don’t really want to pass this course.”

All of these utterances are simply disguised Blamer

Mode sentences. It is a little more subtle to say If you
really loved me, you wouldn’t go bowling,” rather than
“You don’t care anything about me, and the way I can tell
is because you go bowling,” but the meaning is the same.
In a Section A the Hat Blamer Mode accusation is hidden
away as the presupposition.

SECTION B:
• “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t want to go bowling.”
Presuppositions:
“You don’t really love me.”
“You have the power to control your feelings if you
want to.”

Section B’s are like a broadax dipped in poison. They

are Section A attacks escalated to one more level of
viciousness and are of course in Blamer Mode.
In the example sentence about going bowling given

18
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

under Section A, if you stop going bowling you have

“proved” that you really do love the other person. But “If
you really loved me, you wouldn’t want to go bowling
traps you hopelessly. Whether you go bowling or not, you
can’t win—you are still going to want to go. And since you
have swallowed the presupposition that if you really loved
this person you wouldn’t want to go, you are going to feel
guilty no matter what you do. If you go bowling, you’ll feel
guilty because you’re going; if you don’t go, you’ll feel
guilty because you wish you had. The fact that somebody
begins this sequence with “Sweetheart” does not turn it
into a loving, tender thing to say. When you hear it, you’ve
been slugged. Learn to recognize that.

SECTION C:
• “Don’t you even care about your children?”
Presuppositions:
“You don’t care about your children.”
“You should care about your children; it’s wrong of
you not to.”
“Therefore, you should feel rotten.”
• “Don’t you even care about your appearance?”
• “Don’t you even care what happens to the other students?”
• “Don’t you even care what the neighbors will say to your
mother?”

Section C’s are a fairly straightforward Blamer Mode, even

on the surface. It’s hard to imagine one of these sounding
like anything except an accusation.
Notice that the word “care” is heavily stressed in
these examples. That’s important. It’s one way for you to
tell the difference between a genuinely interested request
for information, such as might come from a Leveler who
simply wanted to know, and a verbal attack. The presence
of our old friend “even” is also a clue.

19
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

Take that last example. If it comes from a Leveler,

someone who has no violence in mind, it is far more likely
to take this form:

“Don’t you care what the neighbors will say to your moth­
er?”

There is no stress on the word “care,” and no “even” in

the sentence; the intonation (the melody of the utterance)
is quite different.

SECTION D:
• “Even an elderly person should be able to understand this
rule.” (There’s “even” again—watch it!)
Presuppositions:
“There’s something wrong with being an elderly per-
son.”
“It doesn’t take much intelligence or ability to under-
stand tins rule.”
“You should feel guilty and stupid.”
• “Even a woman should be able to grasp basic economics.”
• “Even a freshman ought to be able to pass this test.”
• “Even the .second-graders know how to do that."

And, for primitive whacking and slashing . . .

• “Even you should be able to follow this argument.”

... which presupposes that there is something terribly

wrong with simply being you.
You will notice that it’s possible to pile these up into
multiples. For instance:

“Even a woman who doesn’t even care about her appear­

ance should be able to understand that plaids are not
becoming except on thin people.”
20
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

This is brutal; go to Computer Mode and maintain it.

The Section D attacks are in a mild Computer Mode,
as are all of the presuppositions except the final accusing
one. It is an abstract reference to a class of individuals,
with the same surface form as a statement like “Even
water in excess can be poisonous.”

SECTION E:
• “Everyone understands why you are having such hard
time adjusting to this job.”
Presuppositions:
“You are having a hard time adjusting to this job.”
“Everybody knows about the problem you have that’s
causing your difficulty in adjustment, so there’s no
point trying to hide or deny it.”
• “Everyone understands why you are so emotional these
days, darling.”
• “Everyone understands perfectly why you are becoming
hysterical, Mrs. Smith.”

This particular type of attack sounds so much like Leveler

Mode that it can catch you off your guard. The presence of
that all-knowing and unidentified “everyone” at the be­
ginning should be a warning; this is a Computer talking,
usually with a Blamer windup. Because it is so carefully
orchestrated, however, it is nothing like the Distracter
Mode. Distracter Mode has no pattern for you to observe.

SECTION F:
• “A person who really wanted to succeed wouldn’t object
to a trivial regulation like our dress code.”
Presupposition:
“You don’t really want to succeed.”
• “A person who has serious emotional problems can’t be
21
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

expected to cope with the work load here like the other
employees do, Mr. Rohr.”
Presuppositions:
“You have serious emotional problems.”
“The work load here is reasonable for an individual
who does not have serious emotional problems."
• “A boy who really wanted people to know he wasn’t a sissy
wouldn't sit around reading all the time.”
Presuppositions:
“You really want people to think you’re a sissy.”
“Sissies sit around reading all the time . .. like you
do.”

Section F’s are basically Computer Mode.

SECTION G:
• “Why don’t you ever want me to be happy?”
Presuppositions:
"You don’t want me to be happy.”
“You have the power to make me happy, if only you
were willing to use it.”

Sometimes this turns up in a flipped form: “Why do

you always want me to be miserable?”, but this is a
valuable clue to the amount of danger you are in. Your
opponent doesn’t have much skill if he or she leaves
anything so obvious dangling out in the open like that.

• “Why don’t you ever act like other mothers?”

• “Why don’t you ever take a close look at yourself?”
• “Why don’t you ever think about the welfare of the other
students in this class?”
• “Why don’t you ever consider the feelings of other peo­
ple?”

No amount of tinkering will make “Why don’t you ever”

22
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

different enough from “You never” to remove it from

Blamer Mode.

SECTION H:
• “Some husbands would object to having their wives go
back to school when the kids are still just babies.
Presuppositions:
“It’s wrong for you to go back to school.
“I’m not like other husbands—I’m unique and supe­
rior to them because I’m not objecting to your going
back to school.”
“I have the power to let you go back to school or not,
just as I like.”
“You should feel very guilty about going back to
school.”
“You should feel very grateful to me.”

All this, and Computer Mode as well? That’s right.

Although the entire set of presuppositions is in Blamer
Mode, not to mention all those claims about “I” and the
powers that “I” has, the surface form is Computer Mode.
Here are a few more examples of this attack, which is
definitely the most advanced on the Octagon:

• "Some bosses would object to having an employee who

always leaves work five minutes early to catch a bus.”
• “Some professors would really be upset about getting a
term paper that wasn’t even typed.”
• “Some wives would really get mad if their husbands went
fishing over the weekend and left them at home alone.”
• “Some landlords would seriously consider taking action if
they had a tenant who never made any attempt to take care
of his apartment.”

By no means does this cover all of the possible stances

of verbal violence. But because most people are no better

23
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

trained in the art of verbal self-defense than you are, you

aren’t likely to encounter many techniques that are any­
thing more than a variation of these eight basic ones.
If you can defend yourself against the eight moves on
the Octagon, your skills will develop and lead you on from
that level to more advanced techniques. In verbal self­
defense, as in any other art, if you master the basics and
apply them by frequent practice, you are well on your way.

HOW TO USE THE NEXT EIGHT

CHAPTERS

Now we are going to move on and take up each Octagon

Section in detail, one to a chapter. The chapters are
carefully designed for your self-training.
At the beginning of each chapter you will find an
octagon like figure 3-1, except that its sections are left
blank. As you read the chapter, you will think of examples
from your personal life that you want to analyze. If you
don’t make a note of these, they will slip your mind, and
then when you are free to work on them, you won’t be
able to recall what they were. To avoid this, write them
down in the sections of the blank octagon as they occur to
you.
You’ll also find in each of the next eight chapters a
Journal section in which you can record verbal confronta­
tions from your own life—both what was actually said and
what ought to have been said. At first you will be much
better at working these out after they are over, when it is
too late, than you are when they are actually going on. For
that purpose the Journal is invaluable. You can try as many
different versions of the way it should have gone as you
like, with no additional penalties. And you should of
course feel free to supplement the space provided in this
manual with as many additional pages of your own as you
24
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

feel you need. The later chapters are more difficult than
the early ones; as in any martial art, you will progress from
the simpler moves to the more complex ones, increasing
your skill as you go. You may find, therefore, that the later
chapters seem to require a lot more Journal space than
the economics of book publishing will allow, in which
case you should add that space. There is no way to predict
for every individual just what the perfect amount of Jour­
nal pages and lines would be in any section, since that
will depend upon your personal life.
Finally, each of these chapters contains sample verbal
confrontations in which some lines have been left blank
for you to fill in. Then, at the end of the chapter, you will
find four possible ways that the confrontation could have
been worked out, with an analysis of the verbal moves.
When you have filled in the example, you should compare
your solution with the end-of-chapter suggestions, remem­
bering that there will always be many possible “correct”
answers.
Now let’s begin.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Book:
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters. New York:
Bantam Books, Inc., 1976. (See pp. 244-50, “Direction of
the Road,” a brief short story that illustrates how much we
take our presuppositions for granted—from an unusual
point of view.)

Articles:
Bohannon, Laura. “Shakespeare in the Bush,” Natural His­
tory, August-September 1966, pp. 28-33. (This article is a
25
 The Verbal Violence Octagon

fine demonstration of the astonishing differences of mean­

ing that can occur when speakers do not share the same
basic presuppositions.)
Moran, Terence P. “Public Doublespeak: 1984 and Beyond,”
College English 37, no. 2 (October 1975): 200-222.

26
 Section A Attacks

If You
Really..
(I)

4
This section is one of the most elementary verbal attack
patterns and is an texcellent xplace for the novice to beginta
practice. The surface structure for a Section A move looks
like this:

If you really (X), you would/wouldn’t (Y).

The X’s and Y’s may be filled by almost anything, depend­

ing on the situation, but the verbal frame into which they
fit will be as shown. Any utterance coming at you in this
form should immediately alert you to the possibility that
you are headed for a verbal confrontation.
27
 Your Personal Octagon

© Suzetto Haden Elgin 1978

The stronger die stress placed on the word “really,” the

more likely it is that you are under attack. The presuppo­
sition that matters is, of course, “You don’t really (X).” and
what is crucial is that you recognize the presupposition
and respond to it, not to the content of (Y). Whatever fills
(Y) is only the bait, the element your opponent is using to
distract you; and ordinarily the move is successful. That
is, the person who neither realizes that an attack is under
way nor knows how to handle it takes the bait and
responds to (Y). This is a sure way to lose the confrontation.
Let’s look at a very simple, and very common, example.
28
 CONFRONTATION ONE
Man: If you really loved me, you wouldn’t waste so
much money.
Woman: I don’t waste money! Do you have any idea what
it costs to feed a family these days?

(woman has already lost this one. no matter what happens

from this point on, because she has completely ignored
man’s real challenge—that she doesn’t love him. By not
responding to that challenge, hidden in the presupposi­
tions, she has conceded the point and admitted by default
that he is right. But let’s look at a few more moves
nonetheless.)
Man: I notice that your sister manages to feed her kids
without putting the whole family into bankruptcy.
Woman: How would you know what my sister spends?
How would you know what anybody spends? You
never do any grocery shopping, all you do is go
out to lunch on your expense account and wave
your credit cards around and charge it all to your
boss, and then you come home and complain
about what/ spend!
Man: [Very reasonable tone of voice] Why is it, sweet­
heart, that whenever we try to have a simple adult
discussion of any issue, you always get hysterical
and turn it into a fight?

Point, set, and match to man, you see. Not only doesn’t
she love him, not only has she fallen for his most obvious
move, but he has succeeded in tricking her into a posture
of violent attack in which she has made a string of open
accusations against him that he will be able to remind her
of and use again and again in the future. “Darling,” he’ll
be able to say, “the reason I didn’t discuss (X) with you
before I did it is because you always get so hysterical.
Don’t you remember the last time I tried to discuss
29
 If You Really... (I)

something with you? I made one little remark about our

budget, and in thirty seconds you were screaming like a
fishwife.”
woman does speak English, and she did hear that
presupposition way back there at the beginning of Con­
frontation One. Because she heard it and understood it,
she knows—as soon as he says, “If you really loved
me . . —that he has done her injury and that she has
been wronged. But because she has bungled the confron­
tation and handed him the victory on a platter, it is WOMAN
who will come out of this feeling guilty. We can be 99
percent sure that no matter what goes on in the next few
moves, the closing lines will be WOMAN’S apology for her
frightful behavior and man’s gracious acceptance of that
apology.
If a woman goes through enough episodes like this
with her husband (or parent or employer or teacher or
child or employee or friend or anyone else with whom she
must carry on a sustained relationship), a number of
unpleasant things will probably happen.
She will grow more and more heavily burdened by
guilt with each episode. She feels guilty because she is
“always starting fights” with man. She feels guilty because
she keeps hearing herself—usually to her complete aston­
ishment—shrieking accusations that she knows are child­
ish and semihysterical and frequently unjustified. She
feels guilty because she keeps admitting that she does not
love tins man, which is one of the worst sins she could
commit in the Romeo-and-Juliet Wonderland she lives in.
The fact that she doesn’t know what she is doing—at a
conscious level—and that she may love man dearly does
not help. The guilt is still there. And piled on all this guilt
is the guilt she feels because, whether she will admit it or
not, she is convinced that somehow she is the one who is
being abused here. But no matter how she tries, she cannot

30
 If You Really. . .(I)

put her finger on the source of that conviction. The tilings

MAN says always sound so reasonable, often tender; the
things she says always sound vile and stupid. And yet she
feels abused and hates herself for that very feeling. This
is an unending vicious and multileveled cycle from which
she cannot escape.
The relationship may end in separation or divorce. It
may end with woman spending an hour a week with a
therapist; or even more hours with a doctor, who can
never find any explanation for her violent headaches or
constant indigestion. It may end with woman becoming
a bitter and vindictive harpy, famous for her uncontrollable
tongue and temper, and man the object of the sympathy of
everyone who knows the two of them.
MAN couldn’t get away with a continual campaign of
physical attacks like this. The bruises and marks he would
leave would be a testimony to his brutality that would
catch up with him in the long run and expose him for the
bully that he is. So long as his attacks remain verbal,
however, he is not only safe from retribution, he has an
excellent chance of being perceived by others as a hus­
band of almost saintly tolerance saddled with a shrewish
wife. What is most ironic about this is that he has to do so
little to achieve so much. The “If you really .. .” move is
a baby trick and should not have a prayer of success.
I would like to point out, before the tomatoes come
flying, that MAN may not be consciously aware that he is
carrying out this constant verbal battery. He may actually
believe that he is extraordinarily tolerant and patient and
loving, and that his wife is “a mental case.”
And we should all be grateful that this is so, because
such a man, taught a few elementary facts about verbal
behavior and brought to a conscious realization of his
actions, will probably change his ways.
He may also be doing it all on purpose, of course,

31
 If You Really.. .(I)

and enjoying it immensely—and despising woman be­

cause she is so pathetic an opponent. The question is,
why? And how is he able to do it so easily?
Men, as I said earlier in this book, do get some
informal training in the verbal martial arts. They observe
other men, and hear or read the speech of other men, and
they learn the techniques used by their fathers and their
uncles and their older brothers. And they hear utterances
like this one:

“See how your mother acts every time you try to have any
kind of discussion with her? Son, I’ll never understand
women; the better you try to treat them, the less credit you
get for it.”

In school, where the proportion of male administrators to

female teachers is extremely high, young males in America
are able to observe one episode after another in which the
teacher loses to the* administrator’s verbal attack—in front
of the whole class, in many instances, or at least in front
of several males.
By the time they are themselves adult males, men
have acquired a body of informal training and information,
and a repertoire of challenges and responses, that they
have learned so well that they are unaware they ever
learned them. Verbal confrontation is as natural to them
as walking or breathing, and as unconscious.
Young girls, on the other hand, learn only the tech­
niques of the verbally battered women who are their
models, and they move on to produce another generation
with exactly the same problems.
There may have been a time when this was not true.
The stories of Southern women who ran their families
with an iron hand in a tiny rose-colored velvet glove, like

32
 If You Really. , (I)

the stories of formidable New England matriarchs who

kept generations of their kin under control by the mere
raising of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip, would lead us to
believe that tilings may once have been different. But in
those days women grew up to fill the same roles in society
that their mothers and grandmothers had filled before
them, or their maiden aunts; and there were generations
stretching back into time all secure in the filling of those
roles, to pass on an oral tradition. Those days are long
gone, however, whether the Equal Rights Amendment is
in force or not.
If you look at Confrontation One again, you will see
that man opens with a challenge in mild Blamer Mode.
(If he were more skilled, or had more respect for woman
as an opponent, he would use Computer Mode instead; in
later chapters we will look at examples of that type.)
woman responds immediately to the bait, as he had known
she would, in strong Blamer Mode, man comes back with
an even milder remark than his first one, but woman
escalates into violent Blaming, man, now the winner and
so far out in front that he needn’t even exert himself,
finishes WOMAN off by ending in a mild combination of
Blamer and Computer.
Learn this rule early: never reply to blamer MODE
WITH ANOTHER BLAMER MODE utterance. The only way
any Blamer ever beats another Blamer is by having more
sheer force available—being able to yell louder, knowing
more rotten things to say, being able to keep up an
exchange of insults longer without running out of steam,
or by any similar “advantage.” This is exactly analogous*
to one person beating another in a fight because Person A
outweighs Person B by sixty pounds and has a bigger club.
It’s primitive, and indicates a total lack of skill on both
sides.

33
 If You Really... (I)

But if woman should not have replied in Blamer

Mode, and should not have taken the bait in (Y), what
should she have done? One step at a time ...

• First Principle; Know that you are under attack. Hearing

“If you really ...” should have been signal enough.
• Second Principle: Know what kind of attack you are
facing. Clearly, she wasn’t up against much. Any opponent
who can’t do better for openers than this doesn’t have
much skill or isn’t investing much energy.
• Third Principle: Know how to make the defense fit the
attack. He gave her an easy one; she should give him an
easy one in return. She should speak to the presupposition
and do so in Computer Mode. Look at the revised version
of Confrontation One, for clarification.

CONFRONTATION ONE—REVISED
Man: If you really loved me, you wouldn’t waste so
much money.
Woman: You know, it’s interesting that so many men have
tliis feeling that their wives don’t love them.

Notice that she has not used “I” or “me.” She has not
taken the bait and moved to defend her spending patterns.
She has shown no emotion beyond a kind of neutral
interest, and she has not blamed him in any way—she is
talking about men in general. She also has not admitted
that his presupposed claim, that she doesn’t love him, is
true. Over to MAN.

Carried out in this way, the confrontation may come

to a halt right there. For one thing, woman has the
advantage of surprise, man will be stunned—she is not
supposed to know how to carry out a move like that, or to
have the fortitude to follow through with it. With any luck

34
 If You Really... (I)

at all he’ll change the subject as fast as possible, and the

whole thing will have been headed off. This is an ideal
script and is completely nonviolent self-defense.
To be certain that this is clear, let me show you a
violent countermove, for contrast.

CONFRONTATION ONE—REVISED AGAIN

Man: If you really loved me, you wouldn’t waste so
much money.
Woman: You know, it’s interesting that so many men—
once they reach your age—begin to feel that their
wives don’t love them.

This is dirty fighting. If you give in to the temptation to do

this kind of thing, you had better be prepared for an
instantaneous escalation, and be sure that you’re able to
handle some serious heavy-duty confrontation. This is no
move for a beginner to make, but many a beginner gets
into deep trouble in this way because it is so easy and
seems so effective. Resist the temptation. File the idea
away, so that when an utterance like it is coming at you,
you will recognize it for the low blow it is. But don’t stoop
to using it yourself; you can do much better than that, and
more honorably.
Now, about the Fourth Principle—following through.
If you can’t bring yourself to respond as in the first revised
Confrontation One because it would spoil man’s fun, or
because you don’t have enough self-discipline to ignore
the bait about wasting money, you aren’t going to do very
well at this. You must follow through.
Here is a slightly different example:

CONFRONTATION TWO
Child: If you really wanted me to get an A in math, you’d
buy me a calculator.

35
 If You Really... (I)

Father: A calculator! Do you have any idea how much a

calculator costs?
Child: Jimmy’s dad bought him a calculator. So did Mar­
io’s.
Father: Jimmy’s dad is a surgeon. Mario’s dad is a very
successful lawyer. They can afford to buy calcu­
lators, or any other kind of junk their brats want.
Child. So now I’m a brat, and all my friends are brats!
Just because you couldn’t make it through college
like everybody else’s dad, just because you’re
jealous, all of a sudden everybody’s a brat. That is
really weird, you know that?
Father: Now, listen. I don’t have to take any more of that
kind of talk from you!
Child: That’s right, you sure don’t! Remember that next
time you start complaining that I never talk to you
about school, okay?

The winner, and the undisputed champeen—child.

By father’s third move he has completely forgotten that
child’s math grade was the opener here. He has admitted
by default the presupposition that he doesn’t really want
CHILD to get an A in math. And you can be sure that CHILD
will remember this and store it away to use the first time
his math grade doesn’t meet father’s expectations.
Children are often highly skilled in verbal confron­
tations with their parents, especially in Blamer Mode.
Male children hone their skills and increase them as they
grow older. Female children are somewhat more likely to
accomplish what they want by virtue of their “adorable­
ness,” and to rely on their dimples and curls and sitting in
people’s laps being cute. In the process they forget any
verbal skills they might otherwise have acquired; and
when they cease to be adorable and are too big to climb
into laps anymore, they are utterly vulnerable. If a woman

36
 If You Really. . . (1)

is able to convince a man that she is cute and adorable, it

may work. But it is unlikely to work on anyone except a
man with whom she is living in an intimate relationship
of some kind. Beating your cute little fists against the hairy
chest of your boss, your professor, your male colleagues,
and so on, will not work. That may be why systems of
this kind are ordinarily recommended to women who
prefer to remain within the confines of the home; and it
shows great good sense on the part of those who devise
them that they see this and state it quite frankly in their
books, articles, and lectures.
Here’s Confrontation Two again, for you to revise.
You’ll find a set of four possible revisions at the end of
this chapter, with comments on each. After you’ve written
your own dialogue, you should compare it with those
examples—but write yours first.

CONFRONTATION TWO—REVISED
Child: If you really wanted me to get an A in math, you’d
buy me a calculator.
Father:

Child.

Father:

Child:

37
 If You Really. .. (I)

Father:

Child:

You may not feel that you need this many moves to finish
the confrontation, and that’s fine. There are literally an
infinite number of possible solutions.

38
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION A ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

39
 If You Really. . .(I)

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

40
 If You Really-. (I)

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What 1 Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

41
 If You Really.. .(I)

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION TWO
Child: If you really wanted me to get an A in math, you’d
buy me a calculator.
Father: Hey . .. when did you start thinking I didn’t care
about you getting an A in math?
Child: Well... you don’t act like you care about it. 1
mean, all the other guys have calculators and stuff,
and if they get a good grade on a test, they get a
buck for it or something. You never do anything
like that. You don’t even say I did all right, or
anything.
Father: You know, that’s pretty stupid of me. Not the
calculator part—the reason I don’t get you a cal-

42
 If You Really...(/)

culator is because we can’t afford it right now

but not paying any attention to your tests or saying
anything about them was stupid of me. I m sorry,
and I do care about your math grades, and from
now on I’ll do a better job of letting you know that.
Fair enough?

This one is well done, and both CHILD and father

come out of it winning, father can afford to bend a little
bit, but hasn’t obligated himself to buy CHILD a calculator
or pay him for his test grades. CHILD is now reassured that
father does care about his schoolwork, even if evidence
doesn’t turn up in the form of money being spent. It’s
pretty clear that child knows about the money problem
and was really only trying to make FATHER understand
that some attention would be appreciated.

Child: If you really wanted me to get an A in math, you’d

buy me a calculator.
Father: Parents who really want their kids to get A’s in
math don’t buy them calculators. You’ll never learn
anything about math that way. Calculators are just
a way of getting out of doing your work.
Child: Then how come you use a calculator when you
bring work home from the office?
Father: That is not the same tiling at all, and you’re not so
stupid that you can’t tell the difference!

FATHER is the loser here and has walked into a sucker

punch. Even if he never uses a calculator, the first re­
sponse to child is all wrong. What father has done here
is challenge the wrong presupposition—the trivial one that
“a parent who wants a kid to get an A in math always buys
that kid a calculator.” father may feel that the response
is a good one, that he’s treating child as a reasonable

43
 If You Really... (I)

person who can discuss an issue logically, and that he is

offering a challenge to the “you don’t really want me to
get an A in math” presupposition by presenting an alter­
native explanation for not buying the calculator. Unfortu­
nately, that’s not the way CHILD is going to see or hear it.
The message child gets is that he’s right—his parent
doesn’t really care anything about his math grade. What­
ever happens from this point on won’t change that, and it
guarantees a fight, father may “win” in the brute sense,
but it will only be because he is bigger, louder, has a
better vocabulary, and so on. Very poor strategy, and sure
to rebound in the long run.

Child: If you really wanted me to get an A in math, you’d

buy me a calculator.
Father: If a calculator is what it bikes to prove to you that
I care about your math grades, son, I’ll buy you
one.
Child: Can I have one like Fred’s got? A really good one?
Father: Like I said, son—if that’s what it takes.

This is an interesting variation, and should be exam­

ined carefully, father has responded, immediately and
directly, to the presupposition in child’s opening move.
But notice what he has done. First, he’s using Placater
Mode in response to a child using Blamer Mode, and
that’s not smart. Children don’t feel secure when the
people they are trying to look up to as role models and
sources of stability in their world start Placating them.
CHILD is dissatisfied enough to push it further; his second
move is a compressed “If you really mean it when you say
you want me to get an A in math, you won’t just buy me
any old calculator, you’ll get me a fancy, expensive one
like Fred’s.” And father does it again—more Placating.
And that’s not all. If you take a close look at what

44
 If You Really. ..(I)

father is saying, you’ll notice a new presupposition that’s

being sneaked in, something like this:

“You are the kind of kid that can only be convinced about
iny wanting you to get an A if I buy you something, and I
don’t think much of that kind of kid—but I guess I’m stuck
with you.”

It’s a small dig, going by fast, but it’s in there, and CHILD
will hear it. Especially when father repeats it for him.
Nobody won here, and nobody got anything he wanted.
This is a standoff in every way, with the possible exception
of father’s finances.

Child: If you really wanted me to get an A in math, you’d

buy me a calculator.
Father: Why do you think I don’t want you to get an A in
math, son? That’s a crazy idea.
Child: I didn’t say that! You said that! You’re always
putting stuff in my mouth I don’t say!
Father: Now, getting all excited and starting an argument
is not going to help your math or anything else.
When you’re ready to talk like a reasonable person,
we’ll discuss this again.

father’s mistake here was in adding “That’s a crazy

idea” to the end of his first response. Up to that point, the
response was a neutral request for information about the
presupposition. But the “crazy idea” addition is straight
Blamer Mode, and it shames and embarrasses the child.
In the sense that father doesn’t have to buy a calculator
and has demonstrated his superior status in the household
relative to CHILD, father has won. But the price is a
resentful and humiliated child who still believes that
FATHER doesn’t care anything about his math grades and

45
 If You Really. . . (I)

may now be convinced that the reason for that is that he

doesn’t have any respect for child in any case. Resist the
temptation to throw in little flourishes and extras, unless
you have had time to plan them carefully and are very sure
what presuppositions they carry with them.

46
 Section B Attacks

If You
Really ..
(H)
5
Going from Section A moves to Section B moves will not
be difficult, because Section B is only Section A with the
power turned up one notch. Your practice with the exam­
ples in Chapter Four should make it possible for you to
move through this chapter with ease and confidence. Keep
the Four Principles in mind; keep the Satir Modes in
mind; and practice.
The surface structure for a Section B move looks like
this:
If you really (X), you would/wouldn’t want to (Y).
Or, to make it just a tad meaner ...
47
 If You Really. . . (II)

“If you really (X), you wouldn’t even want to (Y).”

(Or). .. you would at least want to (Y).”

There are two presuppositions in the basic sequence

that you need to pay attention to. The first one is already
familiar: “You don’t really (X).” And then there is this one:

“You have the power to control not just your actions but
also your personal desires.”

The first presupposition may or may not be false, depend-

Your Personal Octagon

© Suzette Haden Elgin 1978

 //You Really ..(II)
ing on whether you really do or do not love someone, want
to get good grades, want to be promoted, want to make
your mother proud of you, want to make the football team,
want to stop smoking, or whatever is the content of (X).
The second presupposition, however, is always false.
All of us are able to exercise our willpower to a
certain extent. We may be quite capable of turning down
that second piece of cake. We may be equally capable of
staying out of that poker game we were invited to join.
But none of us, because we are human and because desire
is part of being human, is able to deliberately no t want
the piece of cake or NOT want to join the game. We may
be able to distract ourselves by eating four carrots instead
of the cake or by going fishing instead of to the poker
game, thus lowering the intensity of the desire a little —
but the wanting remains. That is the nature of being
human, and if you are free of that trait, you certainly don’t
need to read this book.
In a Section B confrontation you will have no trouble
recognizing the attack. There’s “if you really" to let you
know something’s up, and once you’ve spotted the two
presuppositions you know what you’re dealing with. The
level of skill and strength shown is slightly higher than a
Section A move, but it’s nothing formidable. You know
that the proper way to handle it is to respond to the
presupposition, preferably with no violence at all. But
there’s an additional problem here: which presupposition?
The Section B move offers you two.
The answer is that it depends. Which one is the
strongest attack on you? Which one bothers you most?
Which one seems the easier to take on? You have ample
time to move against both if you like, and it makes no
particular difference which one you start with. This is
nothing to be distracted about; choose one, and then go
on to the other if it turns out to be necessary.

49
 If You Really. .. (11)

Here’s an example for you:

CONFRONTATION THREE
Mother: If you really eared anything about my health,
you wouldn’t tvant to dress the way you do!
Daughter: There is nothing wrong with the way I dress
except that you are too old to understand what
a young woman ought to wear!
Mother: What? I’m not old, and if I wasn’t so sick, I
wouldn’t look old, either. How can you be so
cruel? My own daughter! But never mind—you
know me, I don’t care about anything anymore.
Daughter: Mother, I didn’t mean that you look old, I didn’t
mean any of that like it sounded. Mother, don’t
cry, please don’t cry! You know how I am, I say
things before I think; I never did have any
sense. You know I wouldn’t hurt you for any­
thing in the world.
Mother: No, it’s my fault, and you’re right. I’m an old
woman, and I’m holding you back. But I won’t
be here much longer, and then you can wear
whatever you want to wear.
Daughter: Oh, heavens, Mother, you know I don’t care
what I wear! Come on, now—what do you hate
the most? You tell me, and I’ll throw it away.
Please?

Notice the sequence of moves here. MOTHER opens

as mild Blamer. daughter fid Is for the bait; she ignores
the presuppositions and concedes both that she doesn’t
care about her mother’s health and that she is able to
control her desires—thereby implicitly admitting that she
deliberately mistreats her mother. Since she has admitted
that she could stop tvanting to dress the way she does if
she cared to, no other conclusion is possible. With both

50
 If You Really • • (H)

her admissions made, daughter responds in strong Bla­

mer Mode. MOTHER grabs her opportunity and surges into
Distracter Mode, raining blows in all directions, and—
sure enough—DAUGHTER instantly switches to Placater.
mother does a touch of phony Placating, and then twists
the knife in for a final Blamer claim; daughter, she
accuses, is just hanging around waiting for her to die so
that she can dress like a fool and spend the rest of her life
in that stupid activity. DAUGHTER, now completely demor­
alized, goes into the most extreme Placater style she can
muster, and ends by begging for a chance to prove that
she is not really the monster she has just admitted herself
to be.
Because I have no intention of writing a sexist book,
I was very careful to include in Confrontation Three a
woman who is highly skilled at verbal abuse. While it’s
true that men are more likely to be good at this than
women, by no means are all women innocent victims.
MOTHER in tins example is guilty of blatant child abuse,
but like the man in Confrontation One, her attacks leave
no surface bruises. If she is good at what she does, she
may manage to live out her life viewed by one and all as
a devoted parent mistreated and neglected by her ungrate­
ful selfish child. Because she’s a woman and must deal
with the stereotype of the endlessly complaining older
woman, it’s a little harder for her to bring it off. But if she
does it with dignity and elegance (yes, this is possible),
and if the child makes one stupid mistake after another,
her chances are pretty good.
Now, let’s consider what DAUGHTER might have done
instead. A few possibilities ...

CONFRONTATION THREE—REVISED
Mother: If you really cared anything about my health,
you wouldn’t want to dress the way you do!

51
 If You Really... (II)

Daughter: The idea that people don’t care about other

people’s health is interesting, don’t you think?
It would seem that any human being would,
just naturally, be concerned about the well­
being of other people .. . but just look at the
state of health care in this country!

This is a response in full Computer Mode, directed

to the first presupposition. MOTHER and DAUGHTER are
now in the midst of a philosophical discussion of an
abstract question instead of a personal confrontation.
Or. ..
Mother: If you really cared anything about my health,
you wouldn’t want to dress the way you do!
Daughter: You know, the idea that people are able to
control not only their actions but their desires
is a fascinating one.

This is the same technique, but DAUGHTER has re­

sponded to the second presupposition rather than the first.
Or DAUGHTER might want to try something in a phony
Leveler Mode. For the beginner, this is most easily done
with a “when” question, an absolutely straight face, and
an air of neutral interest, like this:

Daughter: Mother, when did you start thinking that I don’t

care anything about your health?

OR...
Daughter: Mother, have you always thought that people
could control their wishes and their desires?

The phony Leveler stance is a useful one, but it must be

done with care. Any mistake in the tone of voice or the
expression of the face, and the utterance will sound like
Blaming instead of Leveling. Above all, be sure you don’t
throw any “evens” into one of these, as in this example:

52
 If You Really... (//J

Daughter: Mother, when did you first decide that I don’t

even care about your health?

The other question words (WH-words) are also available

for use in this move. For instance:

• “Where did you get the idea that I don’t care about your
health?”
suppose you feel that I don’t care anything
® “Why do you s"pp
about your health?’
• “Who in the world suggested to you that I didn’t care
anything about your health?”
(and so on ...)

But be careful with these; each carries with it a presup­

position. The first: You got the idea that I don’t care about
your health somewhere. The second: You have some reason
for feeling that I don’t care about your health, if we could
only figure out what it is. The third: Someone suggested
to you that I didn’t care anything about your health.
Any question about time will also have presupposi­
tions, but a time question is not as tricky to handle and
not as likely to lead you into dropping in a presupposition
that you never intended. The “when” question usually
leaves your opponent only two choices: either answer the
question as if it were really a neutral request for informa­
tion or deny its presupposition. Like this:

Daughter: Mother, when did you first start thinking that I

don’t care anything about your health?
Mother: When you were thirteen years old, that’s when.
Don’t you remember the time that...
[And with any luck at all, MOTHER will head off
into an anecdote, and you’ll be able to shift to
another subject entirely.]

W
 If You Really... (II)

OR...

Mother: I never said I thought you didn’t care about my

health! I was talking about the disgusting way
you dress!

Now mother should move into a lengthy lecture on

proper clothing; but whatever happens, she has been
forced to switch her techniques and she is now on the
defensive. If things become too difficult, this one can be
tied off with a phony Placater stance, as in this example:

Daughter: Isn’t it amazing how I always misunderstand

you, dear? I must not be paying attention, or
else I’m just stupid. I’ll try to do better.

daughter has really won with this last line, although

it may sound like a surrender. She has not admitted either
that she can control her wishes or that she doesn’t care
about mother’s health; she took care of that with her
original “when” question. She has led the confrontation
completely away from either mother’s health or her own
style of dress and has not agreed to change that style in
any way whatsoever. Finally, she has demonstrated what
a good daughter she is by admitting a trivial flaw—not
paying close enough attention when spoken to—and prom­
ising to improve her performance in the future. MOTHER
may not be taken in by any of this; but for her to work her
way back to either of the two attacks she started with will
require her to behave like a shrew, become violent and
semihysterical, and that is not the way to win.
If you have no choice but to hit back, the counterattack
to the opening line in Confrontation Three goes like this:

Daughter: When a woman reaches your age, dear, she

often begins to think that nobody cares about

54
 If You Really. , . (II)

her health. It’s very common, and perfectly

understandable, and you mustn’t worry about it
for a single minute.

This is something you reserve for emergencies. As in any

other martial art, unnecessary force is dishonorable and
merely indicates that you are either an amateur or a sadist.
It may be justified as a way of protecting someone else
who is clearly at the mercy of a vindictive parent, one who
would stoop to attacking his or her own child in public.
Don’t be surprised, however, if your attempt to help out
in a situation like that causes the child to turn on you and
defend the rotten parent! That’s a pretty standard script,
especially if the child is one of those completely unaware
victims and the attacks have been going on for years.
Attacking you may be the only chance the victim gets to
ease the burden of guilt—if it happens, let it pass. You can
afford to be generous, and she probably cannot.
Now, here is a sample confrontation for you to work
on, with suggested solutions at the end of the chapter:

CONFRONTATION FOUR
Supervisor: If you really cared about being promoted,
you’d tvant to get your reports in on time, like
everybody else in the department does.
Employee: _______

Supervisor:

55
 If You Really... (II)

Employee:

(Who won?)

56
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION B ATTACKS ON ME:
(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

57
 If You Really... (II)
THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

58
 If You Really... (11)

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said
 If You Really... (II)

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION FOUR
Supervisor: If you really cared about being promoted,
you’d want to get your reports in on time, like
everybody else in the department does.
Employee: Miss Stein, have you always felt that I had no
interest in being promoted?
Supervisor: No—frankly, my first reaction to you was that
you were someone with a lot of ambition. I
expected you to get ahead in the department
and do it pretty quickly.
Employee: I wonder what caused you to question your
original judgment, Miss Stein. Ordinarily you
trust your perceptions of your staff, and that

60
 If You Really . (II)

policy seems to have had only positive results

for the firm.

EMPLOYEE has done this well. Miss Stein is now in a

tight position for her next move. She may of course move
right in with a response like this:

“Thank you; I appreciate the compliment. However, in

your case I clearly was mistaken.”

If that happens, however, employee has nevertheless

managed one important and positive result—Miss Stein
has switched into Leveler Mode, and it should now be
possible to discuss the issue more openly and reasonably.
employee has not made the mistake of taking the bait and
arguing about the timing of the reports, but has responded
to the presupposition. Furthermore, although a compli­
ment has been paid to the SUPERVISOR, it isn’t an excessive
Placating gush. It is moderate, and primarily in Computer
Mode. Miss Stein may be willing to accept it and unwilling
to present the idea that she has been mistaken in her
perceptions this time. In either case, EMPLOYEE is now in
a much better position to discuss the matter.

Supervisor: If you really cared about being promoted,

you’d want to get your reports in on time, like
everybody else in the department does.
Employee: Miss Stein, where did you get the idea that
I’m not interested in being promoted?
Supervisor: [Icily] If you are suggesting that I have lis­
tened to gossip about you, or anything of that
nature, I suggest you think carefully before
you say anything more. I despise office gossip.
Employee: Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest anything like
that, Miss Steinl

61
 If You Really .. (II)

[To which, I’m afraid, the most likely response

is “Then why did you suggest it?”]

employee has properly moved to respond to the

presupposition in this confrontation. However, what hap­
pened is typical of the hazards of asking anything but a
time question. Each of the WH-question words (who,
what, when, where, how, why, and so on) has presuppo­
sitions of its own. Since the person using a Section B has
already agreed to the existence of the claim being made
after “If you really ...” that existence has to have had a
starting point in time. Asking about that point is then no
challenge. This strategy may be boring, but your goal is
not excitement, even the excitement of verbal violence.
Your goal is to avoid that violence as far as possible, to do
so honorably, and (when it cannot be avoided) to handle
it in such a way that you cease to be its victim without
yourself becoming an attacker. Stay with the “when”
questions until you are certain you are ready to move
beyond them or that it is truly necessary to do so.

Supervisor: If you really cared about being promoted,

you’d want to get your reports in on time, like
everybody else in the department does.
Employee: Miss Stein, do you really believe that people
have the ability to control their desires as well
as their actions?
Supervisor: I beg your pardon?
Employee: I mean, when did you start thinking that peo­
ple had control over what they want to do?

EMPLOYEE has slipped badly here and has chosen the

wrong presupposition to respond to. Miss Stein is under­
standably bewildered by the whole exchange, and things
are only going to get worse. You would only take up the
question of whether someone can control their desires

62
 If You Really... (II)

when the issue being discussed is food or drink or sex or

gambling or something of equal importance. The idea of
anyone agonizing over whether they do or do not want to
get their reports in on time, fighting or resisting the
temptation to get them in late or early, is preposterous.
And employee can only come out of this looking ridicu­
lous. SUPERVISOR wins again.

Supervisor: If you really cared about being promoted,

you’d want to get your reports in on time, like
everybody else in the department does.
Employee: Miss Stein, when did you begin to feel that I
am not interested in promotion?
Supervisor: I should think that would be obvious—when
you began turning in your reports late.
Employee: Perhaps a specific incident would be helpful,
Miss Stein.

You can always hope that this won’t happen. And

whether it happens or not has much to do with whether
Miss Stein is in fact justified in complaining about the
lateness of your reports or not, as well as whether that
lateness is something unique to you and not shared by
your fellow workers. However, if you are not going to be
able to avoid dealing with the accusation, you are far better
off discussing a particular occasion on which it is claimed
that you were at fault. You may be able to explain that
instance to your supervisor’s satisfaction and convince her
that it isn’t part of a pattern, but an isolated event. If you
are actually at fault, and have no excuse, and if it is part of
a general pattern, the fact that you are able to discuss it
reasonably may win you a little time to improve your
performance. If Miss Stein cannot come up with a specific
incident and is forced to admit that, you have gained a
point or two. It’s much too early in this one to see who
will win, but given the supervisor’s second move, it is

63
 If You Really. .. (II)
going along properly, employee should stay in Computer
Mode, unless it becomes possible to move to genuine
Leveling, and should try to carry this off with as much
dignity as the facts of the matter will allow.
One word of warning: Probably the stupidest move
of all, the most nonproductive that you could make, would
be to go for the last succulent morsel of the bait and
maneuver yourself into an argument about whether other
employees get their reports in on time. Don’t stoop to that.
Even if you know for a fact that half the staff is always
later than you are, saying so will only make it possible for
your supervisor to call you a tattletale. Tattletales are not
admired in this country, even when they are in the right.
Let that pass, even if supervisor makes an all-out effort
to force you to get into it. If you find yourself obliged to
say, “Miss Stein, I do not talk about other people behind
their backs,” you may feel that you’re risking insolence
and asking for trouble. On the contrary—you will be
respected for it. Your failure to take that position will earn
you nothing but contempt, whether it shows in the surface
responses made to you or not.

64
 Section C Attacks

Don’t You
Even Care..

6
This technique is a major advance over those in Sections
A and B. It’s basic form is like this:
Don’t you even care about (X)?

Possible fillers for (X) are infinite in number; here are

some typical examples.

Don’t you even care about...

• your grades?
• your children?

65
 Don't You Even Care...

• your colleagues?
• your students?
• your patients?
• your appearance?
• your health?
• your responsibility to (Y)?

In skilled hands the range is awe-inspiring, with items

such as “Don’t you even care about the countless genera­
tions to come who will have to pay the price for your
misguided actions?” representing a middle level of poten­
cy- .
The presuppositions that have to be identified for
Section C moves are these:

• “You don’t care about (X).”

• “You should care about (X); you’re rotten not to.
• “Therefore, you should feel very guilty about this.”
As you would suspect, the presence of the word “even”
hammers in the third presupposition. If Section C chal­
lenges are used without “even,” they are considerably
more gentle. Coming from a Leveler they may be no more
than a genuinely neutral request for information about
your feelings. When you hear a Section C with “even” in
it, however, you may be reasonably confident that the
question isn’t neutral and that a confrontation is headed
your way.
You’ll notice a specific difference between this move
and the Section B move. Both have more than one presup­
position for you to deal with. But in “If you really (X), you
would/wouldn’t want to (Y)” there doesn’t have to be any
relationship between (X) and (Y). They are completely
independent of each other, and almost anything to which
the victim is vulnerable can be used to fill the (Y) slot.
66
 Don’t You Even Care. ..

This isn’t true with a Section C move; here the second

and third presuppositions depend upon the first. Obvious­
ly, if your opponent is wrong and you do care about (X),
then the second and third presuppositions are irrelevant
There are a number of possible ways to handle a
Section C. A crude one, but an effective move if you don’t
riind following through on it, is this:

Chair: Don’t you even care about the other members of

this committee?
Member: No; why?

Your Personal Octagon

© Suzette Haden Elgin 1978

 Don’t You Even Care...

I’m serious. There are times when a crude move—like a

two-by-four right between the eyes—can be most effec­
tive. The biggest advantage of this response is its shock
value.
Look again at the presuppositions of a Section C, and
it will be clear why the outrageous “No; why?” is an
effective response. The person coming at you with a
Section C is relying on you to go along with the idea that
nobody with even a shred of human decency could pos­
sibly disagree with those presuppositions. Nobody. Your
opponent expects you to agree that the item in (X) is
something everyone approves of, that not to go along with
that is wicked and rotten and abominable in every way,
and that anyone guilty of the accusation should feel like a
worm and beg to be stepped on. Your anticipated response
is a furious claim that of course you care about (X), and
how dare your opponent suggest that you don’t—which
means, of course, that you have accepted the second and
third presuppositions by default.
Unless you have a reputation as a sociopath or an
eccentric, the possibility that you will not go along with
this script will never for an instant have been imagined.
Your opponent will be flabbergasted, and that may be
exactly what you want. For instance:

CONFRONTATION FIVE
Teacher: Don’t you even care about your little girl flunking
out of third grade?
Parent: No; why?
Teacher: [Stunned silence of considerable length) But you
can’t possibly mean that! You’re a good parent,
you’re a respected member of the community,
and you love your daughter!
Parent: [Maintains neutral expression of polite interest,
but says nothing at all.]

68
 Don’t You Even Care.

Teacher: Look, let me explain to you what it means for a

child to flunk a grade and get kept back. First of
all .. .

parent has won hands down, teacher has complete­

ly forgotten (or will have by the time he or she is a
sentence or two farther along) that the opener was essen­
tially an attack on the parent’s moral fitness to be a parent.
What TEACHER will do now is present a lengthy lecture
on the problems of a flunking child—any flunking child at
all, not the one who is associated with PARENT. The
confrontation has been successfully defused from a per­
sonal attack to a philosophical discussion, parent, if
skillful, will agree with everything TEACHER says that is
remotely sensible and at the first opportunity will increase
the degree of distance between the personal and the
philosophical. For example:

Parent: You know, you’re absolutely right, and it takes

someone with your training and experience to
realize the implications of these matters. And as
long as you’ve brought it up, don’t you think that
everything you’re saying also applies to college
students? Sure, they’re adults, but even so, it
seems to me—
Teacher: Certainly! Many people do not realize the burden
that an F in just one course places on a hard­
working student. When I took Logic, for exam­
ple—now please remember that I was a straight-
A student in every other class I had in college—
but when I took Logic ...

Only after parent is long gone will teacher realize that

he or she has been had, since obviously no person who
really did not care about his own child flunking third
grade would have spent an hour discussing the dreadful
consequences of flunking.

69
 Don't You Even Care. . .

What happens next in the continuing relationship

between parent and TEACHER (not to mention the one
between parent and flunking child!) depends upon
the real-world situation. But the technique itself should
be clear to you. However, it has one flaw that must be
pointed out immediately: You can never use it twice with
the same opponent. If you try it a second time, you’re
going to hear an icy “You surely don’t think you can put
that over on me again, do you?” Precisely because it is
such a stunner, and precisely because it is so crude, it will
be remembered. Its effectiveness is probably limited even
in the sense that you can only use it with one member of
a given group in the circle of people you deal with. You
are otherwise likely to hear this: “You surely don’t think
you can get past me with that just because you managed to
put it over on TEACHER, do you?” But it has its place, and
when you are in that place, by all means put it to use.
Another possibility, and one with a bit wider appli­
cation, is to respond immediately to the first presupposi­
tion, but not by denying it. Instead, present a question
about the presupposition. For example:

Employer: Don’t you even care about the way sales have
been dropping off in your division?
Employee: Pardon me, Mr. Lopez, but when did you first
start thinking I had no interest in our sales
figures?

OR...

Employee: Do you see this indifference to the sales figures

as a general problem, Mr. Lopez, or do you feel
that it’s confined to the division chiefs in the
PQR Plant?
OR...

70
 Don’t You Even Care...

Employee: That question is certainly worth exploring;

however, before any attempt can be made to
answer it, there is the problem of actually
putting one’s finger on the cause for this indif­
ference to sales that you’ve noticed. A number
of factors that might account for it come to
mind, but your perception of the matter—from
where you sit—would constitute a valuable
source of preliminary data.

If we gave belts in verbal self-defense, each of the

three replies above would represent a more highly valued
belt color. And it can certainly be carried much farther. In
business or professional contexts, one of your surest re­
sponses to a Section C is a question about the first
presupposition (that you “don’t even care”) as heavily
larded with the jargon of your field as you can make it. If
you can do this entirely in Computer Mode, with no hint
of “I” or emotion anywhere, you have an excellent chance
of leaving your opponent exhausted in three moves.
And while we are on the subject of the world of
business and the professions, I’d like to focus briefly on
one of the factors that gives men an advantage over women
in this part of the arena. An amazingly high percentage of
men, with absolute honesty, are astonished when they
find that the verbal attacks they’ve carried out in the
courtroom or at the conference table are resented by a
woman on the receiving end. THEY ARE NOT PRETENDING;
THEY TRULY DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
Males learn very early that verbal confrontations are
a part of the necessary activity of their careers. They learn
to admire the skilled verbal infighter, to keep track of the
“one for you, and one for me” scores as the confrontations
go along, and they do not take any of this personally. (The
man who doesn’t learn this is the man who gets passed

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 Don’t You Even Care. ..

over again and again while less able people are promoted
over his head.)
Women are bewildered when they see two men who
have just spent twenty minutes trading the sort of vicious
insults associated with lifelong hatred go off to lunch
together as if nothing at all had happened. Men are equally
bewildered when they find that the woman they just went
through the same process with won’t go to lunch because
she’s angry. They see it as roughly equivalent to refusing
to go to lunch with someone because you were just
whipped at checkers. And when their “But you weren’t
supposed to take any of that personally, don’t you know
that?” is either not believed or considered to be insult
piled upon injury, they are reinforced in their belief that
women have no business in business.
The fact that women are frequently unable to play
this game—and make no mistake about it, it is just that, a
game—limits them forever to the lower strata of most
corporations, universities, hospitals, publishing houses,
and so on. Men look upon it much as they do any other
sport: Get in there and play to win, and then, after the
final whistle blows, everybody go out together for pizza
and beer. (Or steak and a good red wine, or doughnuts
and coffee, depending.)
If you are a woman and you do not owni the corpora-
tion, publishing firm, hospital, or whatever—-which
> would
change all the rules in a number of intricate ways—either
learn to play the game or forget about a career within the
system. I’m sure this statement is not going to be looked
upon with any pleasure by people of either sex; but it is
the grim truth, and nothing will be gained by pretending
that it isn’t. If you go into a football game and insist upon
playing it by the rules of tennis, you surely have better
sense than to think that (a) you will win; or (b) anybody
will ever let you play in their football game again.
Two more rules, especially for women: Do not cry.
•72
 Don’t You Even Care. .

Not ever. No matter what. A man might under extraordi­

nary circumstances be able to get away with it, but a
woman can’t. And don’t ever forget for one moment that
the rules of the game apply just as rigidly to the other
women present as they do to the men.
The second rule is included because 1 have seen so
many women who handled the confrontation game with
casual ease in the usual team situation of one woman and
seventeen men, but were completely disoriented when
another woman joined the group. Please remember that
the other woman is not attacking you personally any more
than the men are. Like you, she is simply playing the
game as well as she can.
I have heard men say, with utter seriousness, “But it
wasn’t a lie at all—not in that situation.” Whether it was
true or not, they will explain solemnly, has nothing to do
with whether it was a lie. Women must learn to anticipate
tins orientation toward honesty and to take it into account
in planning verbal strategy.
(Later in this book you will find special chapters for
men and for women, where male-female differences in
verbal behavior will be discussed in more detail.)
When the totally abstract Section C move comes at
you, in business or in any other setting, your response
should take advantage of that abstractness. For example:

Opponent: Don’t you even care about the thousands of

people who go to bed hungry in this country
every night?

This is a low thing to say. Of course you care. The idea

that you don’t, that perhaps you sit at night stuffing your
face with chocolates and chuckling over the image of tiny
children crying with swollen bellies in the slums, giggling
over the elderly couple splitting a can of cat food for
dinner... that is repulsive. For somebody to accuse you

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 Don’t You Even Care...

of that is not to be looked upon as just a passing remark.

It’s arsenic in your potato salad, and unless it’s true it’s
inexcusable. The very last tiling you should do is stoop to
quibbling over how much you care. (A little bit. A whole
lot. A rating of 3.2 on a scale from I to 5.) DO NOT fall
FOR this. Instead, you say back

“Which study are you referring to on that, Dana? The

Calumet Institute Report or the one from the Borogrovian
Center for Social Research?”

And make them both up. And stoutly maintain, in the face
of all inquiries, that you are shocked to hear that your
opponent has not even read (the “even” is important!)
either of these two major studies. After all, you must point
out, if he or she really cared about hungry people, he
would at least take the trouble to keep up with the basic
literature on the subject!
Now, here5 are two practice sets for you to work on.
Sample scripts are
i at the end of the chapter.

CONFRONTATION SIX
Doctor: Don’t you even care about the effect your smoking
has on the health of your husband and children?
Patient:

Doctor:

Patient:

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 Don’t You Even Care...

(Who won?)

CONFRONTATION SEVEN
Mother: Don’t yon even care what your father will say
when he hears that you’re dropping out of school?
Don’t you even care about the way that will make
him feel?
Student:

Mother:

Student:

(Who won?)

75
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION C ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

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 Don’t You Even Care. ..

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

77
 Don't You Even Care...

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

78
 Don’t You Even Care. .

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION SIX
Doctor: Don’t you even care about the effect your smoking
has on the health of your husband and children?
Patient: Well, he smokes, too. Why don’t you talk to him
about smoking?
Doctor: Because he isn’t my patient. You are my patient.
Patient: Well, it’s not fair.

patient here has swallowed the bait, admitted by

default that she doesn’t care at all what her smoking does
to her family’s health (which is very unlikely to be true),
and has done her best to dump part of the blame on one
of the people she is accused of endangering. There are
worse ways of handling this, but not many.
•7Q
 Don't You Even Care...

Doctor: Don’t you even care about the effect your smoking
has on the health of your husband and children?
Patient: Yes, of course I care. You know perfectly well that
I care. And I resent very much your attempt to
make me feel even worse about it than I feel
already.
Doctor: Then why in the world do you keep on smoking?
Patient: Because, as you are also perfectly well aware, I
am addicted to cigarettes.

patient is winning, but not by the usual techniques.

The verbal confrontation between doctor and patient—and
especially between male doctor and female patient—is
one of the two or three trickiest interactions in the world
of communication, patient should be safe in Leveling
with the DOCTOR—that is why she goes to him, presum­
ably, to tell him the truth and pay him for using his
expertise to help her with whatever problems that truth
may involve, patient has tackled this situation head-on
and informed DOCTOR that she will not tolerate his attempt
to increase the guilt she already feels by asking her
questions to which he already knows the answers. She is
announcing, “I will not play that game.” Remember that
there probably exists no situation between any doctor and
patient in which the doctor does not hold the dominant
position. The usual rules don’t hold, as a result, and you
must be exceedingly careful.

Doctor: Don’t you even care about the effect your smoking
has on the health of your husband and children?
Patient: No. Why?
Doctor: Hmmmmm. [Makes a note in patient’s file.]
Patient: Well?

PATIENT is not only losing but is in big trouble.

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 Don’t You Even Care...

DOCTOR, because of his or her unique status in American

society, is not the proper person to try this on. Nor is any
doctor someone on whom to try dropping the names of
phony research on the dangers of smoking. DOCTOR, if
worth the money you’re spending, has read all the studies
and knows the facts, patient is going to end up in very
deep water with such maneuvers. In this example, the
note to patient’s file is likely to say something like this:
“Patient states that she is indifferent to the harm her
smoking may cause her family.” And it will be followed
by what DOCTOR thinks that indicates in terms of pa­
tient’s physical or emotional health, patient has goofed.

Doctor: Don’t you even care about the effect your smoking
has on the health of your husband and children?
Patient: You’ve been my doctor for six years now, if my
memory selves me right. When did you first start
thinking that I was indifferent to my family’s
health?
Doctor: After the fiftieth time I told you you had to cjuit
smoking, explained to you that you were endan­
gering not only your own health but that of every­
one in your family, and saw you go right on
smoking.
Patient: A doctor ought to know better than that. Does
your experience and research lead you to believe
that it’s possible to cure addictions by the use of
logical arguments? If so, the news has not yet
trickled down to the general public.

This is very well done, and PATIENT is—probably—

winning. There is always the outside possibility that DOC­
TOR will be so outraged at patient’s attempt to even up
the dominance relations between them slightly that he or
she will make a little note like this one: “Patient appears
belligerent when challenged on her refusal to comply with

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 Don't You Even Care.

medical orders to stop smoking.” But she is doing the best

that can be done under the circumstances.

confrontation seven
Mother: Don’t you even care what your father will say
when he hears that you’re dropping out of school?
Don’t you even care about the way that will make
him feel?
Student: No. Do you think I should care?
Mother: What kind of a monster are you, anyway? As hard
as your father has worked to pay for your educa­
tion, the tilings he’s done without-—how can you
sit there and face me and say that you don’t care?
Student: Because, Mother, it happens to be the truth. I’m
not all that proud of it, but it’s the truth. It was
Dad’s idea for me to go to college, not mine, and
it was a rotten idea to begin with. The sooner we
put it out of its misery, the better off everybody—
including Dad—will be.

This is properly done, although STUDENT may feel

miserable doing it. MOTHER here is doing a classic Blam­
ing attack and, if allowed to continue, will soon bring in
Dad’s heart condition and the time he walked five miles
through a blizzard to buy student something or other for
Christmas, and far on into the night. It has to be made
clear to her, as gently as possible, that this won’t work. If
student is telling the truth and the whole college scheme
was Dad’s idea and is never going to go anywhere but
downhill, then it should be brought to an end. It may
make Dad feel awful, but not as awful as he will feel if it
goes on. College is not what everyone wants or needs, nor
should it be; and if it is all wrong for this student, no
favors are being done to anyone by continuing to throw
good money (and energy) after bad. student is winning.

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 Don't You Even Care

Mother: Don’t you even care what your father will say
when he hears that you’re dropping out of
school? Don’t you even care about the way that
will make him feel?
Student: When did you start thinking I didn’t care anything
about Dad’s feelings, Mother?
Mother: When you stopped even pretending to do your
schoolwork and started spending all your time
lying around at parties and acting the way you
do.
Student: Then why don’t we talk about that? It’s obviously
what’s really bothering you.

It’s hard to know exactly where this will go—at the

moment we have a standoff. STUDENT has, quite properly,
questioned the presupposition instead of taking the bait.
MOTHER has responded with even more Blaming and has
accused STUDENT of several unpleasant things. STUDENT
would have been better off resisting the temptation to add
“It’s obviously what’s really bothering you” to the end of
the next move, in my opinion. This is likely to provoke
“Oh, you always think you know everything!” and turn
into a brawl instead of the reasonable discussion that is
needed.

Mother: Don’t you even care what your father will say
when he hears that you’re dropping out of school?
Don’t you even care about the way that will make
him feel?
Student: That’s a pretty common idea ... that someone
who drops out of school after their parents made
a lot of sacrifices just for that purpose isn’t even
bothered about it. But I never expected to hear
it from you, Mother.
Mother: Oh? Why not?

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 Don’t You Even Care .

Student: Because you’re not the kind of person who would

make that kind of stereotyped judgment, that s
why not.

Very well done. MOTHER has been complimented

thoroughly, the presupposition has been challenged, the
student is in a mild Computer Mode, and all is going as
it should. The next move is up to mother, who is going
to have to change strategies or look more foolish than she
probably cares to.

Mother: Don’t you even care what your father will say
when he hears that you’re dropping out of school?
Don’t you even care about the way that will make
him feel?
Student: Now you’re going to start laying all those guilt
trips on me, aren’t you?
Mother: I beg your pardon?
Student: First you’re going to tell me how hard you and
Dad worked to get me into college. Then you’re
going to tell me that you never took a vacation,
not even once, so there’d be enough money to
pay my tuition. Right? Then you’re going to start
on Dad’s heart condition, and how that’s all my
fault, and then, Mother darling, to finish it off,
you’re going to tell me that if I drop out of school,
it will kill him, and I’ll have that on my consci­
ence for the rest of my life. Arent you?

Now mother is going to tell student, with quan­

tities of ice, that he or she is contemptible. She has won,
and so long as STUDENT insists on this technique, she will
always win. This is a sad way to spend your life—please
don’t do it. At the time it feels wonderful, especially if you
have heard mother run through that particular speech

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 Don’t You Even Care. .

hundreds of times already. But the end results are not

worth die two or three minutes of gratification. You are
only reinforcing MOTHER in this pattern of verbal attack
by showing that it will work so well on you.

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 Section D Attacks

Even You
Should..

7
The most basic form of the Section D attack is not very
subtle and certainly should be hard to overlook. The very
first word is “Even,” and the strong stress on whatever
follows makes the fact that this is an attack unmistakable.
Notice that just the two words “Even you” all by them­
selves are an insult. If you try to think of some way to start
a sentence with “Even you” and finish it without having
insulted the person you’re speaking to, you’ll find it almost
impossible. The only examples I can imagine are sorrowful
statements of fact in Leveler Mode, such as “Even you
forgot to write your paper!” in which there is at least a

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 Even You Should.. .

hint that the speaker is surprised that someone like your­

self would do tliat. And it still is far from complimentary.
The basic pattern looks like this:

“Even (X) should (Y).”

ought to
could
would
might
can
may
must
will

That long list of items with “should” at the top is the set
of English modal auxiliaries. Like “even,” they pack an
astonishing amount ol information into a very small space.
We’ll come back to them shortly, but first let’s look at some
likely fillers for (X) and (Y):

“Even you
• a woman
• a seventh-grader
• a plumber
• someone your age
• someone who doesn’t care about his appearance
• a sophomore
• an uneducated person
• a second lieutenant
■. . should [or other modal]. ..
• be able to understand the basic facts of life.”
• appreciate the fact that money doesn’t grow on trees.”
• know that tenn papers have to be typed.”

87
 Your Personal Octagon

© Suzette Haden Elgin 1978

• realize that being fat is unhealthy.”

• be willing to put some effort into this job.”
• be able to remember that other people have rights, tc

Next let’s pick one combined example and analyze it

for its presuppositions.
“Even someone your age should know that term papers
have to be typed.”

This sentence has at least the following relevant presup­

positions:
88
 Even You Should...

1. Whatever your age is, there’s something wrong with being

that age—it’s not an age to be proud of.
2. The fact that term papers have to be typed is so well known
that for you not to know it is further proof of how inferior
you are.
3. You should feel very guilty and ashamed.

The worst possible response to this is of course to

take the bait—whatever was used to fill (Y)—and begin
discussing term papers and the typing of term papers.
Absolute losing responses go like this:

• “I always type my papers! But my typewriter broke, and it

was Sunday, and there was no way to get it fixed, and the
paper was due today, and today is Monday!” (This will
earn you a chilly lecture about waiting till the very last
minute to type your papers, learning to plan ahead so that
you never find yourself in a bind like that, and so on
forever.)
• “I don't see why they have to he typed as long as they are
neat and easy to read.” (You can’t win this, because it is
the teacher who sets up the requirements for paper format,
not you. You are in the position of a speeder arguing with
a policeman about what the speed limit ought to be.)
• “You never said they had to be typed!” (Oops. If you want
to be stomped on, this is certainly a good way to guarantee
it. The response will be, “The reason I did not say that
they had to be typed is because—as I have already pointed
out to you—even someone your age should know that term
papers have to be typed.” Not only was it necessary to
attack you verbally, you see, but it had to be done twice, in
duplicate, in order to get through to you—and you helped.
Please don’t do this. You can be absolutely positive that
although you may not have known about whatever it was
that filled the [Y] slot, it is something your opponent can
get away with claiming that you have no excuse not to
know about. If it weren’t something like that, it wouldn’t

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 Even You Should...

be appearing in this pattern. You are never going to hear a

sentence like this one, in which [Y] is filled by something
likely to be known only to specialists: “Even someone your
age should know that Mount Erebus is just over thirteen-
thousand feet high.”)

The first step in dealing with a Section D move is to

ignore the bait and identify the presuppositions; then
respond to them, not to the bait. Look at this sample
confrontation:

CONFRONTATION EIGHT
Husband: Even a woman ought to be able to change a flat
tire, you know.
Wife: I can change a flat tire, and just as well as any
man, too.
Husband: Sweetheart, there’s no need for that tone of
voice, or that look on .your face. Just because I
want to be sure you don’t find yourself stuck out
on some highway in the middle of nowhere.
Wife: Now wait just a minute, here. What exactly do
you mean by “that tone of voice” and “that look
on your face” anyway? You started this, you
know.
Husband: [With a look of total amazement] I started what?

wife here has no hope whatsoever and will very

shortly be told at some length about how impossible it is
to talk to her about anything, how touchy she is, how she
blows up over every little thing and imagines that HUS­
BAND is trying to pick fights. And then she will be apolo­
gizing and saying that she simply doesn’t know what on
earth is wrong with her. This is the Valium Trail, Begin­
ner’s Slope.
WIFE should go to Computer Mode, respond to the
presupposition, and maintain her stance, like this:

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 Euen You Should.. .

Husband: Even a woman ought to be able to change a flat

tire, you know.
Wife: The opinion that women are somehow inferior
to men is a rather common one—but I’m sur­
prised to hear it coming from you, darling.

This is a nonviolent tiling to say and should leave HUS­

BAND with some intricate maneuvering to do. It is gentle
and ends with a compliment, presupposing that husband
is not the sort of unsatisfactory person who would have
said what he just said and that it must have been a slip.
Perhaps he is not quite himself lately.
If a counterattack cannot be avoided, it goes this way:

Wife: The opinion that women are somehow inferior

to men is a rather common one in men your age,
darling—it’s nothing to be concerned about.

The crucial sequence is the phrase “in men your age,”

which can be filled in with anything to which you know
this person is vulnerable. If you have no idea, there is the
all-purpose filler “a rather common one in men in your
situation”; after all, he knows what his situation is, and
there is sure to be something about it that worries him.
He will fill in the missing piece for you.
The essential pattern of response to a Section D attack
is a complicated-looking arrangement:

“The opinion that... [fill in whatever is presupposed by

(X)]... is a rather.. .[fill in with an appropriate adjec­
tive—‘common’ ‘interesting,’ ‘typical’.]... one, but I am
surprised to hear it from you.”

Now I want to return to the modal auxiliaries, as

promised. They are very important in verbal self-defense,
and they include the following: “can,” “could,” “should,”

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 Even You Should...

“will,” “would,” “may,” “might,” “must,” “shall” (very

rare in American English). The auxiliary “should” often
surfaces as “ought to.”
The modals have several functions in English. One
of them is to let a speaker carry out what is called a speech
act, such as a command. This isn’t the function we’re
interested in, but to make the distinction clear, look at the
following pair of sentences:

• “John must leave.”

• “John must have left.”

The first is a kind of command, ordering John to leave;

the second is only a statement of the speaker’s opinion,
and it is this function that concerns us. The modals allow
a speaker to state an opinion or make a comment about all
the rest of the sentence in which they appear. If we had
to make this at least roughly explicit for “John must have
left” we would get a strange and pedantic utterance,
something like this:

“I the speaker, based upon all the knowledge and evidence

available to me at this moment, hereby state that it is my
opinion that John is no longer here.”

It would be both boring and awkward to have to go

through all that every time we wanted to express what the
modals express, and that makes them extremely useful.
They are small paragraphs, handily squashed into a single
word. But by the same token, because they have so much
content that is not obvious on the surface, it is important
to learn to pay close attention to them. For example:

• “You must leave” PRESUPPOSES that tine speaker has the

authority or the power to decide whether you stay or not.
• “You should leave” presupposes almost the same thing as

92
 Even You Should. . .

“must”—only kings and queens say, “You shall leave’ —

but does so more subtly, and is therefore the most common
modal in a Section D attack. It says something like this:
“Although I the speaker am not so arrogant as to actually
give you an order, based upon the knowledge and evidence
that I now have, it is clear that I have the right to suggest
that you leave; and it is very polite of me to put it this way
instead of just telling you to get out of here.”

That is a lot of buried content. If you accept it all

without protest, you may find that you’ve set a precedent
which will return to cause you much trouble later. Pay
attention to die modals; they are always important. Here
is a brief run-through of their presuppositions, without
quite so much elaboration, in order to clarify them. (As­
sume that each begins with “I the speaker hereby state
that. . . ”)

Stated. Presupposed.
“John can leave.” “John is able to leave.”
“John could leave.” “John is able to leave if
certain conditions are
met.”
“John should leave.” “It would be desirable
for John to leave.”
“John will leave.” “John is certain to
leave.”
“John would leave.” “John’s leaving could
be predicted with
certainty if certain
conditions were met.”
“John may leave.” “It’s possible that John
will leave.”
“John might leave.” “It’s possible that John
will leave.”
“John must leave.” “It’s necessary for John
to leave.”

93
 Euen You Should. .

(The distinction between “may” and “might” is

disappearing from contemporary American
English.)

People frequently soften the effect of their modals by

putting a question after them, like this:

“You should leave, don’t you think?”

What this does is express your opinion at the same time

that it offers the person you’re speaking to equal rights to
their own opinion, thus canceling out the relationship of
dominance and turning a concealed command into a slight­
ly more neutral utterance.
Now try the practice confrontations for this chapter.

CONFRONTATION NINE
Patient: Even a nurse ought to be able to tell that I’m
really in a lot of pain!
Nurse:

Patient:

Nurse:

(Who won?)

94
CONFRONTATION TEN
Friend 1: Even someone who really has no interest at all
in the feelings of other people should be willing
to make an effort once in a while!
Friend 2:

Friend 1:

Friend 2.

(Who won?)

95
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION D ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

96
 Even You Should .

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

97
 Even You Should. ..

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

98
 Even You Should. .

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I said

99
 Even You Should.

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION NINE
Patient: Even a nurse ought to be able to tell that I’m
really in a lot of pain!
Nurse: You know, it’s astonishing how many people still
feel, after all these years, that nurses have no
training at all. What do you suppose accounts for
that?
Patient: Do nurses have a lot of training?
Nurse: Well, first we have to finish four whole years of

100
 Even You Should...

undergraduate work—and lots of times it takes

five because of extra requirements. And then we
have to pass state examinations.

NURSE is handling this very well; and with a patient

who is in pain, winning and losing is not relevant. The
point is to reassure PATIENT, who may actually be afraid
that nurse doesn’t know how to do anything but fill out
charts and stick people with needles and who wants a
doctor at once. It the patient is in pain (and the proper
assumption should be that he or she is, until there is
evidence to the contrary), NURSE is also helping with that
problem. Distracting patient with an abstract discussion
of nursing training is useful here. If, while he or she is
talking to patient, nurse is also having to do unpleasant
tilings with tubes or needless or other medical apparatus,
all distraction is to the good.

Patient: Even a nurse ought to be able to tell that I’m

really in a lot of pain!
Nurse: There’s nothing wrong with being a nurse, sir.
Nurses are skilled professionals.
Patient: Oh, yeah? I came in here hurting like the devil,
and what you’re doing hurts worse than what I
came in with, and you either call a doctor right
now or I’m walking out of this place before one of
you “professionals” finishes me off!
Nurse: You’re free to leave if you like, sir, but I do not
have to listen to any more of your insults, and I
don’t intend to.

This is an unfortunate mess. People who are sick and

in pain are not at their most reasonable to begin with, and
nurses assuredly do know that. This nurse is now engaged
in an undignified and unprofessional row with a patient;

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 Even You Should. .

and whether the patient deserves it or not is unimportant.

It need never have happened.
NURSE was correct to respond to the presupposition—
that being a nurse is somehow second-rate, something to
be ashamed of. But NURSE has forgotten to respond with
a neutral question or remark; there is nothing neutral
about the move made in response to the Section D attack.
If the patient does not happen to be a “skilled profes­
sional” himself, it has gone beyond the level of non­
neutrality and become an insult. Bad form, and nowhere
to go but downhill, patient will complain about this
nurse, no matter how skillful and efficient the care provid­
ed, and die already low opinion PATIENT has of nurses in
general has now been given a strong reinforcement that
will be no help in the future.

Patient: Even a nurse ought to be able to tell that I’m

really in a lot of pain!
Nurse: Ma’am, have you always thought that nurses didn’t
really know what they were doing?
Patient: Look, are you insinuating that I was trying to
insult you? Because if you were, you’ve picked the
wrong person to try that on!
Nurse; Ma’am, I was only trying to help. If I’ve offended
you, I’m sorry.

This is an example of using more force than the

situation requires—the question nurse asks is not really
neutral. It comes too close to accusing patient of having
said that nurses don’t know what they’re doing, patient
is in pain and may be frightened as well; furthermore, she
appears to be somewhat touchy. For NURSE to switch to
Placater Mode in an attempt to correct the mistake is only
going to increase patient’s lack of confidence.
It is a good idea to remember that most people who
begin with “Even a nurse” are not contrasting nurses with

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 Even You Should.. .

all other possible sets of individuals in the universe.

Usually what is meant is “Even a nurse” as compared
with a doctor. The traditional mystique that has doctors
carrying the power of life and death and nurses carrying
bedpans is something that patients may not be aware they
feel. It is strongly reinforced by the images of doctors and
nurses on television, in movies, and in written materials,
starting with the first reading text in elementary school in
which the nurse is always a respectful female doing minor
things in attendance on a forceful male doctor who is
doing important things. Any nurse is going to have to
contend with this, and it might just as well be looked upon
as one of Life’s Burdens, along with heavy traffic, bad
weather, taxes, diaper rash, and whatever else you want to
put on the list. Being defensive about it will not help
matters, even though it may be wholly justified.

Patient: Even a nurse ought to be able to tell that I’m

really in a lot of pain!
Nurse: You’re absolutely right, and I’m going to do some­
thing about it just as quickly as possible.
Patient: I’m sorry ... I guess I’m not being very pleasant.
Nurse: Anybody who is in pain is likely to be a little bit
on edge. No problem.

In this example NURSE has ignored the fact that

patient’s opening utterance contained an insulting pre­
supposition and has agreed with it as if it had been made
neutrally. (Whether a particular patient deserves this sort
of treatment or is a chronically abusive one who needs no
further encouragement of bad habits is a decision that has
to be made for each individual case.) patient has reacted
well, and NURSE has not rubbed patient’s nose in the
apology. The immediate switch by NURSE in the second
move from the individual patient to the abstract “any­
body who is in pain” is an easy way to accomplish this. To

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 Even You Should.. .

have said back, “Oh, the only reason you insulted me is

because you are in pain, and I don’t pay any attention to
that kind of tiling” would have been a much inferior way
of going about this. It would smack of “Me, Noble Profes­
sional; You, Primitive Patient.” NURSE has demonstrated
considerable skill by the speed with which the focus of
the confrontation was removed from the already embar­
rassed patient and placed on an abstraction.

CONFRONTATION TEN
Friend 1: Even someone who really has no interest at all
in the feelings of other people should be willing
to make an effort once in a while!
Friend 2: When did you start drinking I don’t have any
interest in other people’s feelings?
Friend 1: You don’t. It’s obvious to anybody. You just don’t
care about anything but yourself!
Friend 2: Like I said, when did you start feeling this way?

friend 1 here is determined to remain in Blamer

Mode and is not going to be distracted by FRIEND 2’s
neutral question. Whatever it is that’s bothering FRIEND 1
is going to have to be brought out in the open eventually,
and all FRIEND 2 can do is hang in there. The chances are
about 9 to 1 in a confrontation like this that shortly—if
friend 2 can remain calm and in Computer Mode—
friend 1 will bring up a specific incident: a forgotten
birthday, a remark overheard somewhere or repeated to
friend 1 by someone else and interpreted as an insult,
something that has been festering and needs to be talked
out. The goal, if you value the friendship, should be to
work this into a Leveler Mode so that you and friend 2
can get to the bottom of the matter and be rid of it.

Friend 1: Even someone who really has no interest at all

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 Even You Should...

in die feelings of other people should be willing

to make an effort once in a while!
Friend 2: When did you start thinking I don’t have any
interest in other people’s feelings?
Friend 1: Yesterday. When I needed you in that meeting,
and you just sat there and watched me go down
the tubes.
Friend 2: Want to get some coffee and talk about it?

FRIEND 2, if he or she is paying close attention, will

have a temptation to fight off here. The bait in this Section
D has a presupposition that friend 1 never makes an
effort to consider other people’s feelings. Then here comes
this single incident from only yesterday, and the tempta­
tion will be strong to say something like “I thought you
said I never ...” and so on. If you do that, however,
FRIEND 1 will begin dredging up other incidents, valid or
ridiculous, and you’ll be into a Blamer-Blamer confronta­
tion, headed nowhere. Resist the temptation and try to
make the one incident the subject of your conversation.
If your invitation for coffee and talk is turned down,
what do you do? Just say, “Okay,” and let it go. There’ll
be another time to mend the fences if you want to mend
them. Do not Placate and beg friend 2—one invitation to
Level is quite enough.

Friend 1: Even someone who really has no interest at all

in the feelings of other people should be willing
to make an effort once in a while!
Friend 2: Why do you suppose you think I don’t have any
interest in other people’s feelings?
Friend 1: Because of the way you act.
Friend 2: For instance ...

Again, you are after a specific and concrete incident

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 Even You Should..
!
to discuss, instead of this vast general accusation, and you
are doing it properly. Be careful of body language and
intonation here, however. If you sound belligerent with
your “For instance,” if you come across like a child saying,
“Name me just one time, just one time, I dare you!” It’s
not going to work. The goal is a neutral discussion, and
Computer Mode (both verbal and nonverbal) is indicated.
Be sure that you do not end tire “For instance” with a
question mark—“For instance?” Let the phrase fall cas­
ually and wait.

Friend 1: Even someone who really has no interest at all

in the feelings of other people should be willing
to make an effort once in a while!
Friend 2: Have you always felt that way about me? /
thought we were friends!
Friend 1: If we weren’t friends, would I be bothering with
this?
Friend 2: Well, if it’s such a bother, don't! I don’t need
your comments on my character, thanks.

This is what happens when, after asking your question

in response to a presupposition, you cannot resist throwing
in a little bit extra. FRIEND 2 might get back “We are
friends, and no, I haven’t always felt this way,” and so on
into a productive discussion. On the other hand, things
may go as in the example, and by throwing out that bait—
“/ thought we were friends!”—friend 2 leaves himself
or herself wide open for escalation of the attack. Be sure
it’s worth the risk before you do this sort of thing. Notice
the presuppositions in the tag line, friend 1 will hear,
“I thought we were friends, but obviously I was mistaken
and you’re not my friend at all.” It’s the heavy stress on
“I” and “friends” that guarantees that.

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 Section E Attacks

Everyone
Understands
Why You..

8
There are two basic patterns for the Section E attack. The
first uses the undefined term “everyone” and looks like
this:

“Everyone understands why you (X).”

Possible items to fill the (X) are like these:

“Everyone understands why you

• are so emotional.”
• are so confused.”
• are so hysterical.”

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 Everyone Understands Why You

• really haven’t been yourself lately.”

• are convinced that you have a physical illness.”
• cannot bring your sales up to normal.”
• really cannot function adequately in a Ph.D. prognun.”
• are having so much trouble adjusting to military life, (to
life in the dorms; to this class; to your marriage.)”

The other basic pattern simply makes the “everyone”

more specific, replacing it with a sequence that applies to
a particular group and includes the person spoken to, like
this:
• “All the other members of the staff understand ...”
® “Every student in this program understands ...”
• “Every nurse on this floor understands ...”
• “All of the men/women who have to work with you under­
stand ...”

This opening is then followed by the items in (X), as in

the more simple pattern. It is also possible to throw
modals into the mix, giving us such monstrosities as

“No one in this department with even a shred of common

decency could possibly fail to understand why you are
having so much trouble meeting our standards, Ms./Mr.
Smith.”

Here we have presuppositions piled and stacked and

coming out of the woodwork. This is not a beginner’s
move, and it can be extremely difficult to handle. This is
particularly true because it usually comes at you in a
situation in which you have been called in to face the
other person in isolation, and in which that other person
can easily set up a surface facade offender, loving concern
for you by the bucket—yet it is really an attack, and is

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 Your Personal Octagon

© Suzettc Haden Elgin 1978

often a vicious one. The Section E attack is likely to leave

a beginner feeling beaten and bewildered and resentful,
and absolutely unable to understand why he or she has
reacted so strangely to this person who has just been so
kind.
From your work with the earlier sections of the Oc­
tagon, it will be apparent to you that the bait—the part to
be ignored—is what appears on the surface, filling the (X)
slot in the pattern. You do not, under any circumstances,
want to make replies like these:
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 Everyone Understands Why You..

“Anybody who is saying that I am emotional is completely

out of line, and I want that understood. In no way am I
emotional [or confused or hysterical].”
“What do you mean, ‘everyone understands’? If there are
people in this office [or dormitory, or barracks] talking
about me and calling me names, I’m not surprised; but it’s
those people who have problems, not me.”

Responses like these, even if they are absolutely true,

even if you are an island of serene competence in a sea of
chaos, are only going to sound more and more as if you
were—as you are claimed to be—emotional or unable to
cope or confused. Everything you say along these lines
will get you in deeper and deeper; if you are a woman or
elderly or in any way disabled, you might just as well go
play in heavy traffic on the highway and be done with it:
You’d be in better shape afterward.
Equally futile and foolish is an attempt to argue that
you can meet your sales quotas or pass your comprehensive
examinations or whatever it is being alleged in (X) that
you can’t do. And this sort of futile foolishness is exactly
what the person attacking you expects to encounter.
The real danger of a Section E is in these presuppo­
sitions:

• “There is something very wrong with you.”

• “This ‘something wrong’ is well known to everyone around
you.”
• “This something wrong is so wrong that we are all more
than willing to forgive you for (X).”
• “You should be very, very grateful to all of us for being so
perceptive and so understanding.”
• “You should be very, very ashamed of yourself.”

Personally I would rather be socked once than have

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 Everyone Understands Why You .

all this dumped on me and not know how to handle it.

The child who begs to be spanked rather than lectured to
understands this quite clearly.
Remember, on pages 35, 54, and 91, the counterat­
tacks that were described for emergency use only? Re­
member the discussion on page 91 of ways to proceed
when you don’t know precisely where your opponent is
vulnerable? Section E attacks are based upon this same
mechanism, which is one of the fundamental truths:

Everybody in the whole world has something he or she

looks upon as a dirty little secret and would hate for
anybody else to know about.

Anyone using these moves, even with no idea at all what

your particular hidden-away and gnawed-over secret is,
can count on the fact that you know or think you know.
And they can count on your reacting to “a person in your
situation” or to "Everyone understands why you (X)” with
this thought: “Oh, no! Everybody knows about IT!"
It’s most unlikely that they know about your personal
IT. I assure you, that’s hue. Whether it is your sexual
preferences or the fact that you once stole three dollars
from petty cash and have never put it back; whether it is
that you are a bigamist or were arrested nine years ago for
participating in a political demonstration or running a red
light and have been lying about that; whether, as in the
vast majority of people I come across, it is only a feeling
that your thighs are lumpy or that you’re too short, it makes
no difference. True, if you’ve done something really awful
and done it blatantly, it may have come to light. But
usually that has not happened. Usually the person using
a Section E is simply counting on you to fill in the secret
IT from your personal knowledge and fall apart about it.
That is what ordinarily happens.

Ill
 Everyone Understands Why You .. .

I have seen a student, once or twice, fall right into

this trap and blurt out something like “Oh, no! How did
you find out that I cheated on that test?” even though the
instructor had never suspected anything of the kind. Don’t
do that, please. If you have something to confess, the time
for confessing may come along later, and you may have a
moral decision to make about that. But this is not the time.
Not yet. Not when you don’t know what you’re up against.
Which leads us to what you can safely do. There is a
beginner’s move that has a high safety factor and requires
little effort. It will come as a great surprise to your attacker.

Other Person: Everyone understands why you (X).

You: How very kind of them. I’m deeply
touched.

A response of this kind leaves your attacker in a curious

position—if you do it properly; that is, if you sound sincere,
calm, and mildly interested in what is coming next. You
have now presupposed, you see, that you and the attacker
and all the members of the mysterious “everyone” (or
specified group) share your secret. And if this person
you’re dealing with is working from ignorance, as is typi­
cal, he or she is going to have the communication problem
now, not you. This defense is one you can memorize, just
as you memorized “Pardon me” for when you bumped into
somebody. Use it, and then sit back and wait, looking
calm, and mildly interested.
More advanced elaborations of this defense are re­
sponses such as the following:

“The company [or dormitory, or therapy group, or whatev­

er] that is able to achieve a spirit of community such as
that evidenced by what you have just said to me is un­
doubtedly rare, and a credit to your leadership. One can

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 Everyone Understands Why You .

only feel sympathy for other groups in which that spirit is

lacking.”

You’ll recognize this as straight Computer Mode, as a

response not to the bait but to the presuppositions, as a
complete denial that you feel or should feel any guilt (or
any gratitude) other than a kind of neutrally polite appre­
ciation of “their” good manners; and it is very hard to
follow it up with something nasty back at you. Further­
more, you will recognize it as a move away from the
personal and dangerous one-on-one situation that opened
the exchange to a much safer discussion of an abstract
issue—that is, the “spirit of community” and its various
ramifications. (If “spirit of community” is not appropriate,
by the way, insert whatever chunk of jargon does fit your
situation.)
Your attacker has of course been complimented at
great length. What may amaze you is how much of this you
can lay on, and how thickly you can lay it on, without it
being recognized for the shuck it is. People in power,
especially if they enjoy using Section E moves, can swal­
low an incredible amount of this sort of tiling if you keep
it in Computer Mode. How far you want to carry it depends
on how strong your own stomach is and how skilled you
are at judging your opponent’s limits. The example seems
to me to go about as far as you should either need or want
to go. However, it’s important for you to be aware that the
reaction to your remarks is not as likely to be that you are
toadying as you would think. The Section E user is often
almost lusting to hear about his or her great abilities as a
leader, or potential as a scholar or administrator.
I want to introduce one concept here, very briefly,
because it is such an important characteristic of Computer
Mode and has been used in the expanded defense move
in this chapter. It’s called the nominalization, and its

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 Everyone Understands Why You . ..

function in verbal encounters is to hide away what is

actually being said. Obviously, for you to say to the Section
E attacker, flatly and baldly, “You are a great leader,”
would be sickening. It wouldn’t work, despite what you
see happening in television situation comedies. (At least
I hope it wouldn’t; I hope nobody is that naive and still in
a position to use Section E’s on you.) But you do want to
slip that remark in there, where Ms./Mr. Jones will hear
it without quite realizing where it came from. You do that
by nominalization. Look at these following examples:

1. a. “The students • cheated on their final exam.”

b. “The students’ cheating on their final exam • distressed
the entire faculty.”
2. a. “Elizabeth • is careless with her children.”
b. “Elizabeth’s carelessness with her children • must have
some reasonable explanation.”
3. a. “Bob • is cruel to animals.”
b. “Bob’s cruelty to animals • is something that none of us
who know and admire him can understand.”

In each of the (a) examples a flat statement has been

made, an open and overt claim. It appears in the predicate*
of the utterance (to the right of the dot), and the burden of
its proof is on the speaker. Anyone listening can legiti­
mately demand that proof. In the (b) examples, however,
the only claims being made on the surface are those that
appear in the predicates, and they are things that are not
likely to outrage the listener. The hidden claims have
been nominalized and moved into the subject of the
sentence, where they are now only presupposed. That is,

* In English, the term “predicate” covers a wide range of things, including

verbs and adjectives.

114
 Everyone Understands Why You

“The students cheated” presupposes that the students

exist and claims openly that they cheated. “The students’
cheating distressed the faculty” presupposes the existence
of the cheating and claims only that it distressed the
faculty. This is an ancient technique of the political
speech, the propaganda message, and the sales pitch, and
you need to recognize it when it’s coming at you, even if
it goes by very fast.
Nominalization means only turning a “verby” thing
into a “nouny” thing. Some verby things have special
forms for this process in English. For example:

careful carefulness
abandon abandonment
patriotic becomes patriotism
resign resignation

Any item can be nominalized, however, just by adding

“-ing” and, in most cases, a possessive marker of some
kind. The examples that follow should make this clear:

4. a. Bill • burned down the building.

b. Bill’s burning down the building • was unfortunate.
5. a. He • smokes.
b. His smoking • came as a surprise to me.
6. a. For anybody to cheat • is unwise.
b. Cheating • is unwise.

In example 6(b) you will notice that there is no

possessive marker, such as “Bill’s” or “his.” The person
or persons doing the cheating have been eliminated from
the utterance completely, and the abstract action—cheat­
ing—appears as the nominalization. This is Computer
Mode at its most advanced and is used frequently to create

115
 Everyone Understands Why You. .

symbols either to rally round or protest against, as the case

may be.
The more nominalizations you are able to use in
Computer Mode, or any mode, the more chunks of mean­
ing you will be able to hide away as presuppositions. In
Computer Mode it should almost never be necessary for
you to make any open claim that could be objected to; that
is why Computers never seem to take a stand on any issue.
They constantly nominalize and then tack on a completely
innocuous predicate. This is a technique to be practiced
until you feel absolutely at ease with it and something you
should watch for until it is impossible for anyone to slip a
nominalization past you unnoticed.

Here are your sample confrontations for tins chapter.

In working with them, try to use nominal izations when­
ever they can be fit in.

CONFRONTATION ELEVEN
(Note: For this particular exercise, assume that the “secret”
worrying the employee, a part-time saleswoman, is her
personal conviction that she is overweight and that other
people perceive her as being fat.)

Employer: Dear, everyone understands why you are hav­

ing so much difficulty finding a place for your­
self in this job. We really do understand.
Employee:

Employer:

116
 Everyone Understands Why You .

Employee:

(Who won?)

CONFRONTATION TWELVE
(Note: Try approaching this exercise with different com­
binations of gender for Doctor and Patient in mind.)

Doctor: I want you to know that every one of the doctors

you have seen—and that includes myself—under­
stands why you are so convinced that you have a
physical disease instead of an emotional problem.
Patient:

Doctor:

Patient:

(Who won?)

117
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION E ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

118
 Everyone Understands Why You . .

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

119
 Everyone Understands Why You

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

IM
 Everyone Understands Why You . . .

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What 1 Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION ELEVEN
Employer: Dear, everyone understands why you are hav­
ing :;o much difficulty finding a place for your­
self in this job. We really do understand.
Employee: How kind of everyone. I appreciate their con­
cern.
Employer: Well, it includes me, too, you know. I under­
stand, too.
Employee: It’s certainly gratifying to know that.

This is properly done. Now employer is going to

have to come right out and say what it is that “everyone”
understands or else take another tack entirely. And EM-
121
 Everyone Understands Why You

ployee should do nothing to help employer out of this

bind.

Employer: Dear, everyone understands why you are hav­

ing so much difficulty finding a place for your­
self in this job. We really do understand.
Employee: That’s not at all surprising. The teain spirit here
is obvious, and something for which you are to
be congratulated.
Employer: Well, thank you.... I appreciate that.
Employee: Not at all. I believe in giving credit where it is
due.

Having been complimented three times in succes­

sion, EMPLOYER is going to sound foolish if the next move
is an accusation or a complaint. So far, EMPLOYEE is
winning.

Employer: Dear, everyone understands why you are hav-

ing so much difficulty finding a place for your­
self in tins job. We really do understand.
Employee: Just because I’m fat, Ms. O’Donahue, does not
mean that I can’t handle my job. Fat people are
just like any other kind of people—they’re a
little larger, that’s all.
Employer: Really, dear, if you are so sensitive about your
weight—to the extent that you let it interfere
with your job performance—don’t you think you
should pull yourself together and go on a diet?
Employee: I have tried that. I’ve tried every diet that was
every invented, and they do no good at all.
That’s not the point! The point is that accusing
me of being no good at my job just because I’m
fat is unfair.
 Everyone Understands Why You ..

This is a disaster. For one thing, employee has now

given EMPLOYER the full details about where to jab if she
wants to hurt her, something that EMPLOYER may not have
had any suspicion of up to this point. For another, em­
ployee is now wide open for a new attack: “If you really
wanted to lose weight, you’d be able to,” and all that goes
with that. If employer is looking for a perfect victim, she
has found one.

Employer: Dear, everyone understands why you are hav­

ing so much difficulty finding a place for your­
self in this job. We really do understand.
Employee: How perceptive of them—and how nice of you
to mention it.
Employer: Well . . . that’s not really what I wanted to talk
to you about.
Employee: Oh, sorry. Nothing like a misunderstanding to
start off a c: .
conversation! Why don’t we start
over?

employee has done this very well and is now in as

much command of the situation as is possible, given the
fact that she is the employee and has little in the way of
power to use. If employer now moves to straight Blamer
Mode and starts criticizing employee’s job performance
which is likely—she will do so on a footing of less domi­
nance and will have to lay her cards on the table. No
matter how things go, this is a few points for employee.
Notice, too, that by using the nominalization “a misunder­
standing,” EMPLOYEE has carefully avoided any claim as
to who misunderstood whom. This is an ingenious touch.

CONFRONTATION TWELVE
(In the examples that follow, all possible combinations of
gender have been used for doctor and patient. This is
because the gender difference in the DOCTOR-PATIENT
 I
Everyone Understands Why You . . .

situation has such a drastic effect upon the entire confron-

tation.)

Doctor (male): I want you to know, Miriam, that every one

of the doctors you have seen—and that
includes myself—understands why you are
so convinced that you have a physical dis­
ease instead of an emotional problem.
Patient: Do they? I’m sure the support of one’s
peers is always reassuring in situations of
this kind, Doctor.
Doctor: I’m not sure you understood what I was
trying to say to you, Miriam.
Patient: That is of course possible, [patient waits
with an expression of neutral interest.]

In this situation you cannot, as patient, express your

gratitude or appreciation for doctor’s statement, no mat­
ter how many other doctors agree with him. Since you
don’t agree, that would be absurd and would reinforce his
conviction that you have emotional problems. PATIENT
here is probably at a number of disadvantages: For exam­
ple, doctor is dressed, while patient is either naked or
wearing a paper gown; DOCTOR is addressed by title,
while patient gets first-name treatment; DOCTOR is male,
PATIENT is female; and so on. Under the circumstances,
patient is well advised to go to Computer Mode and
attempt to adjust the unequal dominance situation a bit,
and that is what she has done. DOCTOR is going to have to
be a good deal more specific.

Doctor (male): I want you to know, Harry, that every one

of the doctors you have seen—and that
includes myself—understands why you are

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 Everyone Understands Why You . . .

so convinced that you have a physical dis­

ease instead of an emotional problem.
Patient: The way that doctors are always able to
agree on every issue is an amazing phe­
nomenon. One wonders what the medical
profession would be like without that de­
termination to hang together at all costs.
Doctor: Oh, I think that impression of doctors is
very much exaggerated.
Patient: Hmmmm. Interesting.

So far, PATIENT is way out in front. DOCTOR has just

questioned the idea that the consensus opinion of a group
of doctors is necessarily inevitable, which is some distance
away from the question of whether patient’s problem is
physical or emotional. It is now doctor’s move, and he
will either have to pursue this unrelated topic, or retrace
his moves and begin again, or choose some totally different
strategy, patient has maintained Computer Mode through-
out the entire exchange and is in a strong position.

Doctor (female): I want you to know, Miriam, that every

one of the doctors you have seen—and
that includes myself—understands why
you are so convinced that you have a
physical disease instead of an emotional
problem.
Patient: That’s to be expected, under the circum­
stances; it would be unrealistic to antic­
ipate a lack of agreement.”
Doctor: You’re not surprised, then?
Patient: If you expected me to be surprised, Doc­
tor, I am surprised. Perhaps I misunder­
stood your first remark.

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 Everyone Understands Why You . . .

PATIENT is doing very well here. They are fencing,

she and DOCTOR, and where this may lead is impossible
to predict. However, the first response patient made,
with the phrase “under the circumstances,” was an excel­
lent move, doctor has presupposed that everyone (that
is, the set of doctors patient has seen) knows something
about patient, which justifies the claim that is being
made, patient has replied with an utterance presuppos­
ing that she knows something, too, and can at least hope
that DOCTOR is wondering what it is.

Doctor (female): I want you to know, Harry, that every

one of the doctors you have seen—and
that includes myself—understands why
you are so convinced that you have a
physical disease instead of an emotional
problem.
Patient: Yeah? Well, I want you to know, Doctor,
that I am damned sick and tired of hear­
ing that. I’ve heard it from ten men who
called themselves doctors, and I thought
from a woman doctor I might at least get
a different opening line, for crying out
loud. Thanks for nothing, Doctor.
Doctor: Harry, try to listen to me reasonably,
would you? I’m not saying you’re not
sick, and I’m not saying your pain isn’t
real; and neither are the other doctors.
We’re simply trying to tell you that the
problem you have is not the kind of thing
that can be helped by medicine.
Patient: And I am saying that you’re all wrong,
Doctor. And if I have to go to a hundred
doctors before I find one that knows
something, I will.

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 Everyone Understands Why You

patient is losing, of course, and can’t win. It makes

no difference whether he is right or wrong about his
condition. He may very well be sitting there with a
genuine organic disease that can and should be treated
medically—for example, a gallbladder that ought to be
removed. It doesn’t matter. His verbal behavior in this
confrontation is only going to reinforce DOCTOR’S image
of him as an overemotional person with little self-control
who trudges from doctor to doctor in search of one who
will agree with his personal diagnosis. That may be unjust,
and even dangerous to patient, but it is the way things
are.
Doctor-Patient confrontations are rather special, be­
cause of the privileged position and status that physicians
have in American society, and because—unlike the situa­
tion in most confrontations—the doctor often has the
power of life and death over the patient. This tends to
make the confrontations highly charged with overtones
that would be absent in almost any other setting.

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 Section F Attacks

A Person
Who ..

9
The Section F move has an absurdly trivial-looking basic
pattern. It goes this:

“A person who (X) (Y).”

Its danger lies in those characteristics that make it look so

boringly simple, that is, that it offers neither restrictions
nor information. It is in full Computer Mode, referring to
some unknown “person” rather than directly to the listen­
er. And almost anything may be used to fill (X) and (Y),
which makes it a versatile attack that can turn up in almost
any imaginable situation.
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 A Person Who .

Possible ways to fill the empty (X) are listed below:

“A person who
• really wanted to (Z) ...”
• has serious emotional problems ...”
• doesn’t even care about (Z)...”
• has limited perceptions ...”
• always puts other people last...”
• has no interest in achieving anything meaningful . . . ”

Notice that these are stacked, attack inside attack, and

that a new empty slot can be put inside some of them with
no difficulty at all. For example, we could fill (Z) in the
first example like this:

“A person who really wanted to

• get through boot camp ...”
• be accepted by this fraternity ... ”
• gain weight...”
• get well ...”
• get along with other people ...”
• pass this course ...”

Similarly, the other example with a (Z) could be “A

person who doesn’t even care about their grades ...” and
so on.
Now, we can take one example from the lists to serve
as the “A person who (X)” section and look at ways of
filling term (Y) in the basic pattern.

“A person who really wanted to pass this course

• would be careful to always arrive in class on time.”
• would never turn in a paper that had not been prop­
erly researched and immaculately typed.”
• would realize that at least six hours of outside work
are required for every class meeting and would be
willing to put in those hours.”
• would not ask a stupid question like that one!”
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 A Person Who. ..

If we now take just one of these and look at its

primary presuppositions, we will (at last) have searched
out most of the nooks and crannies of that innocent-looking
“A person who (X) (Y)” that we started with. Let’s use this
sentence:

“A person who really wanted to pass this course would

never turn in a paper that had not been properly researched
and immaculately typed.”

Your Personal Octagon

© Suzette Haden Elgin 1978

 A Person Who

The presuppositions are

• “There is a set of persons who really want to pass this

course—and you are not one of that set.”
• “Your paper has not been properly researched.”
• “Your paper has not been immaculately typed.”

The bait is the claim that your paper is badly researched

and typed. But an immediate response to that bait, such as

“Dr. Lopez, I spent almost six weeks researching that

paper, and it was typed according to the style sheet you
specified for this class yourself!”

is even more stupid than usual. You, personally, have not

been openly accused by Dr. Lopez, who can be counted
on to inform you of that fact like this:

"Mr. Martin—I do not recall having even mentioned your

paper, your research, or your typing.”

This statement is accurate and will make you look both

conceited and foolish. Let’s put this one through a few
more moves.

CONFRONTATION THIRTEEN
Dr. Lopez: A person who really wanted to pass this course
would never turn in a paper that had not been
properly researched and immaculately typed.
Student. Dr. Lopez, I spent almost six weeks researching
that paper, and it was typed according to the
style sheet you specified for this class yourself!
Dr. Lopez: Mr. Martin—I do not recall having even men­
tioned your paper, your research, or your typing.
Student: But that’s what you meant! I mean, you may

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 A Person Who .

not have said it right out in so many words, but

that is what you meant!
Dr. Lopez: It is astonishing how many students one en­
counters who are convinced of their ability to
read their professors’ minds, Mr. Martin. To
find you included in that group is not particu­
larly reassuring.

As you can see, student hasn’t a prayer. Nothing

that he can say will do anything but provide the professor
with additional opportunities to humiliate him. Mr. Martin
has conceded, without even a struggle, that he doesn’t
really care anything about passing the course, and is busily
engaged in proving that with every word that comes out
of his mouth. He should extricate himself from this some­
how, but doing it gracefully would be a major project, and
we won’t take it up at this time. Just thanking DR. LOPEZ
for his time and fleeing will suffice for the moment.
There are two ways to respond to a Section F attack
without being trampled into the earth like the unfortunate
Mr. Martin. The first is one of those memorizable-for-
emergency-use sequences, and it goes like this:

"That seems perfectly reasonable.”

Think about this now. Someone has said to you that a

person who really wanted to pass the course would do
certain things. When you reply with “That seems perfectly
reasonable,” what have you accomplished?
Provided you have done this right, with neutral voice
and expression, and in full Computer Mode, you have
flatly denied that you are the “a person” being referred to.
Since a Section F depends on the attacker being able to
maintain the position that he or she has never claimed that
you were that person, this goes a long way toward defusing
the situation. Secondly, you, like your opponent, have
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 A Person Who .

made no reference whatsoever to your paper, your re­

search, or your typing. Furthermore, you have—on the
surface—agreed with every word being said to you. The
professor now has only two choices. He can switch to a
much less impressive technique and accuse you outright,
like this:
“Then will you please explain to me why your paper is
abominably researched and looks as if it had been typed
by a chimpanzee?”
Or alternatively, he can move to a continuing abstract
discussion of research and typing of papers by persons
unknown and carry that on at any length he wishes, always
in Computer Mode. And student should do precisely the
same thing until escape becomes possible or desirable.
All ol which brings us to an interesting point.
There are exceptions, of course, depending upon skill
and context and many other real-world factors. But as a
basic rule of thumb, we can say that except for Levelers,
any confrontation between two individuals using the same
Satir Mode will not go anywhere useful. More individuals
added to the group, also using the same Satir Mode, will
make the results no more productive. The fact that most
individuals on committees carry on the entire meeting in
Computer Mode is probably the major reason why any­
thing accomplished by a committee takes so long and is so
minor in relation to the amount of energy and resources
poured into the undertaking.
Placating at a Placater is an endless waste of time;
Blaming at a Blamer always means a shouting match that
degenerates into total futility; Distracting at a Distractor
is an interaction between two chaoses, and the result
cannot even be referred to as communication. Two Com­
puters talking to one another sound better—and in fact,
often sound as if something significant were taking place—
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 A Person Who. .

but very little actually happens. One of the priceless

survival skills in the academic world (and elsewhere, I
suspect) is the ability to utter sequences in Computer
Mode, within the field of discussion, for almost any length
of time and at a moment’s notice, without ever saying
anything with significant content. For example:

“There appears to be a significant probability, provided all

parameters are maximized to their fullest potential within
the constraints of demographic variance, that none of the
anticipated data will demonstrate behavior atypical of that
which one might encounter within the less constrained
environment of either the behavioral objectives, so to
speak, or the derivationally motivated contingency. This is
of course somewhat oversimplified, but its implications
need not be belabored, since they will be obvious to all of
you, and you need only refer to the relevant literature
(which, I might add, is abundant) for further details.”

I put that together myself; I can go on like that

without a pause for hours at a time if need be. And so far
as I myself can determine, if the sequence has any mean­
ing at all it is entirely accidental. If I face an academic
group and go through that sequence with a straight face,
behaving as if I thought it meant something, I can be quite
confident of the response. People will take notes (the
content of which I cannot imagine), and they will nod
wisely to indicate their agreement; and it will be a rare
and star-studded occasion for me when someone raises a
hand and says, “You know, I do not have the faintest idea
what that means—if anything.”
Learn a few paragraphs like the example above. If
you cannot construct them yourself, look through half a
dozen scholarly journals, or the journals of your trade,
until you have collected at least three; then memorize
them for future use. I am deadly serious about this. So
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 A Person Who.

long as they are sufficiently empty of content, you will be

able to use them in any confrontation with someone else
using Computer Mode, and they will serve to fill up time
while you plan your next move.
Is there an appropriate response to a paragraph like
mine, if you find yourself obligated to respond and don t
want to bother with another paragraph just like it? Yes,
indeed. Look calm, raise your eyebrows ever so slightly,
nod a very limited nod that indicates how polite you are,
and say, “Except, of course, in the New Hebrides.” (What­
ever follows “Except, of course” may be any time or place
or situation or entirely fictitious study or anything else you
care to put there.) “Except, of course, if one must allow
for the metric system.” “Except, of course, in the work of
Gableframe-Socioalwitz.” “Except, of course, in the latter
part of the rainy season.” It makes no difference at all and
will have one of two effects. To those who know that the
original utterance was a put-on, it will be clear that you
know that, too; and you will earn a status point and slide
up the pecking order a bit as someone who has to be
watched out for. To those who have no idea that the
original bit was anything but scholarly and profound, or
evidence of expert knowledge, you will appear to be
scholarly and profound, or expert. Neither outcome can do
you any harm.
The jargon of the communication area you are func­
tioning in must be acquired at once. Whether it is political
science, bartending, military strategy, professional foot­
ball, retail sales, housewifery, surgery, or any of the mul­
titude of other possibilities makes no difference. Learn
the jargon, commit the list of essential words and phrases
(meaningless or not) to memory, and begin using them
with your peers. They are as crucial to your verbal self­
defense as your hands and feet would be if you were
learning karate; without them you are marked, automati­
cally, as a victim.
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 A Person Who .

Way back at the beginning of this chapter I told you

there were two possible ways to respond to a Section F
attack. We have discussed the first at great length. I would
now like to move on to the other and then close the
chapter with your two practice confrontations.
Look at the following:

X.- A person who has serious emotional problems cannot

possibly be expected to deal with the constant pressure
and tension in this particular department.
Y: I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem is, of
course, deciding how a situation of this kind should be
dealt with.

Y’s response, like the “That seems perfectly reasonable”

one, appears to be full agreement with the attacker and
denies that the speaker is the unknown “A person” under
attack. But it raises the level of play by introducing a
presupposition that not only are the two of you in agree­
ment, but you have in mind a particular person—not
yourself—about whom the two of you agree that he or she
has serious emotional problems, and so on. This is going
to be awkward for your opponent, since you provide no
way of determining who that person is and to ask you
would look very foolish. Let’s see how that might go.

CONFRONTATION FOURTEEN
Employer: A person who has serious emotional problems
cannot possibly be expected to deal with the
constant pressure and tension in this particular
department.
Employee: I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem
is, of course, deciding how a situation of this
kind should be dealt with.
Employer: [Lengthy silence.]

136
 A Person Who. .

Employee: You’re quite right. There are no solutions that

leap to the tip of one’s tongue.
Employer: Well . . . Miss Wong . . . what do you think
ought to be the first step? [This is called fish­
ing.]
Employee: Frankly, it’s entirely outside my own area of
expertise. That you called me in on the matter
is gratifying, but I’m afraid that you overesti­
mate the scope of my competence.
Employer: I see. Well, thank you, Miss Wong.
Employee: Not at all. It’s unfortunate that I’ve no really
useful input to oiler, but I’m quite sure you’ll
find someone on the staff—or perhaps an out­
side expert—who will be able to clear tilings
up satisfactorily.

This is an impressive performance on Miss Wong's

part. She has left employer, who called her in to use a
little verbal battery about her alleged “serious emotional
problems,” in a state of some confusion. EMPLOYER must
now find out if some genuinely grave situation exists in
the department about which Miss Wong—and perhaps
“everyone” except himself—knows. This should distract
him from Miss Wong’s hypothetical deficiencies for some
time. And it is not difficult to carry off a defense of this
kind, I assure you. Just practice.
Now here are your practice sets:

CONFRONTATION FIFTEEN
Salesperson: A person who really takes the safety of his
family seriously would never buy one of
those compact sedans, sir—I tell you that
from long experience.

Customer:

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 A Person Who. ■

Salesperson:

Customer:

(Who won?)

CONFRONTATION SIXTEEN
(Note: It’s very common for the neutral “A person who” to
be some more precise term in context such as “A woman
who” or “A minister who” and so on. This narrows the
territory, but does not change the strategy.)

State Policeman: A driver who has any concern for the

lives and safety of other people on the
road would never change lanes the way
you just did, my friend.
Driver:

State Policeman:

138
 <4 Person Who. . .

Driver:

(Who won?)

139
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION F ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

140
 A Person Who. . .

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

141
 A Person Who.

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

142
 A Person Who.. .

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION FIFTEEN
Salesperson: A person who really takes the safety of his
family seriously would never buy one of
those compact sedans, sir—I tell you that
from long experience.
Customer: That seems perfectly reasonable.
Salesperson: Then you’ll be wanting one of our larger
models.
Customer: No, I want one of the little ones, thanks.

CUSTOMER wins. For salesperson to attempt to make

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 A Person Who .

CUSTOMER feel guilty, by insinuating that he doesn’t care

if his family goes to a bloody or fiery death on the highway,
is contemptible. It’s none of salesperson’s business how
you feel about your family’s safety, unless you’ve asked for
advice on this matter, salesperson will be feeling either
confused or foolish at this point, and that’s fine.

Salesperson: A person who really takes the safety of his

family seriously would never buy one of
those compact sedans, sir—I tell you that
from long experience.
Customer: I couldn’t agree with you more. The problem,
of course, is deciding whether to blame the
automobile manufacturers, the government,
or the advertising agencies.
Salesperson: Well, the point is that those little cars are
deatli traps.
Customer: The studies on the question of responsibility
just don’t get to the heart of the problem, as
you are of course aware.

Pretty soon, salesperson should catch on to the fact

that customer is not going to play this game and will
switch to some other strategy. CUSTOMER is winning.

Salesperson: A person who really takes the safety of his

family seriously would never buy one of
those compact sedans, sir—I tell you that
from long experience.
Customer: That seems perfectly reasonable to me. What
doesn’t seem reasonable is that—given your
long experience—you’re willing to sell those
little death traps.
Salesperson: Now, look, I only work here. I don’t order
the merchandise.

144
 A Person Who..

Customer: I see. Well, that must pose a serious ethical

problem for you, since you have to sell a
product you consider unsafe. How do you
handle that?

Game, set, and match to customer. What is surpris­

ing here is salesperson’s lack of skill. Salespeople, es­
pecially professional full-time salesmen of expensive
items such as automobiles, are ordinarily far better trained
in verbal interaction than the average person, salesper­
son’s response was an amateurish mistake, and if the boss
has heard it, SALESPERSON is going to be on the carpet
trying to explain how this particular trip down the garden
path came about. SALESPERSON should have known better
than to take CUSTOMER’S bait.

Salesperson: A person who really takes the safety of his

family seriously would never buy one of
those compact sedans, sir—I tell you that
from long experience.
Customer: You really mean that? I care about my family.
1 don’t intend to take any chances, if you
know what I mean.
Salesperson: I tell you . .. the company has to provide
what the public wants, and a lot of the public
wants compact cars. But I wouldn't risk my
family in one, and I’m glad to see that you’re
the sort of person who has better sense than
to just go along with the herd.
Customer: Well... it’s a lot of money, and I was hoping
for something with better mileage. But if it’s
a matter of safety, that’s got to come first.

SALESPERSON has won, and CUSTOMER hasn’t even

put up a mild struggle here. Notice, too, that in Salesper-

145
 A Person Who. ..

Son’s second move the responsibility for the product

claimed to be unsafe has been adroitly dumped on the
unthinking public. This is what SALESPERSON is supposed
to do, by contrast with the previous example.

CONFRONTATION SIXTEEN
State Policeman: A driver who has any concern for the
lives and safety of other people on the
road would never change lanes the way
you just did, my friend.
Driver: That seems perfectly reasonable.
State Policeman: Then why did you do it?
Driver: I’m sorry, officer, I don’t know—and I
don’t intend to do it again.

Like DOCTOR-PATIENT confrontations, those between

officials of the law and alleged breakers of the law are
slightly different from the ordinary. DRIVER does not nec­
essarily want to win this one; on the other hand, it isn’t
necessary to be slavish about it. The example seems to
me to have the proper degree of respect for the officer and
no more than that.

State Policeman: A driver who has any concern for the

lives and safety of other people on the
road would never change lanes the way
you just did, my friend.
Driver: What makes you think I don’t have any
concern for other people’s safety, officer?
State Policeman: I don’t believe this. What makes me
think so? I told you—that lane change
you just made!
Driver: Oh, yeah.

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 A Person Who. . .

state policeman is right, he did tell you exactly

why he thought you were a sadist bent on running down
everybody else on the road. This is no time to ask him to
repeat it, even if you don’t agree with die man’s judgment
of your lane change.

State Policeman: A driver who has any concern for the

lives and safety of other people on the
road would never change lanes the way
you just did, my friend.
Driver: You’re absolutely right. The problem is,
of course, what to do in a situation like
that.
State Policeman: A situation like what?
Driver: Well, you have a truck bearing down on
your bumper from behind, and another
truck right in front of you going thirty-
five up a hill, and neither of them seems
to know you’re there. It’s a little hard to
know what to do in a case like that.

driver is doing fine here; and provided that he or

she really was in a situation where an otherwise dangerous
lane change seemed to be the only choice available, this
is a good way to approach the discussion, driver has
begun by agreeing with state policeman and has not
offered an excuse for the lane change until asked for it.
This racks up a few points in driver’s favor. Furthermore
driver has managed to shift the discussion from this
specific lane change toward the question of lane change
strategies in general. Well done.
State Policeman: A driver who has any concern for the
lives and safety of other people on the

147
 A Person Who. ..

road would never change lanes the way

you just did, my friend.
Driver: You may be right, but let me tell you,
officer, I was really in a bind back there.
I notice you saw me make a lane
change .. . how about the guy that was
running me off the damned road? How
come you aren’t stopping him?
State Policeman: My, you’re a polite one, aren’t you? You
have anything else to tell me about how
I ought to do my job?
Driver: Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. My taxes
pay your salary, you know.

I assume no comment is needed here. If you are

looking for a strategy to use in confrontations with police­
men that will guarantee you an expensive ticket, talking to
them in Blamer Mode like this is certainly it. driver
cannot possibly win.

148
 Section G Attacks

Why Don’t
You Ever..

10
You will immediately recognize the Section G pattern as
an attack in Blamer Mode and one that can be flipped
tidily on its back to a “Why do you always ...” form.
(Flipped like that, of course, the attack becomes so nearly
identical to its presupposition—that you “always” do what­
ever is stated—that the difference between them isn’t
worth mentioning.) The basic form is this:

“Why don’t you ever (X)?”

Almost anything can be fit into the empty (X) term of the
pattern. For example:

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 Why Don’t You Ever. ..

“Why don’t you ever

• try to make me happy?”
• consider anybody’s feelings but your own?”
• act like other people’s mothers?”
• do anything that / would enjoy doing?”
• want anybody else to have any fun?”
• think about the effect of your behavior on the other
people in this class?”
“Why do you always
• get such a kick out of seeing me miserable?”
• try to make me look like an idiot?”
• knock yourself out to ruin things for everybody else?”
• deliberately embarrass me in every way you can?”
• spoil anything good that happens to come along for
anybody else?”

The presupposition of “Why don’t you ever (X)?” that

is relevant for verbal self-defense is simply “You never
(X).” It is certainly neither subtle nor intricate. Why, then,
have I put it all the way up at the G level in difficulty
instead of letting it share bottom rank with “If you real­
ly .. . ”? Obviously it is not here because it presents levels
of interacting and well-hidden presuppositions that re­
quire great skill to disentangle. The problems with the
Section G attack are the following:

1. Most of them come at you from people who, because you

are involved in a close relationship with them, have a real
power to cause you pain. Unlike the teacher you see for
only one semester of an academic year or the mechanic
that you take your car to only once, people who hit you
with Section G’s tend to be people you spend large portions
of your life with. You can’t say to yourself, “Oh, well, it’s
only sixteen weeks and then I’ll never have to go near this
person for the rest of my life.” Because Section G’s have
their source in people you must interact with closely and
constantly, they are unusually difficult to manage.

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 Why Don’t You Ever.

2. Leading right from the first problem is the fact that people
in a position to try a Section G on you usually know your
most vulnerable spots. If you worry because you think
you’re too thin or because you didn’t finish high school or
right on up the scale to such problems as alcoholism or
bankruptcy, these people probably know about that. They
may have been around you most of your life, and as a result
they know exactly where to put the knife and how many
twists of it are required to get to you.
3. Because the Section G’s are so personal, and so vicious,
they face you with a tremendous temptation to respond by

Your Personal Octagon

© Suzette Haden Elgin 1978

 Why Don't You Ever...

hurting back. That is, you are likely to know as much about
your attacker’s weak spots as he or she does about yours.
And in a sort of blind reaction to pain you tend to go
straight to Blamer Mode yourself and head straight into a
full-scale disaster, full of things that can never really be
forgotten, even though they may be forgiven. Furthermore,
if you have become highly skilled at verbal self-defense,
you may be able to do harm for which you will never be
able to forgive yourself.

These three factors, taken together, seem to me to

cause a Section G to merit the next-to-last spot in the
ranking of difficulty. (And I may have underestimated;
perhaps they should be at the very top.)
If you value the relationship you have with a Section
G opponent, you must not give in to the temptation to hurt
back. That cannot work; it is two primitives battering one
another with boulders, and it is a battle to the death. (If
you don’t value the relationship, things are quite different,
of course, and your best strategy is probably just to leave.
That’s a subject for some other book and won’t be dis­
cussed here.)
Trying to argue against the accusation won’t help,
either. It will go like this:

X: Why don’t you ever try to make me happy?

You; Sweetheart, I do try to make you happy!
X: When? Just tell me one time you did that!
You; Well, don’t you remember the time that (and here you
produce your example, or list of examples, and you
will feel silly doing it].

If you bring up the time you bought a Chevrolet

instead of a Jaguar because you knew that X didn’t want
a Jaguar, you’ll hear that the only reason you did that was
because the Chevrolet was cheaper and furthermore
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 Why Don't You Euer..

you’ve never stopped nibbing X’s nose in that one. If you

bring up the time you gave up a trip to San Francisco at
company expense because X couldn’t go and didn’t want
you to go on that basis, you’ll hear that the real reason you
did that was to have the satisfaction of telling everybody
how narrow-minded X is and hearing them laugh about it.
It won’t get better—it will go on like that. For every token
you offer, every shred of proof that you have tried to make
X happy, X will have an alternative explanation that fits
the picture of the world in which all your energies are
devoted to making him or her miserable. As your shreds of
proof grow more trivial, you will feel more and more
ridiculous. And you should. You should never start one of
these absurd lists; that went out with gallant knights
bringing fair maidens one token after another to be reject­
ed contemptuously. “Remember the time I went out and
killed nine giants at a blow and brought you back their
heads?” This is ridiculous, and stupid. Don’t do it.
The only effective nonviolent response to a Section
G is one in which you do the following: Immediately say
something which, in itself, disproves the claim your at­
tacker is making. Preferably by offering something you
know quite well that he or she doesn’t want at all. For
example:

Husband: Why don’t you ever try to make me happy?

Wife: Sweetheart, do you think maybe you’d be hap­
pier if we both quit our jobs and moved to
Wyoming? [Be certain before you do this that he
does not want either of you to quit your jobs or
move to Wyoming—or be prepared to follow
through and keep your mouth shut about it.]

The sequence looks simpleminded; I agree. But the

attack itself is simpleminded, and it deserves a simple-
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 Why Don’t You Ever .

minded response, not a subtle one. HUSBAND has claimed

that wife never—not ever, not even once—does anything
to try to make him happy. Immediately, without a second’s
delay, she proves him wrong; her response is an attempt
to make him happy. It is an act as well as an utterance,
and it falsifies his claim on the spot.
The fact that it is outrageous has no relevance here.
In fact, it may well be that the more outrageous it is—so
long as it does not make HUSBAND feel he is being made
fun of—the better it is. Especially if he intensely does not
want to accept whatever is being offered in an attempt to
“make him happy,” it should cause him to drop the attack
and devote his energies to heading off the offer. Above
all, it will head off the list of proofs from the past, each of
which he intended to painstakingly expose as not a gen­
uine attempt to make him happy. This is what matters
most of all. Let’s try carrying this out for a few moves.

CONFRONTATION SEVENTEEN
Husband: Why don’t you ever try to make me happy?
Wife: Sweetheart, do you think maybe you’d be hap­
pier if we both quit our jobs and moved to
Wyoming?
Husband: [Stunned silence.]
Wife: Honey? Would you like that?
Husband: The last thing on this earth I would ever want
to see happen is both of us quitting our jobs and
moving to Wyoming!
Wife: Well, then, let’s not. I’m perfectly content with
the way things are.
Husband: Move to Wyoming ... pheew.”
Wife: Since that’s settled, what would you like to do
for dinner tonight?

If this happens every time husband tries a Section

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 Why Don’t You Ever..

G, he will give them up. They’re no fun at all if the other

person involved won’t play the game. They’re rewarding
only if they allow a long wallow in past regrets, broken
promises, inadequate compromises, and all the rest of it.
If they are instantly refuted with an offer like the one in
Confrontation Seventeen, it will become clear to hus­
band—although it may hike a while—that this technique
is never going to pay off.
Section G’s should be looked upon as a bad habit to
be broken, like spitting in public. They should be a habit
you can break the other person of just this simply, and
reasonably quickly, by taking all the fun out of them. If
you can’t—if HUSBAND, or whoever the other individual
may be, persists in spite of your efforts over several
months—then you don’t need verbal self-defense. You
need an expert to find out what’s wrong. That goes far
beyond the scope of this book.
Once in a while a Section G will come your way from
someone who is not particularly close to you and doesn’t
fit die typical pattern. You may just happen to have a boss
who is a natural bully and enjoys the Blamer role. Unless
you let this get to you and make you miserable, it’s trivial;
and it can be handled in exactly the same way as the more
classic situation. For example:

CONFRONTATION EIGHTEEN
Employer: Why don’t you ever, even once, consider the
feelings of the other people in this office and
try to do something that would make life pleas­
anter for them instead of thinking only of your­
self?
Employee: Okay. .. how about if all the coffee breaks
were thirty minutes instead of fifteen. 1 think
that might do it.
Employer: Thirty-minute coffee breaks? You’re out of your
155
 Why Don't You Ever. .

mind! We’d never get any work done around

here.
Employee: Well, you’re the boss.

Like I said, this is trivial. Just be sure to pick something

that the boss would never under any circumstances con­
sider doing, but which will stand, in itself, as a refutation
of the accusation. The principle is the same as in Confron­
tation Seventeen, but the stakes are lower.
Now here are your practice confrontations, with sam­
ple scripts at the end of the chapter.

CONFRONTATION NINETEEN
Daughter: Why do you always have to be different? Why
can’t you ever be like other mothers, anyway?
Mother:

Daughter:

Mother:

Daughter:

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 Why Don't You Ever

Mother:

(Who won?)

CONFRONTATION TWENTY
Woman: Why do you always go out of your way to make
me look stupid and ignorant in front of all your
friends? Why don’t you ever let me have a chance
to show people that I know something, too?
Man:

Woman:

Man:

Woman:

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 VWiy Don't You Ever.

Man:

(Who won?)

158
 YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION G ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

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 Why Don't You Ever
THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE - What My Opponent Said

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 Why Don't You Ever

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

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 W/iy Don’t You Ever...

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE - What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION NINETEEN
Daughter: Why do you always have to be different? Why
can’t you ever be like other mothers, anyway?
Mother: Okay. From now on, like other mothers, I’m
giving you a ten o’clock curfew on school nights.
Daughter: But, Mother—
Mother: And, like other mothers, I’ll expect you to be in
by eleven on Saturday night. Does that solve
your problem?
Daughter: That’s not fair!
Mother: Really? Let me introduce you, my dear, to the
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 Why Don’t You Ever. .

real world, in which many things are not fair.

Including lots of other people’s mothers.

If ynu wrote something like this, it’s hard to know

where you’re headed without also knowing the teen-age
daughter you had in mind. True, this move on MOTHER’S
part immediately negates the claim that MOTHER is never
like other mothers and does it by offering something
MOTHER can be certain DAUGHTER doesn’t want. This is
fully in accord with the instructions for responding to a
Section G, and it may have been called for, depending on
the DAUGHTER in question. However, there’s no winner
here; it’s a standoff, daughter feels resentful, and if in
fact she didn’t deserve this, she has been smacked down
as surely as if MOTHER had used an open hand; and she
won’t forget it. The injury will fester. MOTHER feels smug
right now, especially after the very “grown-up” finish
line, but will probably feel ashamed of herself later. What
mother has accomplished in this example is the teaching
of a lesson: Do not try being a Blamer at me because I am
bigger and more powerful than you and I will see to it that
you regret it. This may be temporarily satisfying, but it
has two certain effects: (a) to reinforce daughter in the
Blamer pattern; and (b) to ensure total noncommunication
with daughter, who’ll go do her Blaming on someone
her own size in the future.

Daughter: Why do you always have to be different? Why

can’t you ever be like other mothers, anyway?
Mother: Well, let’s see. Would I seem more like other
mothers to you, honey, if I always waited up for
you when you go out at night? And then you
could come sit on my bed, and we could have
a nice cozy chat about what your evening was
like, and what everybody was wearing ... you
know, girl talk. Would you like that?
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 Why Don't You Ever...

Daughter: Good grief. That would be horrible.

Mother: Well, then, we certainly don’t have to do it.

Much better, and no further moves needed. If the

custom described above is already observed in this house­
hold, and enjoyed by both .MOTHER and DAUGHTER, it’s
not an option (though something else can be used in its
place). But most American teen-age daughters do not want
this ritual added to their lives. On the other hand, it fits
superbly into the traditional image of the Devoted, Caring
Mother Like Other Mothers and is an instant offer—which
the Blaming daughter must turn down, mother wins,
without turning into a heavy parent figure, and without
much effort.
MOTHER must be careful not to overdo this, however,
or DAUGHTER will think she is being made fun of. If “nice
cozy chat” won’t get by this DAUGHTER, mother can pare
it back to “a discussion of your evening.” It must be played
absolutely straight.

Daughter: Why do you always have to be different? Why

..... ever be
can’t you .— o
k„ like other mothers, anyway?

Mother: I’m different from other mothers? Hmmm. How

about if I cut my hair and quit wearing these
jeans?
Daughter: That wasn’t the kind of thing I meant.
Mother: You don’t want me to look like other mothers?
Daughter: No! I like the way you look.
Mother: Well, then, I don’t know—you want to talk about
it awhile?
As with the move to Wyoming, MOTHER should be
sure that the offer she makes is either something she
doesn’t mind doing or that DAUGHTER will be certain to

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 Why Don't You Ever

refuse. Assuming that this is true, she has done well and
is winning. MOTHER has refused the “you never” presup­
position, since lots of mothers don’t wear jeans and do cut
their hair. She has done it immediately, with no Blaming
involved. And she has now a potential here now for .some
productive Leveling.

Daughter: Why do you always have to be different? Why

can’t you ever be like other mothers, anyway?
Mother: Because you don’t act like other daughters,
that’s why. And until you do, I don’t intend to
put myself out for you.
Daughter: Thanks lot, Mother. I’ll try to keep that in
mind.
Mother: You do that. And if you find yourself forgetting
it, try another smart crack and I’ll help you
remember.
Daughter: Thanks—I won’t need any help.
Mother: You’re quite welcome. Drop in and have a little
chat anytime.

Very, very bad. Here we have two Blamers, whacking

away at each other with fang and claw. MOTHER is serving
superbly as a role model in this example, training daugh­
ter in all the finer nuances of being an adult Blamer.
She’ll regret it eventually—and nobody wins.

CONFRONTATION TWENTY
Woman: Why do you always go out of your way to make
me look stupid and ignorant in front of all your
friends? Why don’t you ever let me have a chance
to show people that / know something, too?
Man: Okay, sweetheart. Next time the subject of oil
depletion allowances comes up, you handle it.

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 Why Don’t You Ever.

Woman: You’re still doing it!

Man: Doing what?
Woman: You know perfectly well what!
Man: Sorry—you’ve lost me.

MAN appears to be a chronic verbal abuser, if this is

any sample of his behavior, and WOMAN is getting nowhere
with the problem of defending herself. He has responded
with an immediate offer to show people that she, too, can
shine in conversation and has carefully chosen something
that he knows she doesn’t want. But he has also carefully
chosen something he knows quite well she knows nothing
about, something that she would look stupid and ignorant
discussing, and by so doing has (as she points out) dem­
onstrated to her once again how stupid and ignorant she
is. (Laying herself open to this kind of thing is stupid and
ignorant, by the way.) She then goes right on Blaming, and
man enjoys himself at her expense. Total silence would
be less of a waste of time.

Woman: Why do you always go out of your way to make

me look stupid and ignorant in front of all your
friends? Why don’t you ever let me have a chance
to show people that / know something, too?
Man: Okay, sweetheart. How about if we give a big
party—I mean a really big party—and we ask
everybody we usually see around and whoever
else you’d like to ask. And I promise to keep my
big mouth shut and let you do the talking.
Woman: Oh, dear . ..
Man: Something wrong? Look, I wouldn’t mind doing
that at all.

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 IV/iy Don’t You Euer .

Woman: I hate parties. Especially big parties.

Man: Then we don’t have to do it. It was just an idea.

Very well done. MAN needs to demonstrate to woman

that the Section G is not a productive way to talk about
things, and he’s done that. At the same time he’s made her
an offer of exactly what she appeared to be asking for,
choosing something he could be sure she wouldn’t care to
accept. And of course he closes by reassuring her that he’s
not about to insist on her doing something she’d rather
not do. It will take considerable ingenuity on woman’s
part to find anything to complain about here.

Woman: Why do you always go out of your way to make

me look stupid and ignorant in front of all your
triends? Why don’t you ever let me have a chance
to show people that I know something, too?
Man: Because, my sweet, you are unable to hold up
your end of a conversation on any subject except
dieting and toilet training.
Woman: Your friends could use some current information
on both topics.
Man: You know what you deserve? You deserve for me
to let you make a fool of yourself!
Woman: Does it make you feel important to talk to me like
that? Do you enjoy that?
Man: [Sigh] If you really wanted to look intelligent,
darling, you’d make an f 1T—*■ to 1learn
effort - ■’ ;
--------something
worth talking about.

The only difference between this woman’s behavior

and that of the one in the first example in this confrontation
is that she has learned to do her Blaming with a bit more
sophistication. The only result is that man will return the

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 IV/iy Don’t You Ever..

ball with more force. Notice that he is now headed full­

swing into a different attack and is moving into more and
more violent Blamer Mode with each move. This one is
hopeless—and woman will lose.

Woman: Why do you always go out of your way to make

me look stupid and ignorant in front of all your
friends? Why don’t you ever let me have a chance
to show people that I know something, too?
Man: You know, if I’m doing that, I should be ashamed
of myself. Tell you what. You pick out a list of
things you’d like to talk about next time we go
out, and I’ll promise to stay clear away from every
one of them. Fair enough?
Woman: No! Then I’d really look silly!
Man: Why? Isn’t that what you wanted?
Woman: No! That’s not what I meant at all. It would be
obvious ... and artificial... and . . .
Man: Well, look, you want to stop someplace for coffee
and talk about this? I don’t seem to be getting the
message.

This is well handled. The first offer MAN makes is

sufficiently strange to be unlikely of acceptance, but it
qualifies as doing what woman says he never does. And
it doesn’t humiliate her or blame her, so long as he is
careful to keep a neutral stance and sound perfectly seri­
ous. If WOMAN takes him up on the offer to talk this over,
they may be able to do some Leveling and accomplish
something. If she doesn’t, he has at least headed off the
argument, and there will be other chances to discuss the
problem.

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 Why Don't You Ever.

man is die winner, nonviolently, and is definitely not

encouraging woman in this particular pattern for working
out their difficulties. That’s the primary goal, and he’s
following through properly.

169
 Section H Attacks

Some X’s
Would..

We are now at the last of the attacks on the Octagon—

Section H. Its basic pattern looks like this:
“Some (X’s) would (Y) iflwhen (Z) (W).”

We have a lot of unfilled terms there, each with its own

potential for trouble. Because of the possibility for confu­
sion as we take up the empty pieces one at a time, a
sample with everything filled in would be a good way to
begin. For instance:
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 Some X’s Would...

"Some instructors would really become angry when a

student handed in a paper that looked like this one.”

If we label the parts in that example to match the pattern

in the box, the breakdown looks like this:

"Some instructors [X’s] would really become angry [Y]

when a student [Z] handed in a paper that looked like this
one [W].”

The heavy stress on the word “Some” at the beginning is

important. As is often the case with emphatic stress,
removing it changes the meaning of the sequence—which
means that the presuppositions are different. Without the
heavy stress the sequence is not a Section H, but a neutral
statement of opinion; thus, the stress is crucial.
Possible ways to fill in each of the empty terms should
now be more easy to follow. We’ll go straight down the
line.

"Some (X) husbands

bosses
kids
patients
people
lawyers
would (Y) really not be able to understand
resent it very much
really get mad
be absolutely shocked
not stand for it for one minute
when/if (Z) you
a student
a customer

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 Your Personal Octagon

© Suzette Haden Elgin 1978

somebody who ought to know better

a full-grown woman
(W) always comes to class late with a ridiculous excuse.”
lost her job foi the second time in one year.”
never had time to talk to them for more than three
minutes and then charged them $25.”
(X) can be any set of individuals which the speaker
considers himself or herself to be a member of. (Z) may
be filled by anything at all that the speaker cares to use to
represent the person spoken to—and it may very well
contain within it other moves from the Octagon. For
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 Some X’s Would...

example, (Z) may turn up as “a person who doesn’t even

care about the effect her smoking has on other people
around her.” Or worse.
Deep water, agreed? However, despite the pileup of
possibilities here, and the potential for intricate presup­
positions nested inside other presuppositions, there is
nothing new. It is just a matter of carefully taking the big
pieces apart into smaller pieces and proceeding with each
of them separately. The difficulty in the real world is, of
course, that you have to do this in your head, do it very
fast, and not get mixed up. I suggest lots of practice, and
plenty of work in your Journal, unless you find that you
can do this with ease. Working your way in writing through
a few dozen Section H attacks that are completely hypo­
thetical, so that you can spend all the time you like thinking
them through, will pay off the first time you find yourself
facing a real one with about five seconds lead time.
If we return to the first example sentence in this
chaptei■—'‘Some instructors would really become angry
when a student handed in a paper that looked like this
one”—we can list its relevant presuppositions as follows:

1. “Your paper is an absolute mess, a disgrace, an object that

no ordinary instructor would even consider accepting.”
2. “I’m not like other instructors; I’m unique, and quite
superior to them.”
3. “The reason that I am uniqi|ue and superior is that I am
going to accept your paper.”
4. “You should feel very, very guilty and ashamed about your
paper.”
5. “You should feel very, very grateful to me, your unique and
superior instructor.”

Yes, Virginia, all of that most assuredly is in there.

And often there’s a good deal more, depending on the
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 Some X’s Would...

particular situation; for instance, there may be a presup­

position that foe speaker has the authority and power to
let you do something or keep you from doing it.
A Section H attack is in Computer Mode throughout,
if it is well done. If the person using it fills term (Z) with
the word “you”—as in “Some guys would really get mad
if you .. .,” that is an indication of little or no skill. The
bait is whatever turns up in (W), and it should be ignored,
like foe bait in any other attack. If you fall for foe bait,
YOU will LOSE. Period. You cannot take it and win, no
matter how great it makes you feel to surge into battle
against this inexcusable accusation and shout your outrage
and so on. You may enjoy that for a few minutes, but you
will lose.
I have two suggestions for your response to a Section
H. The first is more personal than the second; both are
quite gentle; and either will do the job. Your choice
depends on how pleasant you care to be to this person.
Remember your basic pattern: “Some persons [identified
by your opponent] would react in a particular way to what
you are [claimed to be] doing.” That’s what you will hear.
And you should respond like this:

“Really? It would be interesting to hear your opinion on

foe matter, darling [or “Mr. White” or “Dr. Blue,” or
whatever is appropriate].”

This a skilled move. First of all, it blandly denies the

most crucial of the presuppositions, as in the “A person
who ...” attack. It denies that you are the individual
being referred to in (Z). Since your attacker has not said
that you were that person, he or she has only been agreed
with on what you are treating as a neutral abstract state­
ment about opinions or reactions that some people might
have. You have not taken foe bait. Furthermore, you have
complimented your attacker by asking for his or her opin-
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 Some X’s Would. .

ion, even though you know quite well that you have really
just heard that opinion given. You now have your Section
I I person in a tidy bind, and it is you who are winning.
An alternative response, if you don’t care much about
this person, is the following:

“That’s been said a good deal and is undoubtedly an

interesting idea.”

Now wait, looking very calm and only mildly interested.

This is full Computer Mode. It accomplishes the same
goal of removing you personally from the confrontation
and denying that you are involved. It uses the adjective
“interesting” to refer to what’s just been said; and in
America “interesting” is the adjective you use when you
do not wish to commit yourself either for or against some­
thing. If a friend asks whether you like the sonata she has
just composed, and you despise it, but you either don’t feel
competent to judge it or don’t want to hurt her feelings,
you say that it is “interesting.” This is the proper move.
There are two reactions that are almost universal in
my workshops and training seminars at this point:

“There’s got to be some other way of doing it—that abso-

lutely would not work.”
OR...
“I could not possibly say either one cf “
of those ;
things. No
way. Other people, maybe, but I couldn’t do it.”

But I am obliged to tell you that if you try to make changes

in the two responses I’ve just given you, I can guarantee
you the following results: (a) you will change the degree
of challenge in your move, either increasing it or decreas­
ing it; (b) you will introduce new presuppositions that you
are not likely to have intended and may be entirely
175
 Some X’s Would.. .

unaware of; (c) in all probability, both (a) and (b) will
occur.
If you have ever been involved in any of the classical
martial arts, you can surely remember a time when the
instructor described a move or a stance to you and the
situation was analogous to this one. In judo, for example,
the instruction to fall in a certain way struck me as
something I could not believe in and something I could
not do.
The responses to Section H are the right ones, they
will work, and they should not be monkeyed around with
until you are highly skilled. If they sound phony and
pretentious to you, that’s fine. They are intended to do so.
The Section II attack is itself phony and pretentious. For
you to respond with equal pretentiousness is precisely
correct. It will immediately inform your opponent that he
or she is not dealing with a naive victim but with someone
who knows just what is going on and is prepared to deal
with it. In any martial ai t there comes a moment when you
must trust your instructor, or no progress is possible, and
for this one, this is the moment.
There is also a counterattack. Please remember that
counterattacks are verbal violence, and that they can rarely
be justified. But because the Section H move is so dan­
gerous, and because the person using it is so likely to get
you into much thornier thickets than you would anticipate
I feel an obligation to provide it for you. It has an empty
spot in it that you will have to fill in, based on your
personal knowledge of your opponent; if you have no such
knowledge, you’ll have to use a neutral sequence and
count on the other person to supply it with content. Here
you are:

“I wonder if your mother [or your minister, the public your

supervisor, or your associate] is aware of your position on
this matter.
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 Some X’s Would . .

If you use this, you have become the attacker. Do it if you

must, but only if you must. It’s not nice. It will say to your
Section H-er that, in your opinion, whoever you have
picked out to fill the empty slot probably doesn’t know
about the strange way your attacker is behaving. . . but
might well be told, if things go on. It is a threat. The
decision to use this is an ethical problem rather than a
wholly strategic one.
Let’s look at one sample confrontation and then close
this chapter with two practice sets for you to work on. The
first blank lines you have to fill in should be easy, since
you will only have two choices. Going on from there may
be more difficult. Here’s the sample:

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-ONE
Husband: Some husbands would really get upset if their
wives insisted on going back to work when the
kids were still only babies.
Wife: Really? It would be interesting to hear your
opinion on the matter, darling.
Husband: My opinion is that you have no business going
back to work, if you really' want to know.
Wife: I see. Well, I’m willing to discuss that idea if
you are.

Notice what has happened here, husband, caught off

guard, has abandoned all pretense of being some unique
and superior individual to whom wife should be grateful
in spite of the awful things she is doing; and he has given
up Computer Mode for Blainer. Now the issue is right out
in die open, and wife has made an offer to continue the
discussion in Leveler Mode. This is properly done.

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-TWO
Financial Aid Some financial aid officers would be very unlike-
Officer: ly to believe a student with a grade point average
177
 Some X’s Would..

of only 2.6 and a story like the one that you have
just told me, Mr. Everett.
Student: _ _______________ _______

F. A. O.:

Student:

F. A. O.:

Student:

(Who won?

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-THREE
Mechanic: Some skilled mechanics would consider it a
real insult if a customer came back and insin-
178
 Some X’s Would...

tinted that work had been done on their car that

wasn’t really necessary.
Customer:

Mechanic:

Customer:

Mechanic:

Customer:

(Who won?)

179
 Some X’s Would..

YOUR JOURNAL
SECTION H ATTACKS ON ME:

(1) Date

Situation

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

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 Some X s Would. .

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE-What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

(2) Date

Situation

181
 Some X's Would..

FIRST MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SECOND MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

THIRD MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

182
 Some X’s Would...

What I Should Have Said

FOURTH MOVE—What My Opponent Said

What I Said

What I Should Have Said

SAMPLE SCRIPTS

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-TWO
Financial Some financial aid officers would be very unlike-
Aid ly to believe a student with a grade point average
Officer: of only 2.6 and a story like the one you have just
told me, Mr. Everett.
Student: Really? It would be interesting to hear your
opinion on the matter, Mr. Begaye.
F.A.O.: Dr. Begaye, Mr. Everett!
Student: Of course, Dr. Begaye. My apologies.

183
 Some X’s Would.. .

FA.O.: Now where were we, anyway?

Student: You were about to discuss the attitude of other
financial aid officers toward situations of this
kind, Dr. Begaye. And I’m looking forward to
that—this entire matter is a new area of experi-
experi­
ence for me.

student is doing this right—and it isn’t easy. Among

the other unpalatable facts of life (which I know this book
is filled with) is this one: There is no way to ask someone
either to loan or to give you money while maintaining an
attitude of total independence. Dignity, yes; begging is
not required. But any person you are asking for money
other than at gunpoint is the person in power, and you
had better keep that firmly in mind. There’s a fine line
between respectful attention and bootlicking; you’ll need
to learn where that line is and how to walk it.
financial AIDS officer has given away a few points
with his insistence on being called “Dr.” rather than
“Mr.,” which probably means that student’s first move
caught him off guard. Only if F.A.O. is insecure in his own
estimate of his status would he demand the title in that
way. (A Leveler who had to fight hard for a Ph.D. and
intends, for any one of a number of good reasons, to have
that word “Dr.” in front of his or her name, will not make
the demand in the form F.A.O. used. Instead, the line will
be on the order of “If you don’t have any strong objections,
I’d rather you called me Dr. Begaye.”)
By the end of the set of moves in this example,
STUDENT has F.A.O. in a position in which it’s going to be
awkward to return to the original accusation, with all its
dangling presuppositions. Who will win is difficult to say,

184
 Some X's Would.. .

but tilings are going well. Just remember that if you’re

asking for money (or any substantial favor), you can’t afford
to humiliate the person you’re asking; on the other hand,
money that robs you of all your self-respect is money at
too high a price, student’s closing line is just respectful
enough.

Financial Some financial aid officers would be very unlike-

Aid ly to believe a student with a grade point average
Officer: of only 2.6 and a story like the one you have just
told me, Mr. Everett.
Student: My story iis true. And my grades are as good as
anybody’s; could be with the obligations 1 have
to meet.
F.A.O.: Mr. Everett. . . whining is not going to help mat­
ters. I sit here all day long and listen to whiners,
and I get very tired of it.
Student: Then maybe you’re in the wrong job, Mr. Begaye.
F.A.O.: And maybe you are in the wrong school, Mr.
Everett.
Student: Okay, okay. I get it.

STUDENT gets the message, but not the money; and

it took him about three minutes to lose. He now has the
satisfaction of his intact pride, but he has no money to pay
for his tuition, and he has also given the F.A.O. a chance
to dump a lot more abuse on him, for free. This is not
cost-effective. If student is going to be turned down for
the money anyway, he might at least come out of the
verbal confrontation with a few more points earned.

185
 Some X’s Would..

Financial Some financial aid officers would be very unlike-

Aid ly to believe a student with a grade point average
Officer: of only 2.6 and a story like the one you have just
told me, Mr. Everett.
Student: I’ve heard people say that lot, and it’s an
interesting idea.
FA.O.: You spend lot of time applying for loans, do
you?
Student: Sorry—I don’t think I follow you.
F.A.O.: Well, young man, unless your circle of friends
includes numerous financial aid officers, bank
loan officers, and the like—which I sincerely
doubt—I don’t know where else you would have
heard people discussing the appropriate attitude
for officials in charge of disbursements of monies
toward dubious applicants.
Student: Sorry. I guess I was out of line.

This is the sort of thing that you risk when you tinker
with the response to a Section II. student’s mistake was
in not going to Computer Mode—notice that he begins
with “I’ve heard people say that” and leaves himself wide
open for F.A.O. to knock around. Which is what happens.
The whole point of putting this response into the form
“That’s been said a good deal,” however odd it may sound
to you, is to eliminate any overt claim on your part as to
who said it or where or when or to whom—and most
especially to take you personally out of the sentence.
student’s mistake has cost him dearly, whether he gets
the loan or not. He ends up Placating and apologizing and
generally crawling about on the floor being an animated
exercise mat for F.A.O. Not recommended.

186
 Some X’s Would. . .

Financial Some financial aid officers would be very unlike-

Aid ly to believe a student with a grade point average
Officer: of only 2.6 and a story like the one you have just
told inc, Mr. Everett.
Student: One hears that said a good deal. It would be most
interesting to hear your opinion on the matter,
Dr. Begaye.
F.A.O.: One does, does one?
Student: I’m sorry?
F.A.O.: Another thing one hears—if one listens to the
right people—is that if you’re asking someone for
money, you don't start by proving that you could
qualify for the Olympic Gold Medal in arrogance.
Student: Yes, sir.

Again, student has tried to make a few small

changes. And it is quite tine that the use of the indefinite
“one” in his response takes him out of the sentence, puts
it in Computer Mode, and is roughly equivalent in mean­
ing to “That’s been said a good deal.” Unfortunately, by
using this construction, student has escalated the pomp-
ousness of the dialogue and outpompoused F.A.O. This is
very risky. Most people in a position of power, if they have
any goodwill in their character, will have reservations
about picking on people who aren’t remotely their equals
in status. But student has canceled that out. His response
says, “Look, you pompous creep, you don’t need to use
kid gloves on me. Anything you can do, I can handle.”
Once that’s done, F.A.O. is no longer bound by any code
of not kicking underdogs; on the contrary, STUDENT has
specifically released him from that and demanded to be
treated as an equal. He has only himself to thank when he
gets precisely what he asked for. F.A.O. is playing the

187
 Some X’s Would.

game by the rules, right down the line, and STUDENT is

going to take a beating, and lose as well.
Be absolutely certain before you declare yourself
ready to play verbal games with no holds barred that you
really are ready. Or that you can afford to look upon being
used to mop up a floor as a kind of educational experience.

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-THREE
Mechanic: Some skilled mechanics would consider it a
real insult if a customer came back and insin­
uated that work had been done on their car that
wasn’t really necessary.
Customer: Really? It would be interesting to hear your
opinion on the matter, Mr. Granger.
Mechanic: You just heard it.
Customer: I don’t think I followed you.
Mechanic: You want me to spell it out for you?
Customer: That’s an excellent idea.

This is going properly. MECHANIC is now going to

have to be absolutely specific, which will give CUSTOMER
a chance to deal with the situation on a Leveler basis. And
mechanic has abandoned his abstract Computer stance
without even a struggle. CUSTOMER is way ahead.

Mechanic: Some skilled mechanics would consider it a

real insult if a customer came back and insin­
uated that work had been done on their car that
wasn’t really necessary.
Customer: That s been said a good deal and is undoubt­
edly an interesting idea.

188
 Some X’s Would...

Mechanic: What do you mean by that?

Customer: You read about mechanics who—in spite of
their skill—are touchy and defensive about any
attempt at a logical, adult discussion of their
bills . . . and one can’t help wondering why that
should be so. After all, the mechanic is the
expert, not the customer, right?
Mechanic: Absolutely.
Customer: What do you suppose accounts for this problem,
Mr. Granger—speaking as a skilled mechanic
yourself?

CUSTOMER is winning, and it will be interesting to

see what mechanic does next. He can move into an
abstract discussion of other mechanics and other estimates,
losing money as he whiles away time with this pleasant
CUSTOMER who is so interested in all his opinions. Or he
can change his strategy and try Leveling. Or he can try to
think of something else. He knows of course that CUSTOM­
ER is putting him on, but he started this himself and will
have to get out of it the same way.

Mechanic: Some skilled mechanics would consider it a

real insult if a customer came back and insin­
uated that work had been done on their car that
wasn’t really necessary.
Customer: Too bad you aren’t a skilled mechanic, then,
isn’t it?
Mechanic: You want to see my credentials? I’ll be only too
happy to show them to you. Or perhaps you’d
like to speak to the manager of the shop.
Customer: Listen, nobody talks to me like that!
Mechanic: One more time ... let’s go see the manager.

189
 Some X’s Would

Customer: The only person I’m going to see is my lawyer,

and believe me. I’m going to have a lot to say
to her\

Even if CUSTOMER does go to court, does win the

lawsuit, does get the car repaired properly at a proper
price, this is a confrontation that has been won by ME­
CHANIC. CUSTOMER has done everything wrong, and even
if it’s true that MECHANIC has tried to charge for unnec­
essary repairs, it is CUSTOMER who will be without a car
while the repairs are going on. It is also CUSTOMER who
will have to spend time in court instead of going to work
or to school or taking the kids to the beach. The fact that
mechanic is also being inconvenienced during this is not
going to cancel out all that time and money and effort
wasted. Only as a last resort is a script like the preceding
one justified, (mechanic’s next line, by the way, would
have gone like this: “Suit yourself.”)

Mechanic: Some skilled mechanics would consider it a

real insult if a customer came back and insin­
uated that work had been done on their car that
wasn’t really necessary.
Customer: How nice to know that you’re not one of those,
Mr. Granger.
Mechanic: Oh, I see. You’re not going to play that game.
Customer: No. I’m afraid not. Now, let’s take a look at that
bill again, please.

This is expertly done, and very risky. CUSTOMER

should try this only if he or she knows the work of a
mechanic upside down and backwards and is prepared to

190
 Some X’s Would. .

prove it. If you happen to be in that fortunate position, you

can afford to try this. Not otherwise. A Leveling challenge
with a mechanic, a carpenter, or a skilled craftsman of any
kind is appropriate if your skill is at the same level. In that
case, by all means go ahead.

191
 Supplementary Techniques I

Body
Language

12
Until now this manual has focused on one specific element
of verbal interaction: tire sequence of words that is the
utterance itself. We've used this artifical separation of
words from their contexts for two purposes: (a) to let us
look at surface patterns that occur in utterances; and (b) to
simplify the process of relating to those surface patterns
the unspoken presuppositions that lie behind them.
This has been useful, but it cannot go on forever,
since in real life we do not carry on conversations that
have no context. For any utterance there will be (a) the
verbal channel represented by the words; and (b) at tire
same time, a nonverbal channel that underlies the words
192
 Body Language

and must be considered just as thoroughly in verbal self­

defense. (The fact that ideally this underlying nonverbal
channel would include the entire real world does not
make life—or this book—any simpler.)
Massive amounts of research indicate that when the
verbal channel and the nonverbal channel are in conflict
and you have no solid information to tell you which one is
reliable, the right strategy is to choose the nonverbal. (An
example of verbal-nonverbal channel conflict, first pointed
out to me by John Grinder and which I have seen many
times since then, is the person who says, “I love her so
much, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her!” while pound­
ing his fist on the nearest surface and slowly shaking his
head from side to side.)
The nonverbal channel is made up of so many differ­
ent things that its study has spawned a whole set of
technical terms in communications fields and in linguis­
tics. You will read of kinesics, proxemics, pragmatics,
paralinguistics, and so on. None of these terms is exactly
right for this chapter; but then, the term I have chosen—
body language—is not exactly right either. I selected it
because it is a familiar term and does cover in a rough
way what will be discussed here. However, as used in
much recent popular literature, it refers only to gestures,
posture, and facial expression; I will be using it more
broadly than that. Let us understand it to mean the fullest
extension of the phrase “the language of the body,” the
entire nonverbal channel as it is put to use in verbal
interaction. It will then include, for the purposes of this
book, not only gestures, posture, and facial expressions
but many other tilings as well. For example, it will include
the inflection and quality of the voice, the distance be­
tween speaker(s) and listener(s), the messages conveyed
by the way a speaker chooses to clothe or decorate the
body, the method a speaker uses to decide when it is his
or her turn to talk, and so on.
193
 Body Language

Because doing this topic justice would require a

separate book, I am going to concentrate my attention on
three specific areas of body language that are both useful
in verbal self-defense and suitable for a beginner’s manual.
(You’ll find suggested readings at the end of the chapter to
lead you into more advanced material if you want to
explore it further.) First, there is the proper use of the
voice itself as an instrument for producing words, just as
you would talk of the proper use of a musical instrument
to produce a melody. Then there is the proper arrangement
of the parts of the body, including the face, and their best
positioning in relation to the physical setting and other
person(s) involved in the verbal interaction. Finally, I
want to talk about mannerisms, nonverbal habits that may
either be deliberate or that a speaker may be unaware of.
In terms of techniques that can be quickly mastered for
maximum positive effect, these three areas are the most
promising.

PROPER USE OF THE VOICE

Voice “quality” is a mysterious thing. It involves pitch

and nasality and volume and breathiness and harshness
and timbre (“timbre” being that even more mysterious
quality that lets you know if the instrument you hear being
played is a violin or a flute or a piano) and on far into the
acoustic night. Experts called phoneticians can tell you
more than you’ll ever want to know about all of these
things, but learning to control each one of them conscious­
ly and blend all those separate controls into a natural
whole is probably impossible. Fortunately, it needn’t be
possible. You don’t have to know consciously what adjust­
ments to make in muscles and nerves and joints in order
to walk. Like the centipede who was doing fine until
somebody told her that she had one hundred separate legs
194
 Body Language

to manage, an attempt at such conscious knowledge would

only make you fall down. You make all the necessary
adjustments without “knowing” what you are doing, and
your body has the same skill available for use of the voice
as it does for use of the legs and feet.
This is fortunate, because—although it is utterly un­
just to do so—people judge other people on the basis of
their voice quality, often without taking anything else into
account. If your voice is perceived by others as “whiny,”
perhaps because it is high and nasal and thin, your utter­
ances are going to be perceived that way, too—and your
personality. If your voice is perceived as gruff and harsh,
you are likely to be considered a bully; if it is breathless
and badly controlled, people will assume that you are
slightly feather-headed and untrustworthy. The situation
should not he this way; people should not automatically
label others on the basis of voice quality, any more than
they should judge them on the basis of such things as
haircut or accent or clothing. /Xll these things may have no
relationship to the words being said or the kind of person
saying them. But as Robert Day said in a brilliant New
Yorker cartoon in 1970: we are in a real world, in which
we cannot change the channel. You, as a student of verbal
self-defense, can make a real effort not to do this kind of
labeling. You can withhold your judgment of others until
you have some better information to base it on than voice
quality alone. But you cannot safely assume, ever, that
other people will pay you that same courtesy. Therefore,
knowing how your voice sounds to others is a crucial part
of your self-defense skills, and a pleasant voice quality is
as important to your success as the mastery of any tech­
nique we have discussed so far. (It would not be an
overstatement to say that getting rid of an unpleasant
voice quality is even more important than any of the other
techniques, since it can in fact invalidate all the rest of
your skills.)
195
 Body Language

Begin by listening to a tape recording of your voice in

ordinary conversation with a friend. You don’t want a
distorted or defective tape, of course; however, high fi­
delity is not important. The inexpensive cassette recorders
and tapes you can pick up at the drugstore are more than
adequate. Remember that when people listen to you talk­
ing they don’t get high fidelity' either, and what you want
to know is how you sound under ordinary conditions, not
in a recording studio. Your tape should be at least half an
hour long, to give you and your friend a chance to get over
feeling self-conscious about the recording process and to
start speaking naturally.
My personal experience is that when people hear
themselves on a tape, unless they’re accustomed to doing
so, they immediately declare that that is not how they
sound. Some of this is an acoustic matter; but for the most
part the problem is that the voice they hear does not fit
their personal image of the way they sound. Since it is
possible that the tape could be defective or the batteries
low or something of the kind, if you have this reaction by
all means get a second opinion. Ask someone who is used
to hearing you talk if the recording sounds like you to them
or not. But unless there really is a mechanical problem, 99
out of 100 times what you are hearing is the way you
sound to other people—which is what you’re trying to
find out. Knowing that you sound like Lauren Bacall or
Paul Newman to your self is a useless piece of information
unless other people share that perception, and it is in fact
a dangerous illusion that you should get rid of as rapidly
as possible. If you are convinced that you sound like Paul
Newman, but other people hear you as someone with a
high, squeaky voice, one of your major problems in com­
munication has been identified.
What if you find out that the quality of your voice is
unpleasant? Then what? Rarely, that unpleasantness will
be an actual speech disability requiring the attention of a
196
 Body Language

medical expert or a speech therapist. If that’s what you’re

up against, try to get the expert help you need, because it
will be worth every penny. People tend to quickly forget
minor physical differences from the noon; once they’ve
noticed that you have something they perceive as a “big”
nose or a “poor complexion,” they get used to it and
disregard it. Deciding whether something of that sort
requires medical correction is a cosmetic decision, usually.
Your voice, however doesn’t share that “fading percep­
tion” effect. Instead, the more you talk, the more aware
people become of whatever it is they find unpleasant, and
the greater the handicap it is to your success in commu­
nicating with them. This is a serious problem.
Let’s assume (as will ordinarily be true) that the
problem is not a genuine disability. In that case, I am
happy to be able to tell you that there is something you
can do about it, that it won’t require you to spend huge
sums on a voice coach, and that you can begin working on
it at once.
First, get it straight in your own mind that your goal
is to sound like your own self, but with a pleasant voice
quality. I warn you about this because the technique I’m
about to describe would indeed allow you to train yourself
to sound like Lauren Bacall or Paul Newman, and that
would be a fatal mistake. It would only make people
consider you some kind of nut who thought Lauren Bacall-
Paul Newman imitations were appropriate for ordinary
conversation.
Second, buy or borrow or rent or check out from a
language lab one of those inexpensive cassette recorders
I mentioned before, plus about five hours’ worth of inex­
pensive blank tapes. (As of this writing, in 1979, you can
buy all of this for about twenty dollars.)
Now, find a friend whose voice quality you perceive
as pleasant, who is of the same sex and generation as you
are, and who is willing to help you out. Have your friend
197
 Body Language

fill all but one of your tapes with ordinary speech—which

does not mean reading aloud. Ask for a tape on “The
Teacher I Hated Most When I Was a Kid” and one on
“Why I Don’t/Do Like the President” and “My Most
Embarrassing Experience” and so on. Ordinary, talking-
to-somebody-else talking. Keep the last of your tapes for
your own use, because you will need it for recording your
own voice and listening to it to check your progress.
You will work with your tapes in privacy and at your
own convenience. How fast you do this is up to you. But
how you do it is not up to you at all. It must be done right,
and I’m going to be very autocratic about that, since the
chances are that many of the things you have been told
about working with such tapes are wrong.
Do not listen to a sentence on your friend’s tape, stop
the tape, repeat the sentence (trying to sound like the one
on the tape), and then do that over and over again. The
effect of that technique is merely to train you even more
thoroughly' than you were trained before in your present
bad habits. You’ll get nowhere that way, because that’s not
how your brain and your ears and your speech mechanisms
work. Instead, pick any sentence (or shorter sequence) on
the tape that you want to work with, listen to it several
times, and then try to say the sequence ALONG with the
tape. Do that over and over again, until you can do it
easily; then choose a new sequence and go on to work
with it. Be sure that you don’t write down the sequence
and read it back with the tape—reading aloud will never
produce natural speech.
Why does this work? Because as you try to speak
along with the tape, you will unconsciously hear tiny
differences between your own speech and the speech
you’re using as a model. Differences of volume, pitch,
timbre, and so on. You will then try to reduce those
differences, making use of the constant feedback between
the two streams of sound, with your brain going, “Now
198
 Body Language

that’s closer on the pitch, but let’s turn the volume down
a bit. . . yeah, that’s better, but now there’s too much nasal
in there, let’s cut that back . . . better, but there’s still a
difference... let me see, how about putting the volume
back up a tad . .. yeah ...” and so on. Consciously, you
cannot do tin's; and I am not seriously suggesting that
there is any unconscious level at which your “brain” is
actually running through that monologue—it’s just a way
of explaining what is happening without going into a
lecture on neurolinguistics, the anatomy of perception and
neuroanatomy, and so on. Unconsciously, if you trust your­
self and let the mechanisms of your body take over the
job, you can do this. You will gradually reduce the differ­
ences between the tape and your own speech, a little at a
time, until they are a good match. (And if you go on
fiendishly at this, you can keep it up until they are a
perfect match. At which point you have trained yourself to
sound like an imitation of your friend. Remember, this is
not your goal.)
Once a week do another tape of yourself talking for
twenty minutes or so, and listen to it. When your voice
quality begins to sound pleasant, STOP. You have gone far
enough. If you’re not sure you can trust your judgment and
think you may just have become so accustomed to the way
you sound on tape that you imagine all is well, get a
second opinion again. Chances are that you have indeed
fixed your problem. Thereafter you need only check once
in a while to be sure you haven’t gone back to your old
bad habits—once a month for six months, and maybe once
more six months later. This should be sufficient.
Before we leave proper use of the voice, I want to
take up briefly the topic of stress. This has been mentioned
before—for instance, when I have pointed out that the
difference between a verbal attack and the neutral utter­
ance of a Leveler is often the presence or absence of stress
on a word such as “really.” But stress is so very important,
199
 Body Language

since it actually changes the meaning of the words you

use, that I think it requires further explanation. The classic
example type from linguistics, used by everyone but first
pointed out by Edward Klima, goes like tins:

1. “What are we having for dinner, Daddy?”

2. “What are we having for dinner—Daddy?”

(There’s a pause in the second example, but it is the stress

that really matters.) Sentence 1 asks Daddy what the
dinner menu will be, and sentence 2 asks somebody else
whether Daddy is going to be the main course. That’s a
big difference in meaning to be riding on stress alone, but
English works that way. In fact, one of the quickest ways
a native speaker of another language can spot native
English speakers is by their habit of using English stress
in every language they learn, whether tlie other language
has that characteristic or not. French, for example, does
not have emphatic stress, but Americans rarely let that
stand in their way when they speak French.
Stress is heard as either higher pitch or greater vol­
ume or botli. It must be handled with great care, since in
English its function is to call attention to some part of an
utterance, and since it always brings with it presupposi­
tions d)at may or may not be reflected on the surface. Look
at the following set of sentences, witii their meanings
spelled out beneath them in a very exaggerated way for
clarity:
3. a. “John is the only man in the room.” (Neutral statement
of fact, meaning “This room contains only one male human
being, and that male human being is the individual referred
to by the name John.”)
b. "John is the only man in the room.” (“John—not the
other person or persons I just heard you mention—is the
only male human being in the room, in my opinion.”)
200
 Body Language

c. “John is the only man in the room.” (“John—despite the

statement made by another person or persons to the con­
trary—is the only male human being in the room, in my
opinion.”)
d. John is the only man in the room.” (Mystery utterance.
The only likely context is a teacher correcting a pupil who
has read the sentence aloud as “John is that only man in
the room,” or something similar.)
e. John is the only man in the room.” (“This room contains
only one male human being, in my opinion, and that male
human being is the individual named John; and I want to
be sure that you realize that there is no other male human
being present in the room. This remains my opinion, even
if there are other human beings in the room who, as a
neutral statement of fact, might be referred to by others as
‘men.’”)

f. John is the only man in the room.” (“This room contains

only one male human being, whose name is John, and that
is my opinion regardless of whether there is anyone or
anything else whatsoever in the room; John, and uniquely
John, meets my personal specifications for a male human
being.”)
g. "John is the only man in the room.” (“There may be
male human beings who are outside the room, or near it in
some other way, but the only one actually located inside
the room itself, in my opinion, is John.”)
h. “John is the only man in the room.” (See example (d)
it’s one of those.)
i. "John is the only man in the room.” (“There may be
male human beings in the car or in the basement or
somewhere else, but in my opinion the only male human
being actually in the room itself is John, and I want you to
be aware that it is'my opinion, because I consider it
important.”)

That constitutes a linguistic demonstration of the

power, and the danger, of English stress. If it doesn’t
convince you, you probably cannot be convinced. You are
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like the karate student who has been shown the technique
for breaking a brick with the side of the hand but believes
it is a trick, and you are likely to be vulnerable to people
who know better.
Whenever you hear emphatic stress in an utterance,
take tlie time to listen hard. And then expand that utter­
ance into everything you can tell it means, as I have done
beneath the examples in sentence 3. If you don’t have
time to do this in conversations, try to jot down the
sentence to analyze later when you are not pressed. With
practice you will learn to do this as rapidly as any other
kind of verbal processing, and with the same lack of
conscious attention. And learn to give the same careful
attention to your own use of stress. It matters.

PROPER PLACEMENT OF THE

BODY

One of the biggest dangers for the novice in verbal self­

defense lies in the oversimplification of the subject that
has found its way into many recent books and magazines.
This is an unavoidable problem; I myself have had to
oversimplify time and time again in the present book, and
experts will be criticizing me for that. But a book that can
be understood only if you already have an advanced degree
in the subject is of no use to the beginner, and refusing to
try to make things clear because of what is called “stooping
to popularization” is a position that tends to make igno­
rance a permanent condition. I don’t approve of it. (And
notice, please, that I said “ignorance,” not “stupidity.”
There is a great difference.) Someone with a Ph.D. in
biology may be totally ignorant about anthropology, as
well as about car mechanics, cooking, the geography of
Sri Lanka, and many other things outside his or her
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professional specialty. It takes enormous amounts of time

to keep up with the one field that is your career or
avocation, and for you to be ignorant of most other fields
is not only not a disgrace, it is inevitable.
All that I can do here is caution you not to take for
granted everything you read about body language. The
idea that a particular set of gestures, a particular way of
crossing the feet or legs, a particular way of wrinkling the
forehead, can be relied upon to have the same meaning
all die time in every person you encounter is a myth.
People who write books on the subject rarely mean to give
that impression and can usually be counted on to tell you
that they are talking about most of the people in a specific
cultural or ethnic group, most of the time. But magazine
articles, quick spots on television talk shows or news
programs, newspaper stories and reviews widi quotes
taken out of context, as well as speeches by “instant
experts,” all tend to overlook these warnings. You get the
idea that you can memorize a list of gestures, expressions,
and postures along with a list of their “meanings” and
then rely on that universally. This is totally false. You
cannot even rely on such a list for one person in a single
culture all of the time. The gesture that means “peace” or
“victory” to Anglo Americans, depending on their age,
means a number of radically different things to other
ethnic groups, and using it indiscriminately is an excellent
way to make a bad impression. Never use a nonverbal item
cross-culturally without checking it out first, to the extent
that such things are under your control.
One of the primary reasons why Computer Mode is
the safest possible stance for the beginner is that it is the
mode with die fewest gestures, the least change in facial
expression, and so on. That doesn’t mean it has no dangers
at all on the nonverbal channel, but it is the least danger­
ous of the Satir Modes you could choose while you are
learning.
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Be sensitive to distance—the size of the personal

space that other people want to have around them. It
varies from one group to another. Some studies have
reported that people who are violent in their behavior
require a larger personal space than the one that is typical
even for their own group; if research proves that to be
true, it will be important knowledge, and it is worth taking
seriously even at this stage. Much research shows that
Latinos need a smaller personal space than do Anglos,
which leads to many incidents in which the Latino keeps
trying to move closer as the Anglo keeps trying to move
away, and the end result is an Anglo with back to the wall
because he or she cannot back up any farther.
Since you cannot possibly know what the favored
personal space of every individual you talk to will be, you
need a general technique to help you in every situation to
some degree—a rough rule of thumb. It goes like this: If
the person you’re talking to keeps moving closer to you,
making you feel a little crowded, assume that that person
needs a smaller personal space than you do for conversa­
tion, and hold still. If he or she then stops moving in on
you, you’ve made the right decision, and things will go
better, provided that you can master your own feeling of
being hemmed in. Conversely, if the person you’re talking
to keeps backing up, assume that he or she needs a bigger
personal space than you require, and stop trying to get
closer. If you’re right, again things will improve. Notice
that in both cases the remedy is to hold still and let the
other person set the limits of the space for your conversa­
tion. Remember what you did, remember how it worked
(or didn’t work), and add it to your records. Don’t make
the mistake of assuming that it will always work for
another person of that particular ethnic group, age group,
sex, or other identifying characteristic; but make a note
that will help you spot rough general patterns for later use.
Finally, be aware that the way you deck out your body
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and where you put it (and the way anybody does those
tilings) is a very large chunk of the meaning in any verbal
interaction. You have every right to go to a job interview
for a junior executive position with the IBM Corporation
wearing your hair loose to your waist (whatever your sex),
a full beard or no bra (whichever fits your situation), and
no shoes. That is your moral right, and nobody is entitled
to take it away from you. Similarly, you have the right to
sit slouched in your chair through that interview, staring
at the ceiling, if you want to. But it is stupid (and notice,
this time I said stupid, not ignorant) to be unaware that by
making the decision to do this you are delivering a lengthy
message. It runs something like this, on the nonverbal
channel:

“Okay, here I am. I know what an IBM junior executive is

supposed to look like, but I don’t happen to give a damn.
This is how I look, this is the way I prefer to look, and
whether you like the way I look is of no interest to me. If
you want to hire me, you hire me like this, because this is
how I am, and you might just as well know it right from the
start.”

You may be so good that that message will get you

hired. The personnel person may be overwhelmed by your
nigged individualism, your honesty, your courage, your
outstanding record, or some combination of these. But be
aware that you are saying all of that, even if every overt
word you say is in a nice polite “Yes, sir/No, sir” style,
and that the full message will be heard.
If you don’t care to deliver that message, there is
another rule of thumb you should observe. Do a little
research before you go into a verbal interaction. Find out
what your audience usually looks like by looking at some
other people who are part of it and observing what they
ordinarily wear and how they ordinarily take up a position
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in conversation. Let that be your guide, to whatever limit

you are willing to make such adjustments. In an advanced
book on verbal self-defense, I would go into methods for
breaking the rules and getting away with it, because that
is possible. But we don’t have room for that here.

MANNERISMS

A mannerism, in the context of this book, is a verbal habit.

A striking and obvious example of a mannerism is the use
of multiple emphatic stresses in a single utterance, like
this:

“If you really mean what you nay about student rights, then
you won’t make us write term papers if we don’t want to.”

For someone to use stress in this fashion is as irritating as

if he or she continually hummed under his breath or
cracked his knuckles. It is typical only of small children
and of adults who do not mind being considered childish,
and it is maddening. Stress is intended, you will recall, to
focus attention on a particular part of an utterance. When
attention is focused in half a dozen different places, it
becomes impossible to make sense of the utterance or to
know what matters to the speaker, and this provokes either
anger or indifference. Two uses of stress within one utter­
ance of ordinary length is about the upper limit; and if
every sentence used has some stressed element, the even­
tual effect is about the same as multiple stress in one
sentence. Stress must be used sparingly and only when it
is truly necessary.
Another example is the gesture so many teachers
have, at all levels—that of shaking their index finger at
someone while the rest of the hand makes a fist. Teachers
may start out-doing this deliberately, but by the time they
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have taught for ten years, it has frequently become a habit

of which they are no longer aware. It is a threatening
gesture and is only appropriate when a threat is needed.
A standard progression is for a new teacher to use the
gesture in a kindergarten to convince a child that he or
she is NOT going to be allowed to hit other students with
the building blocks—that is appropriate. Ten years later
that same teacher, talking to a close friend at lunch about
almost any subject, is shaking that finger nonstop—that is
not appropriate. In teachers of retirement age it tends to
become something they do even when they are talking to
themselves or talking on the telephone, which is hilarious.
I tell the teachers I am training that this particular man­
nerism is so dangerous, and so sneaky, that you must simply
decide at the beginning that you will never use it, and
stick to that. Even if it means that at first you have to clasp
your hands behind your back to keep from using it (which
may be necessary if you’ve already acquired it as a habit
or if you “don’t know what to do with your hands”). Of the
two mannerisms, the one with hands behind the back is
by far the lesser of two evils, and with any luck you’ll be
able to abandon that as well.
To break yourself of any mannerism, by the way, this
is the rule of thumb: Choose some neutral Computer
Mode position that won’t allow you to do whatever the
mannerism requires and use that to break yourself of the
bad habit. Try not to acquire the Computer Mode position
as a new mannerism; this is an obvious danger. Neverthe­
less, I will defend to the last fall the proposition that if
you must have bad nonverbal habits, those in Computer
Mode are the best bad ones to have.
As was true for judging personal space on the spot
and without any extra information, you handle this by
paying very careful attention; by writing down and ana­
lyzing what you observe, in order to record general pat­
terns; and by letting the other person determine the limits
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so far as is possible. If the other person is shaking his or

her finger at you constantly in that Teacher Gesture,
assume that it is a mannerism and cancel your automatic
“Hey, I’m being threatened!” response. Don’t retaliate
with threatening stuff of your own. If you are doing the
finger shaking and the other person is becoming annoyed,
have sense and skill enough to realize what is happening
and stop. If you don’t know what it is about your nonverbal
behavior that is causing the trouble but you notice that the
atmosphere is heating up, try assuming full Computer
Mode as a safe beginning stance and maintain that until
you have more information available. (A word of warning:
you will find books and articles that tell you to work with
this problem, and other problems of body language, by
matching your own body language to that of the person
you’re dealing with. This is an extremely powerful tech­
nique, and it can be taught. But it is for experts, not
beginners. If you fumble it—for example, if you cause the
other person to think that you are mocking him or her—
you’ll be in trouble. Not recommended.)
The major characteristics of the Computer Mode non­
verbal channel, for most Americans, will be the following:

1. very few gestures, or none at all

2. very little facial expression—the absolute minimum that
can be used without giving the impression that you aren’t
listening at all
3. very little change in body language; that is, whatever
position and expression the Computer starts out with is
maintained almost without alteration throughout the con­
versation
4. never any sudden movement or change of expression or
posture—everything is done calmly, slowly, and without
surface evidence of emotion
5. never any body language that is typical of the other Satir
Modes; that is, no Blamer body language, such as pounding
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fists or shaking fingers, no Placater body language, such as

whining or crying or wringing the hands, and no Di.stracter
body language, such as wiggling or constantly fooling with
your hair or your glasses or your clothes. (Leveler body
language cannot be predicted, by the way.)

Watch out for mannerisms that represent an “in” joke,

if you can. For example, the gesture that marks you as an
amateur in a personnel interview for a junior executive
position—thus costing you points—is the one where you
reach up with one hand, taking off your glasses by the
earpiece, hold the glasses in tire area around your chin,
and stare intently into the interviewer’s eyes as you say
something. The more you do this, the funnier it will
become to the personnel manager, who will suspect (prob­
ably accurately) that you read about that somewhere or
saw it on a talk show and that you don’t know what you’re
doing.
These come and go, unfortunately, and what is effec­
tive in April may be funny in May and effective again in
June. Watch the person you’re talking with. If he or she
reacts to some mannerism by what looks like a struggle
not to laugh, it’s a good idea to give it up at once. (A really
skilled interviewer won’t be this transparent, but you can
try.)
Avoid interpreting another person’s mannerisms cat­
egorically, in terms of an unquestioned Popular Wisdom.
For instance, most Anglos have been brought up to believe
something roughly like this: “All people who cannot look
you in the eye are dishonest.” If, from the perspective of
your own cultural group, there is a violent clash here—
say, “All people who insist on looking you right in die eye
are rude”—trouble is clearly possible. You’ll avoid direct
eye contact because you don’t want to be thought rude,
and the odier person will assume that you’re unable to
look him or her in the eye because you’re not honest. What
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makes this dangerous rather than trivial is that usually

neither one of you is aware of what’s happening. The other
person turns you down or doesn’t hire you on an intuitive
feeling that you just aren’t the right person” for whatever
you were there for. You decide that this happened because
the other person is prejudiced against your particular race,
sex, age, life-style, or whatever is your most common
“intuitive feeling” about these things. You’re both wrong,
the verbal transaction was a flop, and the whole process
has just been reinforced in both of you in such a way that
it will go on happening.
Whichever side of the confrontation you are on, use
as a rule of thumb the same one I’ve been giving through­
out this chapter: pay attention and don’t leap to
CONCLUSIONS. Give the other person the benefit of the
doubt until you have information to work with.

This chapter is already a long and heavy one, and it’s

time to wind it up. I want to tackle the problem of the
idea that all these tilings are somehow a massive compro­
mise of your principles. In my workshops and seminars
people say that they would be “prostituting themselves,”
that they refuse to “suck up” to other people (or “talk
down” to other people, depending on their status) in these
ways. This is a gross misunderstanding of what you are
doing and needs to be straightened out.
In verbal self-defense, the ideal—the undoubtedly
unattainable ideal—is never to have to use what you know
because all confrontations are headed off before they start
and only Leveling takes place. Not because you are a
gutless wonder, but because you know what you are doing.
A major factor in working toward that goal is the ability to
reduce tension in any kind of verbal interaction. All of the
techniques I’ve been discussing in this chapter are for that
purpose—lowering the level of tension and emotion in
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verbal encounters .so that a move up to Leveling can

become a possibility. They are not techniques for verbal
self-prostitution, they are defusing techniques. They
quire great skill and carry with them great honor.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED

READINGS

Books:
Birdwhistell, Ray L. Kinetics and Context. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. (This is a scholarly
book but is not overly technical; it is perhaps the major
work in this field.)
Fast, Julius. Body Language. Philadelphia: M. Evans & Com­
pany, Inc., 1970. (A popular treatment of the subject.)
Henley, Nancy. Body Politics: Power, Sex, and Nonverbal
Communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.; Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1977.
Nierenberg, Gerard I., and Henry H. Calero. How to Read
a Person Like a Book. New York: Pocket Books, 1971.
(Another popular treatment.)

Articles:
FlSHER, Seymour. “Experiencing Your Body: You Are What
You Feel.” Saturday Review of Science, July 8, 1972, pp.
27-32. (This article deals in detail with male and female
perceptions of body image. Highly recommended.)
Longfellow, L. "Body Talk: The Game of Feeling and Expres­
sion.” Psychology Today, October 1970, pp. 45-55.
Stein, Harry. “How to Tell a Joke If You’re Not Alan King.”
Esquire, November 7, 1973, pp. 86-87. (In the same issue
and by the same author, “How to Imitate Bogart If You’re
Not Rich Little.”)

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 Supplementary Techniques 11

Being
Charismatic

13
“Charisma”—one of the mystery words. People are said to
“have” charisma in the same way that they “have” black
eyes. Charisma is viewed as something with which you
are born, a gift from the Fates, and something as insepar­
ably a part of you as your eyes and heart. Definitions of
charisma are not very illuminating; a fair summary would
be something like this: Charisma is a mysterious, irresist­
ible, almost magical ability to make others believe you and
want to do anything you ask of them.
If you are believed because of the logic of what you
say, that is not charisma. Furthermore, there is a
libraryful of research to indicate that logic is almost useless
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 Being Charismatic

as a way of convincing people of anything. (Yon might

consider the “logic” of convincing women to buy a cos­
metic because it is so natural looking that when you wear
it nobody can tell that you are doing so; that’s an interest­
ing example of the principle.)
If people do what you ask them to do simply because
you have the power to force them to—with a gun or a whip
or a spanking or a failing grade or a three-week assignment
to latrine duh'—that’s not charisma. The crucial difference
between coercion and charisma is that you want to believe
the charismatic individual and you want to do anything he
or she asks of you, and you don’t care at all about other
factors. It’s said that Adlai Stevenson, when complimented
on a speech, once pointed out that people often said what
nice speeches he made, but that after John F. Kennedy’s
speeches they said, “Let’s march!” That is charisma.
Charisma is a matter of perception. In the discussion
of English stress in Chapter Twelve, I told you that it is
heard as higher pitch and louder volume; experts in
acoustics and phonetics would tell you that that’s a mighty
inadequate description of what stress actually is. For the
purpose of verbal self-defense, however, it is that percep­
tion that is crucial, and that triggers the responses in the
hearer that make stress so tricky a matter. Charisma, too,
whatever its scientific explanation might be, is
perceived—seen and heard and felt—as the ability to
convince and compel without force. And it is that percep­
tion that concerns us here. The interesting question is:
Can you be taught to bring about that perception in people
listening to you? I am prepared to claim that you can be.
Nobody has ever developed a test to measure some­
one’s Charisma Quotient, to my knowledge. But if we had
one, every technique you have learned from this book so
far is guaranteed to raise your CQ a little bit, and every
technique yet to come will continue that process. Just how
high you can go on the charisma scale will depend on
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 Being Charismatic

many things, some of which are indeed a matter of the

Fates. No question about it, it helps a lot to have been
born physically attractive, in glorious health, and wealthy.
The one thing that genuinely matters, however, is how
hard you are willing to work at it.
A warning—don’t confuse charisma with Leveling.
The two may overlap. The person trapped in an elevator,
thinking he’s scared, looking like he’s scared, and saying
he’s scared, is Leveling; whether he’s also charismatic is
something you cannot know unless you are there to judge.
Similarly, the saleswoman who knows that the car she’s
selling you is a bad buy, but who uses both her verbal and
her nonverbal channels to convince you that the opportu­
nity' to buy it is something you should be grateful for, is
clearly charismatic, but she is not Leveling. In the chapter
on emergency techniques we’ll take on the problem of
how to spot and deal with that most dangerous of com­
municating humans, the phony Leveler. In this chapter
we are going to look at several techniques for being
charismatic that can be learned at the beginner’s level and
that will give you a good return on your investment of
effort.

PREFERRED SENSORY MODES

Over the years many researchers have noted that people

seem to have individual preferences for the use of one
kind of sensory information over another. This research
has concentrated most heavily on vision and hearing,
although recently more attention has been paid to touch,
taste, and smell. To my knowledge, John Grinder and
Richard Bandler were the first to publish work on the way
in which people demonstrate these preferences in their
language patterns, and their initial research has been
developed extensively by their associates. Here I will
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 Being Charismatic

touch on only one very limited aspect of this subject, one

that can be an extremely useful addition to your verbal
self-defense techniques.
If we assume that it is usual for people to prefer one
sensory mode to another and agree that they will often
make their preference clear in their language, we can set
up a list of examples such as the following:

G Sight: “I see what you mean. I see your point.”

“That’s very clear.”
“That looks good to me.”
© Hearing: “1 hear what you’re trying to say.”
“What you’re saying is just a lot of noise to me.”
“That sounds fine to me.”
• Touch: “Somehow this situation just doesn’t feel right.”
“I can’t put my finger on the problem.”
“It feels okay to me.”
• Smell: “This is a very fishy situation, if you ask me.”
"The whole tiling smells rotten to me.”
“I’ll sniff around and find out what’s going on.
• Taste: “The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my
mouth.”
“I can almost taste what’s wrong here, but I don’t
know how to explain it.”
“This really sickens me.”

The last two sensory modes, smell and taste, seem to

be more rare as preferred modes than the first three. (And
they are often treated as a single mode, because physio­
logically they are closely connected.) This may be because
so few people develop these senses to any extent—excep­
tions would be perfume specialists and wine tasters or
it may be due to a lack of English vocabulary items for
expressing them, or both. Or there may be a quite different
explanation. Much more research will have to be done in
order to settle this question.
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 Being Charismatic

For our purposes what is important is the technique

of matching die sensory mode being used by the person
you are talking with. Look at these two brief exchanges:

X; That’s my proposal. Now I’d like to know if it s clear,

and if you see any problems.
Y: No, it really looks good to me.
(Sensory modes match.)

X: That’s my proposal. Now I’d like to know if it’s clear,

and if you see any problems.
Y.- No, it really sounds fine to me.
(Sensory inodes clash.)

Although both of Y’s responses “mean” the same thing—

both express approval—they differ in that one uses sensory
mode matching, and the other does not. This is not trivial,
particularly' in a verbal situation for which a confrontation
atmosphere can be predicted in advance. (For example, a
meeting between management and labor or a court trial.)
Often you can use this technique unobtrusively as a way
of keeping the level of tension in a discussion lower than
it might otherwise be, and the minimal effort involved is
well worth the result. Look at the following example:

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-FOUR
Teacher: Look, Bill, your problem in school is no mystery.
It’s obvious—anybody can see that you just don’t
try.
Bill: I do too try! I work on it all the time. I just don’t
get it, that’s all!
Teacher: Bill ... come on, now! Your spelling, for instance.
Do you really expect me to believe that you study
those words the way you’re supposed to—really
study them—and still miss almost every one on
your tests? I’m not blind, you know, or stupid.
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 Being Charismatic

Bill: And I suppose I’m both. And liar, too.

Teacher: I didn’t say that.
Bill: Well, that’s how what you’re saying makes me
feel.
Teacher: Bill, you have got to try not to see everything I
do to help you as a personal attack. That’s a very
warped way of looking at things.
Bill: Now I’m crazy, too—thanks a lot.
Teacher: You see? With that attitude, there is no way
anybody can help you!
Bill: Okay, okay! I give up!
Teacher: Like I said—and now you’ve agreed with me—
it’s not that you can’t do the work, it’s that you
won’t. I hope you see the difference.

This teacher, who has used visual sensory words

exclusively while the student has used only words of
touch, now has a totally hostile and alienated young man
to deal with, bill is of course convinced that TEACHER
has no respect for him at all—which may or may not be
true.
We would be far beyond oversimplification and into
the land of fairy tales if I gave you the impression that I
thought sensory mode matching was a cure for every
problem. Or that it would have automatically eliminated
the difficulties between BILL and TEACHER. Not only is
that not guaranteed, but the technique must be used with
discretion; if you overdo it, you risk making your listener
feel that you are somehow mimicking him or her. Done
properly, however, sensory mode matching is a powerful
way to reduce potential conflict. It makes your listener
feel that the two of you are “on the same wavelength” or
“share the same perceptions,” that you are an unusually
understanding and empathic person, and that you are a
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 Being Charismatic

pleasure to talk to. (In short, it makes you more charts-

matic.)
Learning to do this quickly and naturally requires
practice. You should plan to add it to your Journal work,
because you will need to do some advance practice before
you try it in real-life situations. First, find out what your
own preferred sensory mode is by paying attention to the
language you yourself use. Then practice identifying the
preferred sensory modes of other people by paying close
attention to their language patterns. Finally, practice trans­
lating utterances from one sensory mode to another.
To do this, you will need to be aware of predicates;
for the most part, that is where you will find your clues.
English has four kinds of predicates, as in the example
sentences that follow, where the predicate is everything
to the right of the dot in the sentence.

ENGLISH PREDICATES:
• Tme verbs: “Tracy • worked, left, sang.” (A true verb can
always have “-ing” added to it.)
• Adjectives: “Tracy • is tall, short, tired.”
• Identifiers: “Tracy • is a teacher, doctor, friend.”
• Locations in space: “Tracy • is in the kitchen, in Paris.” I
•[Locations in time: “The party • is at six, is on Tuesday.” I

Any predicate that fits into a particular sensory mode is a

clue to the preferences of the speaker; the more frequently
you hear him or her use predicates from that sensory
mode, the more you can be sure that it is the preferred
one.
The list that follows will give you a few examples of
predicates from each sensory mode. Be prepared for a
shortage of vocabulary in the Smell and Taste sets, as well
as frequent overlaps. (This mirrors the situation in your

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 Being Charismatic

body when your food tastes odd to you if you have a stuffy
nose from a cold or hay fever.)

• Sight: see, look, glance, observe, notice, watch, appear,

seem, resemble, be clear, be transparent, be invisible, be
obvious, be lucid, be foggy, be muggy, see right through
(X), have not even a shadow of a problem with (X), clear
everything up, have an eagle eye
• Hearing: hear, listen, pay attention to what (X) says, be
repetitious, be garbled, be full of static, be just a lot of
noise, sound fine, sound stupid, be unable to make out
what (X) is saying, sound like (X), talk (X) to death, be a
gossip
• Touch: feel, touch, get, make, grasp, dig, handle, put your
finger on (X), get hold of (X), be smooth as silk, be too hot
to handle, be slippery, be easy to deal with, be right where
you can get down to business, be tickled, be a sneak, be a
feeling person, be always pushing people around
• Smell: smell, sniff, sniff around, stink, be rotten, be nosy,
be a stinking person, smell like (X), be where nothing
smells right
• Taste: taste, gobble, be nasty, be sweet, be right on the tip
of your tongue, make you nauseated, make you sick, be
sour, be enough to gag a maggot, be in a sickening place

Now for the “translation” exercise. You don’t have to

be a fanatic about this. Perfect matches like the following
set are rare:

That looks good to me.

sounds great
feels fine
smells right

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 Being Charismatic

Notice that even for an obvious set like this one, we would
have to play around with the example to find a rough
equivalent for the sensory mode of taste. We could say,
“That leaves a good taste in my mouth,” but “That tastes
right to me” is not a likely sentence except with reference
to something you eat or drink.
I’m going to give you ten sentences for practice that
are hard enough to constitute a reasonable workout. By
the time you finish them, you will have a good grasp of the
technique. Here is one more example set to get you
started:

• Sight: “I don’t think you should buy that car. I don’t like
the looks of the deal, and I don’t like die looks of diat
salesman, either.”
• Hearing: “I don’t think you should buy that car. I don’t
like the sound of the deal, and I don’t like the way that
salesman talks, either.”
• Touch: “I don’t think you should buy that car. I have a
funny feeling about die whole deal, including that sales­
man. He really gets to me.”
• Smell: “I don’t think you should buy that car. I think the '
whole deal smells fishy, and that salesman is a real stinker.”
• Taste: “I don’t think you should buy that car. The whole
deal leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and that salesman
makes me sick at my stomach.”

PRACTICE SENTENCES FOR YOU TO WORK ON:

1. “Maria has a good grasp of the problems involved in
starting her own business.”
2. “When everything looks rosy, that’s the time to be careful.”
3. “The mechanic said he wasn’t sure he could do much
about the transmission, but he’d give it a try.”

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 Being Charismatic

4. “All the team members understood what the coach was

getting at, but following through wouldn’t be easy.”
5. “The president said we would all have to pull together if
we wanted to get anywhere.”
6. “I can’t see things your way, but I don’t think it’s because
you’re not being clear—I think I just don’t agree with your
ideas.”
7. “Ellen said the trip sounded foolish and expensive to her,
but if the whole family wanted to be deaf, she didn’t intend
to try to make them understand.”
8. “If you don’t get hold of yourself, there’s no telling what
will happen to you next.”
9. “The weather was rotten, the people were rotten, and I
could smell the lies ten feet away.”
10. “Every time he says that word, it’s like I just ate a tuna
fish pizza cake.”

You may find some predicates impossible to identify,

or they may seem to be combinations. (For instance, is “I
just can’t swallow that” a touch or a taste predicate?) What
you are watching for is clear-cut patterns that seem to
show a systematic preference, not subtle nuances. You
won’t find anybody under normal circumstances whose
predicates are confined exclusively to one sensory mode.

SYSTEMATIC ORGANIZATION
OF UTTERANCES

There was a time, and not so very long ago, when what I
am about to describe to you next was a part of the education
of anyone who went as far as the eighth grade. Nothing I
am about to say is new; it is the material of the ancient

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 Being Charismatic

rhetoric class and was ancient even when Plato was talking
about it. Today, however, unless you enroll in a course in
making speeches or sermons, you are unlikely to learn
even the simplest facts about the rhetoric of oral language.
The rhetoric class today is devoted to teaching you how to
use written language. This is a serious problem in educa­
tion at a time when the telephone call has almost elimi­
nated the personal letter, when many people spend their
entire working lives without ever needing to write any­
thing that involves more than filling out forms, and when
the all-pervasive influence of television has the lion’s
share of the public’s attention.
This book doesn’t have space for an entire course in
old-fashioned rhetoric. But we can take up three tech­
niques that are easily mastered and that have a high
charisma-boosting potential. To begin with, they make you
sound as if you know what you are talking about. They
give your speech a soothing rhythm that is appealing to
the ear, even if you aren’t really being listened to (and
even if you aren’t really saying anything).
I once sat through a forty-minute talk by one of the
most charismatic men I know, and I am here to assure you
that it had no semantic content whatsoever—it meant
nothing at all. He had been scheduled to talk but hadn’t
bothered to prepare anything and was winging it all the
way. When he finished, I expected some expression of
outrage from the audience—after all, they had paid to hear
him. It didn’t happen. Everybody clapped, everybody
smiled, and a woman sitting in front of me turned around
and said, “I didn’t understand a single word he said, but
I just know it had to be important!” Amazing. That is what
happens when people are not taught anything about verbal
self-defense.
We’re going to take a look at three mechanisms:

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 Being Charismatic

parallelism, the unifying metaphor, and culturally loaded

vocabulary.

Parallelism
Charismatic speech is always balanced speech. That bal­
ance makes it easy to listen to and easy to remember. It
makes following the speaker something you can do without
effort, because you so quickly catch on to the pattern and
know what to expect. The balance also creates that com­
forting (or stirring) rhythm I mentioned before, to which
human beings can be counted on to respond.
One of the easiest ways to work toward this balance
is to be certain that whenever you speak of more than one
of anything—and especially if you speak of more than
two—you use the same language form for each item in the
series. For example:

“1 have a goal that will not be ignored. I have a plan that

must not be forgotten. I have a vision that cannot be
denied.”

Now compare this with

“I have a goal that will not be ignored. The plan that I’ve
worked out is one that everybody must remember. And my
vision, now—let them try to deny me that!”

Which is more effective, the first or the second version?

You may have the feeling that the first version sounds
pompous (it does), that it is repetitious (it is), and that the
second version is clear and forceful and will make the
speaker sound like somebody whose head is on straight.
And you may be right. The one that is charismatic, how-

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 Being Charismatic

ever, the one that would provoke the ‘ Let s march! rather
than “What a nice speech!” reaction, is the first of the two.
Notice how carefully it is structured: I have a. . . [one-
syllable noun]. . . that. . . [modal auxiliary]. . . not be .. .
[two-or-three syllable verb].”
Using one three-syllable verb (“forgotten”) between
the two two-syllable ones (“ignored’ and denied ) is the
master touch of slight variety that does not distract from
the basic pattern but keeps it from being perceived as
overdone. By the time the second sentence has gone by,
the listener is relaxed, knows what to expect, and need
not pay attention anymore. So long as the pattern is
maintained, the perception of the speaker as charismatic
will be maintained also—and content has little to do with
it. Politicians and expert trial lawyers know this very well,
as do people who run encounter groups, and they capital­
ize on it to the fullest extent. It takes most of the labor out
of speech preparation.
Perhaps the most striking proof of this is the recent
work of Donald Shields and John Cragan, two social
scientists who have programmed an IBM 370 computer to
produce a nine-minute political speech that could be used
anywhere under any circumstances. The computer’s out­
put has resulted in standing ovations, time and time again
(which, I hope, should go far to dispel the idea that
charisma is an inborn quality granted one by Providence.)
You may never have to make a speech, in the formal
sense of the word, although the ability to do so is well
worth acquiring. It’s very handy to have someone around
who can always be counted on to explain to the PTA or
the board of directors or the secretarial pool, or any other
group, the content of some message that needs to be
passed along. If you can also count on that person to carry
out this task without fuss and to handle the audience in
such a way that it will always be in a pleasant frame of

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 Being Charismatic

mind afterward, even if the message itself was not pleas­

ant, you are likely to consider that person extremely
valuable. It starts with “Miss Kuljak, would you mind
going down to Payroll and explaining to them that memo
I dictated to you yesterday morning? The supervisor tells
me they’re upset about it, which means they didn’t un­
derstand it.” And it ends with Miss Kuljak being sent to
major conferences in luxurious hotels, at her employer’s
expense, to represent the firm on the speaker’s platform.
That’s worth remembering.
But even if you have no interest in formal speech­
making, the principle is die same in ordinary daily con­
versation. All of the following examples are just plain talk,
but all use parallelism:

1. “I’m upset, I’m angry, and I’m annoyed.” (NOT “I’m upset,
and you’ve made me mad, and I am annoyed, too.”)
2. “Pick up your shoes, put away your socks, and turn off that
television set.” (NOT “Please pick your shoes up. And your
socks don’t belong there, they belong in the drawer. And
why do you have the TV on?”)
3- “To go to the lake would be fun, and to go to the fair might
be interesting—but to go see your mother would be appro­
priate.” (NOT “It would be fun to go to the lake, and going
to the fair might be interesting, but I think that for you to
go see your mother is the appropriate thing to do.”)
4. “If you’re worried, say so. If you’re scared, tell me about it.
And if you’re confused, try to explain why.” (NOT “If you’re
worried, say so. Tell me whether you’re scared or not. And
if I don’t know whether you’re confused, or why, because
you haven’t even tried to explain to me, how can I help?”)
5. “You can have steak for dinner—and no dessert. You can
have salad for dinner—and pie for dessert. Or you can have
half a steak for dinner—and melon for dessert. You decide.”
(not “Look, you have to decide. Do you want steak for

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 Being Charismatic

dinner? Fine, but then you can’t have any dessert. You can
only have pie for dessert if you eat just salad for your
dinner. Or I guess you could have part of a steak, and then
have some melon for dessert if you want to.”)

There is affirmative parallelism, as in “I will stay, and

I will work,” and there is negative parallelism, as in “I
will neither stay nor work.” And if your head is beginning
to have echoes in it, along the lines of “If nominated I
will not run; if elected I will not serve,” fine. That means
both that I am accomplishing what I set out to accomplish
and that it is time to stop.
The best exercise I can give you for learning about
parallelism is to tell you to turn to John F. Kennedy’s
inaugural address and take it apart, one sentence at a time,
noting every parallel structure it contains. (Your public
library will have it.) When you get through doing that,
you’ll know a great deal about parallelism.

The Unifying Metaphor

For a plan of any complexity at all to have a chance of
success, particularly if there is opposition to it, one of two
things is required: (a) superior force—the machine gun,
the raise, the promotion, the scholarship; or (b) a unifying
metaphor to be used as a peg to hang the plan on.
Advertising agencies, public relations firms, and image
makers of all kinds rely on the second alternative. It’s less
expensive, less complicated, and people don’t hate you for
it afterward; furthermore, it tends to be self-perpetuating.
The unifying metaphor is essential to charismatic speech.
If we had to choose a single most popular Great
American Unifying Metaphor, it would unquestionably be
the Western Frontier. That one can be used over and over
and over again; it never fails. The Marlboro man is its
personification. Almost every American (even the Ameri-

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can Indian, which is both ironic and mystifying) grows up

today watching Westerns on television and in the movies;
and die whole elaborate system—a kind of consensus
perception of reality—is something you can expect to find
in almost everyone’s memory. Whether any of it is true or
logical or any of those good things is irrelevant. (It was in
the Western Frontier that guns never ran out of bullets no
matter how often you fired diem, all Indians spoke the
same language and lived in wigwams, and hired killers
preferred horses to women. None of that has any logic
behind it, but it does not interfere with our consensus
perception of the West as having been that way.) That
metaphor of the Old West is a perceptual peg, and from it
hang a whole lot of things that you don’t ever have to
mention because they are presupposed by the metaphor.
For example:

1. All cowboys were gallant and chaste and would have died
rather than betray another cowboy.
2. Daniel Boone.
3. John Wayne.
4. All women who ran saloons were really Earth Mother
types, and if you had any problems, you could turn to them.
5. There was always more of everything; you just moved on.
6. Anybody in a black hat was a bad guy.
7. Doctors would ride thirty miles through a blizzard in the
middle of the night to take a bullet out of your shoulder,
and if you never paid them, that was all right. And the cross
way they talked was just to cover up how tender and
compassionate they really were.
8. Brave men never cried.
9. Women never smelled bad.
10. No American ever cheated anybody or lied to anybody or
stole anything from anybody except (a) those who were

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hung for it, and good riddance to them; and (b) those who
spent the rest of their lives making it up to those they d
wronged, and God bless them.
11. Real men didn’t talk much, but they had deep thoughts.
12. The bad guys always lost.
(and so on ...)

A construct like this is very, very useful. It saves

enormous amounts of time, effort, and money. If you can
find a unifying metaphor to use as a peg for your proposal,
whatever it may be, you can rely on all the presupposed
semantic chunks that go with it, and you won t have to go
to the trouble of explaining them. Furthermore, people
will feel comfortable with the things you say, because they
are familiar with the metaphor; it’s like a house they’ve
lived in or a shoe they’ve worn, and they just know that
you are someone they can follow with confidence. When
John F. Kennedy organized the language of his presidency
around the New Frontier, he knew this, and the effect was
predictable. The message was approximately “Follow me,
and once again, the bad guys will always lose, there will
always be more of everything, women will never smell
bad ...” and so forth. He had no need to spell all that
out. And even if your plan is nothing more complex than
getting fifteen people to the same picnic on time, the
unifying metaphor is the handiest and most charismatic
way of doing it.
What you must watch out for, however, is a metaphor
with presuppositions that hadn’t occurred to you and won’t
help. For example, in California’s 1976 election there was
a proposal on the ballot to do something about the problem
of smoking in public. According to all the polls and
questionnaires, this proposal was in excellent shape, de­
spite all the money of the tobacco industry that opposed
it. Even smokers, according to the polls, would welcome
a solution to the nuisance of being hassled to put out their
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 Being Charismatic

cigarettes and being glared at by people in restaurants and

all the rest of that. Logic was on the side of the proposal.
Common sense was on the side of the proposal. The
voters, it appeared, were on the side of the proposal. But
the measure was resoundingly whipped at the polls all the
same.
There were a number of reasons for this, but a major
one was the unifying metaphor invoked by the slogan the
proposal carried with it. It was “Clean Indoor Air.”
Who could possibly' be against clean indoor air?
Everybody. As a unifying metaphor, clean indoor air
carries with it a list like this:

Nobody likes to clean house, but somebody has to do it,

and it’s probably you.
2. If there are rings around the shirt collars at your house,
you’re disgusting.
3. If there’s a ring around the toilet bowl at your house, you’re
disgusting.
4. If your glassware doesn’t shine and sparkle, you’re stupid;
don’t you even know which detergent to use, dummy?
5. Air that is clean does not smell—have you changed your
kitty litter, or not?
6. Air that is clean does not smell—have you run around the
house spraying everything like a decent person would, or
not?
7. If you don’t keep the air clean inside your house, your
family will be embarrassed, and nobody will want to come
have coffee at your place, and you’ll be unpopular.
(and so on ...)

That is, the decision was to choose between the Marlboro

Man and the individual a friend of mine calls Tommy Tidy
Bowl. Once this metaphor had been drummed into the
minds of the voters, no amount of money could have saved
that proposal.
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 Being Charismatic

When you choose a metaphor, be sure you know what

its presuppositions are. In an emergency, just shout, “Wag­
ons, ho!” and stand back out of die way; you 11 be amazed
at how effective that is all by itself. Everybody' moves.
You cannot be charismatic with any of the following
as your unifying metaphors: The Clean Little Cottage; The
Good Little Boy; The Cheerful Factory. (At least a begin­
ner can’t; it is possible that millions of dollars and a few
experts could.) More likely choices are these: The Proud
Ship Sailing; Miss America; The Football Game. When
you drink of a good unifying metaphor, or when a com­
mercial, an advertisement, or a speech makes you think of
one, write it down; you may be able to use it later.

Culturally Loaded Vocabulary

The last of our charisma producers is closely related to
the preceding one. Certain words and phrases are heavily
loaded—either positively or negatively—within the cul­
tural group that uses them. Small children learn at an
amazingly early age that one sure way to get attention is
to use one of the negative ones.
If you want to be perceived as charismatic, you need
to know die culturally loaded vocabulary of the person(s)
you are bilking to, and whether their values are positive or
negative. Certain items will trigger positive presupposi­
tions, others will trigger negative ones, and you need to
know which is which. Some of these are overpoweringly
obvious. No subtle explanation is required to let you know
that you must be careful with ethnic terms, curses, en­
dearments, and current media cliches.
Within any group that is reasonably familiar to you
your problems should be minor. You will know what items
are on the list, whether their value is positive or negative,
and when to use which ones. For dealing with persons
from a group that is unfamiliar, you must do some advance
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 Being Charismatic

research, preferably by discussing the matter with some­

one who is native to that group. (This is a topic for the
expert, not the beginner, and won’t be discussed in tins
book. It will be obvious to you that it can’t be accomplished
by simply sitting down with the informed individual and
saying, “By the way, I need to know which words and
phrases are taboo in your group, and which ones people
really like to hear.”)
A word that I have used frequently in this book—
“Anglo”—will serve us well as an example. In the United
States “Anglo” is an ethnic label roughly comparable to
“Chicano” or “Latino” or “Black” or a number of others
that come readily to mind. Certainly it qualifies as a
culturally loaded term. But does it have a positive or a
negative value in your speech?
That depends. If the group or person you are speaking
to uses the set of terms including “Mexican American,”
“Afro American,” “Native American,” and “Asian Ameri­
can,” the term “Anglo” is probably one with negative
presuppositions attached. If the person would never
breathe any of those words but would instead say things
such as “you know who I mean” and “people who aren’t
like us,” you can be absolutely certain that the word
“Anglo” is as negative as a loaded cannon. The dialogue
that follows demonstrates how not to be charismatic in
this respect:

CONFRONTATION TWENTY-FIVE
Employer: I’ve called you in because I have a lot of respect
for you, Bob, and I think your advice could be
of help right now.
Employee: Well, I appreciate that. Anything I can do,
anytime. What’s the problem?
Employer: It’s something that baffles me, frankly. I mean,
it’s made very clear around here how things
are supposed to he run. There’s a sign on the
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 Being Charismatic

wall—it says any employee more than three

minutes late reports to the supervisor immedi­
ately. That’s clear, right?
Employee: Certainly.
Employer: And they know—all of them—that if they’re
late, they are going to get docked for it. They
know that.
Employee: Yes, sir. That’s correct.
Employer: Then will you please explain to me, Bob, just
one thing: Why do they keep coming in late
every day?
Employee: I think that’s an easy one.
Employer: I knew I could count on you, Bob.
Employee: The problem, sir, is that we’re Anglos and
they’re not.
(This did not start as a confrontation—but it
ended as one.)

It’s not that employee here should not point out to

his boss that the difficulty lies in differing perceptions
about time in different ethnic groups, if that is in fact
what’s causing the tardiness upsetting EMPLOYER. Not at
all. The problem is the use of the word “Anglo.” EMPLOY­
EE may perceive both himself and employer as Anglos,
but employer obviously does not; and he will have no
further interest in Bob’s opinions. There are a number of
reasonably safe ways to convey the same information
without using a term that will bigger so much negative
emotion. For example:

“The problem, sir, is that the Protestant Ethic is not really

part of everyone’s cultural heritage.”
OR...
“Sir, different groups of people have different ways of
looking at time. I think that’s at the root of the difficulty.”
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 Being Charismatic

One of these responses might allow employer and EM­

PLOYEE to go on with the discussion and exchange some
useful information. But the line “We’re Anglos and they’re
not ’ can only be the end of all meaningful communication
between these two.
This is clearly a tricky area once you are beyond the
most simplistic examples. I will be giving more exam­
ples—and more complex ones—in the special chapters in
this book specifically directed to college students, men,
and women, respectively. But the basic principles should
be clear.
If you are certain that a particular item has a positive
value as culturally loaded vocabulary, use it if you can;
this will set up a feeling that you are someone trustworthy.
Avoid negatively loaded items. If you’re not sure which
value an item has, leave it out of your speech completely.
If you find yourself in trouble, go to Computer Mode, use
the most neutral and abstract vocabulary you can, and
maintain that mode until you have more information to tell
you what is appropriate.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED

READINGS

Books:
Elgin, Suzette H. Pouring Down Words. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975. (Especially Chapter Six,
“Political Language and Its Structure”; and Chapter Nine,
“Language and the Media.”)
Grinder, John, and Richard Bandler. Structure of Magic II.
Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, Inc., pp.
3-26. (This book is devoted almost exclusively to tech­
niques for therapy; however, the section cited discusses
the language patterns associated with the various sensory
modes.)
233
 Articles:
Edelman, Murray. “Language, Myths and Rhetoric.” Society,
July-August 1976, pp. 14-21. (An excellent discussion of
metaphor.)
Geldard, Frank A. "Body English." Psychology Today, De­
cember 1968, pp. 43-47. (This is a discussion of research
on the sensory capabilities of the skin and the sense of
touch.)
Goleman, Daniel. “People Who Read People.” Psychology
Today, July 1979, pp. 66-78. (This article describes the
method of verbal training and analysis called Neurolin­
guistic Programming, developed by Grinder, Handler, and
their associates. It has much to say about charisma.)
Heller, Celia S. “Chicano Is Beautiful.” Commonweal, Jan­
uary 23, 1970, pp. 454-458. (A language-centered article
on Chicano, Black, and Anglo ethnic groups.)
Knight, Arthur. “The Way of the Western: More Mire than
Myth.” Saturday Review, March 1973, p. 38.
Leonard, George B. “Language and Reality.” Harper’s, No­
vember 1974, pp. 46-52. (This is an extensive discussion
of the power of metaphor and language to shape our
perceptions of reality. Highly recommended.)
Novak, Michael. “White Ethnic.” Harpers, September 1971,
pp. 44-50. (This article takes up the discussion of groups
such as the Irish, Polish, and other white ethnic populations
in the United States. Highly recommended.)
Wax, Rosalie, and Robert K. Thomas. “American Indians
and White People.” Phylon (Atlanta University), Winter
1961, pp. 37-46. (This article is especially valuable for its
detailed description of differences in nonverbal behavior
between the two groups under discussion. Highly recom­
mended.)

234
 Verbal
Interaction
Power
Networks

14
You are now equipped with a set of basic skills for verbal
self-defense and should be ready to begin putting them to
use in your everyday life. The questions that now come
up are, when do you use your new skills, where do you
use them, and to what extent?
Within any culture, or any subgroup of a culture, all
language behavior is determined by rules. The fact that
most of these rules are not part of the conscious awareness
of those using them does not make them any less binding.
It does lead to confusion, since there is a strong tendency
to assume that some people just “have a knack” for

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

communicating with others and that because it’s all done

on an intuitive basis there’s nothing you can do but envy
such people. (This is similar to the idea that people are
“born with charisma.”) You will now be well aware that
this is not an accurate idea—for which we can all be
thankful. There is a very concrete system for answering
the questions at the end of the first paragraph in this
chapter; you do not have to “play it by ear.”
All human beings function in networks of interaction
with others. Your family is such a network, the people
with whom you work or study are another, your friends are
a third (and may be several separate networks), and so on.
How many networks you are involved in, how much they
overlap and intermesh, will depend upon your personal
life-style, but only if you live in total isolation from the
world can you escape them. I doubt that such isolation can
be achieved on this planet today.
Below is an illustration of one such network, called a

Verbal Interaction Power Network Diagram

President -

/^Administrators Administration \
Colleagues '

[PUBLIC]
(for everyone
on network)

Faculty Colleagues
+
—Students "
Key:
-------- Direct verbal interaction and contact
—•— Indirect verbal interaction and contact
-------- Incidental or special verbal interaction and contact
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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

Verbal Interaction Power Network Diagram. Almost any

group would serve equally well as an example, but I have
chosen the academic environment of a large state college,
because it is the one with which I am most familiar.
This diagram lays out for you the typical verbal inter­
actions for this particular network. As you can see by using
the key to the lines, a faculty' member will ordinarily be
in direct verbal contact with other members of the faculty,
with the administration immediately above him or her in
rank, with the students, and with the staff. There will be
indirect contact with the president of the college at an
occasional meeting or social event. An administrator, on
the other hand, unless the position is one specifically
requiring constant contact with students, will encounter
them only indirectly.
The dotted lines represent special relationships,
which will always be either utterly trivial or extremely
important. Notice that the president is shown as in direct
contact with individual administrators. However, the line
from president to administration colleagues is a broken
one. This means that although the president would be
expected to be directly available to any administrator, it
would be unusual for him or her to become involved in
the internal interaction of one administrator with another.
Similarly, although faculty' are in direct contact with one
another, it is not usual for them to become involved in the
internal affairs of the administrators. The dotted lines
ordinarily represent situations such as the following:

1. A member of the secretarial staff finds himself or herself

caught in a feud between two administrators who are not
speaking to each other and who use the staff member as a
kind of messenger.
2. A student becomes entangled in a power struggle between
two faculty members, both of whom want the student to
emerge as their personal protege.
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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

3. A member of the administration is married to a faculty

member and therefore becomes involved socially with a
part of the network that would ordinarily only be in indirect
contact with him or her.

These special situations cannot be anticipated, although

you must be alert for them. They require careful handling,
since the individual lowest in the power hierarchy is
ordinarily the one to suffer if mistakes are made in the
situation.
This diagram should remind you of those maps you
find in public places with a little dot saying, “You Are
Here.” However, these networks, unlike maps of build­
ings, are not stable. The moment you place yourself on the
diagram as the dot representing your own position, the
entire map will change to reflect the way it looks from
your point of view. The figure on page 236 is therefore a
neutral and abstract representation, with many artificial
features. For example, every group in the network appears
to be equal in power relative to all the others—and that is
certainly not accurate.
Furthermore, the diagram is drawn as if there were
only one level for each group—again, this is not realistic.
Each group on the network will have another network
unique to it, with numerous levels that have their own
interrelationships. Thus, although the president will be in
direct contact with some levels of the staff—for instance,
his or her own personal secretary—there will be hundreds
of people working at the college that he may never so
much as see during his entire career there. The president
may be in direct contact with some levels of the adminis­
tration but may almost never encounter the assistant deans.
Students will be in constant and maddening direct contact
with the staff’in the offices to which they must go for grade
records, petitions, admissions forms, and so on, but they

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

are unlikely ever to have anything to do with the personal

secretary to the vice-president for academic affairs.
And because a state college is supported by public
hinds and is a part of the real world, everyone on the
network has a relationship of some kind with that nebulous
entity, the Public.
Now, how do you go about using the diagram concept
as a guide for your use of verbal self-defense skills?
First, decide on a reasonably uncomplicated network
of which you are a part, one that you know well, and draw
a diagram for it like the one on page 236. It should be a
neutral diagram, with the same artificial characteristics as
the example. Decide which interactions in the network
are direct, which are indirect, and which are incidental;
decide whether all of them are two-way relationships that
should have an arrow at both ends. (Because it is surpris­
ingly difficult to decide these things, you may want to
choose a small network for your first attempt at this.)
Second, when you are sure that you have made your
diagram as accurate as possible, draw a new diagram for
the same network, but this time put yourself in the center
of the diagram. The “You Are Here” position, for any
network you function in, will always be central, in the spot
where “Staff” was placed in the figure on page 236. Now
redraw the rest of the diagram to indicate the way power
relationships and verbal interactions are represented from
your position at the center. You will then have a diagram
that is accurate for you personally within that network,
rather than an artificial diagram that has only an abstract
connection with your life.
For each network that is an important part of your life,
you should go through at least the second step of this
process. Only the first pair should be difficult, and you
need the full set. Furthermore, anytime that you add a
new network to your life—for example, if you change jobs

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

or graduate from college—you should prepare a new set

of diagrams reflecting the changes.
Can you do all this in your head instead of going
through the tedious process of putting it all on paper?
Perhaps. If you’re able to do that, and feel confident that
way, fine. At first, however, there is a strong probability
that you will overlook or distort an important interaction
relationship. I strongly recommend taking the time and
making the effort to get all your information laid out neatly
before you where you can refer to it as your own situation
changes. Remember that these are fluid maps; unless you
are convinced that your relationships will never change in
any way, they are a useful device for keeping track of
shifts in status or power that affect you directly. And
although you may be determined that there shall be no
change in your life, others may take that decision out of
your hands, often with little warning.
Now let’s return to the illustration on page 236 and
see how you would work with it if it were a primary
network in your own life. Since the example is drawn with
“Staff” at center position, we’ll discuss it from that point
of view.
Assume that you have just been hired for a position as
administrative assistant to an assistant dean in the School
of Sciences. (Administrative assistant is a semiclerical
position, much like that of an executive secretary but with
more responsibility and with greater prestige in the aca­
demic network.) Look at the following scenarios and con­
sider what changes you might want to make in the way
the diagram is drawn:

1. There are four other assistant deans, each with an admin­

istrative assistant like yourself. Above you are two associate
deans, as well as the dean. Your college has six divisions
like the School of Sciences, each with an administrative
structure roughly comparable to yours. Then, beyond those
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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

six cleans, there is a level of administration with four

assistant vice-presidents, two associate vice-presidents,
three vice-presidents of one thing or another, and—final­
ly—the college president. What changes do you make?

ANSWER: The line from “Staff” to “President” should

become a broken one indicating only indirect interaction.
Your chances of having to interact verbally with the presi­
dent, given all that hierarchy between the two of you, are
very slim.
2. There are two other assistant deans, but neither of them
has an administrative assistant. The other two have a
personal secretary instead. There is one associate dean, the
dean proper, and beyond that there is the same structure
described in Scenario A. Your college has six divisions like
the School of Sciences, each with a few assistant deans, no
more than two associate deans, and a dean at the head.
Only one other assistant dean in the entire college has an
administrative assistant. What changes do you make?

ANSWER: The line from “Staff” to “President” becomes a

broken line, as in Scenario 1. However, things are not quite
the same. The fact that your boss is one of only two people
at his or her rank with an administrative assistant probably
means that he or she is headed for an associate deanship,
either increasing the number of associate deans in the
School of Sciences or replacing the present one. Since you
have no way of knowing which of these two alternatives is
likely, you need a special direct line to the personal staff of
the present associate dean. If your boss is going to be
replacing their boss, you need a way to get an early warning
on that, as well as a firm relationship between you and that
group to serve as a base for the sudden interaction that
you’ll have to handle when the replacement happens. The
line you are drawing is hypothetical at this point—it will
be up to you to use your verbal self-defense skills to make
it a real one.
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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

If you compare the two hypothetical scenarios, you

will see how the diagrams are used and why they matter.
In tlie first example, you could ask yourself whether you
need to worry about verbal interaction with the president
of the college, and the answer would be no. Unless some
unusual situation (dotted-line variety) developed, you
could be sure that use of your new skills relative to the
president would be a waste of time and energy, leading
nowhere. (This also holds for the second example.) In
Scenario 1, so far as you can tell at this stage of the game,
all administrators at the rank your boss holds are on a
roughly equal level, [and you are one among others who
hold an equal rank of staff.] You should expect to need to
put your energies into direct verbal interaction with your
boss and the other administrative assistants, and indirectly
with the dean and associate dean. The situation appears
to be in balance.
Scenario 2 is quite different. The power relationships
are changing in some way that you, as a new staff member,
will need to keep an eye on. You can anticipate that
whether your boss becomes another associate dean or
replaces the present one, there will be verbal confronta­
tions with much tension ahead of you, and you are going
to be part of them. You need to find out some tilings, and
the best way to do that is by using your verbal self-defense
skills. For example:
1. Do the personal secretaries of the other two assistant deans
resent your being hired as administrative assistant to your
boss? This is likely—though not inevitable—because one
potential applicant for the job you’ve just filled could have
been one of them. They may feel that you have been
brought in over their heads, unfairly. You need to find out
whether they applied for the job you got, and if so, why
they failed to get it instead of you. This matters very much,
since you must work with them.

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

2. Is there already tension between the present associate

dean, and his or her staff, and your boss? (There may not
be. It is at this level that, in accordance with the Peter
Principle, you tend to find people who seem to have no
sense at all of what is going on around them in terms of
interaction.) Even if the administrator seems to be obli­
vious to the coming upheaval, the staff will probably be
well aware of it. You’ll need to check both parts of the
question separately.
3. Are there any bodies buried anywhere? This is one of
those dotted-line matters. That is, are there private feuds
or private friendships at levels that would not be predict­
able from the diagram? If so, you need to know about them
and put a warning line on your diagram indicating that the
persons involved are possible sources of conflict and are to
be treated with every bit of skill you have in any verbal
interaction.

What you are doing is deciding, based on information

that you now have and to which you will keep adding as
von continue in your work, who are possible sources of
verbal confrontation and therefore require your attention,
who can safely be eliminated from that set unless the
situation changes drastically, who are individuals that you
may deal with in a relaxed manner, and so on. That is —
when, where, and to what extent do you use your verbal
self-defense skills in this network?
It’s foolish to waste your time trying complicated
maneuvers with an administrator who has gone as far as
he or she will ever go in the college, who is completely
powerless to do you either good or harm in your career or
in your personal life, and who has been, from the point of
view of the rest of the network, “retired” from the power
chain to a permanent holding position.
A caution here: I am not, most emphatically not,

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

saying that you should treat this individual with anything

but the utmost courtesy and respect. Remember that we
are talking about self-defense, not attacks. But the colleges
are full of ludicrous examples of staff wasting valuable
time trying to build strong relationships with administra­
tors of this kind because they do not realize that they are
at a dead end. You have only so much time and energy to
spread around, and your job network is not the only one
you must deal with. Don’t waste your energies. In this
same category you should put being afraid of people who
cannot possibly harm you, which creates unnecessary
tension and disrupts the entire network not only for you
but for many people who must interact with you.
If your job matters to you, if you want to be successful
in it without the job becoming an obsession that has
serious negative effects on your health and your personal
life, you must know what the power structure is like. You
must know where you fit into it, what measures are re­
quired of you in terms of personal interaction, and how to
go about carrying out those measures. You must have what
is called a “support structure,” and the only way you will
get one is by building it. It will not build itself.
Nasty moral time.
It ought to be true that the support structure and the
job success would come of themselves, automatically, as
a result of your being a good person who does your work
properly. I am sorry to have to tell you that the game is not
played that way. People who assume it is will be trampled
upon and will usually never know what hit them. Your
decision, the one that matters, is whether you intend to
deal with this unpleasant truth offensively or defensively.
If your choice is an offensive strategy, the shelves are full
of manuals on how to fight your way to the top over the
bleeding bodies of those you knife. You’ll have no trouble
finding these books; most are best sellers. This book, on

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

the other hand, is intended to prepare you for the defensive

choice, and to equip you to deal with the consequences of
having made it.
Your support structure is crucial. There must be peo­
ple you can count on, whether you are around or not.
There have to be people who, hearing a rumor about you,
will be willing to come to your defense. (If you do your job
well, there will be rumors; they are a by-product of
jealousy.) They also have to be people who will then come
to you to find out the truth of the matter, so that you know
what is going on—or who know when that is not appro­
priate. Without such a structure you are at the mercy of
many fish with big teeth working their way upstream.
The strategies outlined above, and all the steps within
them, can be applied to every network you find yourself
in. Your household should be analyzed this way, with
scrupulous care; you may be astonished at the sources of
tension you will find and that you had not realized were
there. Your job, your friends, your health network, any set
of interpersonal contacts that you must deal with using
oral rather than written language, should be approached
in the same way that the academic network was analyzed
in this chapter. Then add your other techniques and use
them to keep the networks working, stable, and in a
positive equilibrium as part of your life.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Book:
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam Books, Inc.,
1972. Chapters Six and Seven, pp. 95-142. (This is, in my
opinion, the best basic source available on personal inter­
action in the rapidly changing framework of today’s society.
Highly recommended.)

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 Verbal Interaction Power Networks

Articles:
Dellinger, R. W. “Keeping Tabs on the Joneses.” Human
Behavior, November 1977, pp. 22-30. (An article on the
subject of status, how it is demonstrated, and how its
indicators are changing today.)
HARRAGAN, Betty L. “Why Corporations Are Teaching Men to
Think Like Women: And Other Secret Game Plans That
You May Not Have Been Briefed On.” Ms. Magazine, June
1977, pp. 62-63 and 87-88.
Lamott, Kenneth. “The Money Revolution.” Human Behav­
ior, April 1978, pp. 18-23. (This brief article discusses the
changing attitudes in America toward getting ahead. It
should provide you with an idea of some of the offensive
strategies for interaction.)
Yankelovich, Daniel. “Who Gets Ahead in America.” Psy­
chology Today, July 1979, pp. 28-43 and 90-91.

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 Special Chapter

College
Students

15
As college students, you have special problems in verbal
self-defense that are not typical of any other population
group and which create for you situations that—if they
appeared in a work of fiction—would be rejected as “too
unbelievable.” I can vouch for the truth of this; I spent
twelve years as a college student myself, and have been
teaching college students ever since, and those unbeliev­
able things do happen. Absolutely.
Your situation will differ depending on whether you
attend a small private school or a huge open-admissions
state university; whether you are a graduate or an under­
graduate; whether you are returning to school after years
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 College Students

in the armed services (or business or as a homemaker or

parent) or are going straight on to college from high school;
whether you must go to school and work and try to take
care of a home as well or are free to devote all your time
to your academic responsibilities; and whether some spe­
cial qualification, such as a physical disability or having a
native language other than English applies to you. I cannot
in this single chapter cover all these eventualities, and I
am going to try to speak to a hypothetical “average”
student. No such creature exists, of course, but we’ll make
do.
I will try to discuss aspects of verbal self-defense that
would be useful for the widest possible range of students.
But I want to begin by stating that the first step should be
one I have already discussed in detail, in Chapter Four­
teen. Only you have the necessary information to draw a
Verbal Power Interaction Network that represents your
own academic situation from your own point of view. You
should do that at once. If you are a handicapped student,
the Disabled Student Services staff (or their equivalent on
your campus) will have a place on that diagram. If you are
a veteran, the Veterans Affairs Office will play a part in
your life. If you work on campus, you have a different
relationship with both faculty and staff than do the other
students. If you attend an exclusive and expensive resi­
dential school, there are special circumstances that will
show up on your diagram—sit down and make them clear.
If you live in a dormitory, the diagram must show your
relationships in the dorm; if you live off-campus, the
network will show die members of your household and, if
you rent your housing, the individual you rent from. By
using die Network Diagram you can clarify your situation
for yourself, no matter how different it may be from diat of
the mythical “average student” I am speaking to. Begin
with that step.

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 College Students

Next I am going to go once more around the Verbal

Violence Octagon, specifically for the student, giving ex­
amples from each section. These utterances are examples
that should immediately alert you to the possibility of a
confrontation. If you feel that you would be confused by
any one of them or uncertain about how to handle it, you
should go back and review the chapter in this book that
deals with that section of the Octagon.

© Section A: “If you really wanted to pass this course,

you’d write a term paper.”
“If you really wanted to be accepted at this
school, you wouldn’t dress like that.”
“If you really wanted to get into this de­
partment, you’d retake the entrance ex­
ams.”
O Section B: “If you really wanted to graduate, you
wouldn’t be interested in going to parties.”
“If you really eared about getting a loan,
you wouldn’t want to walk in here looking
like a bum.”
“If you really wanted to join this sorority/
fraternity, you wouldn’t want to spend so
much time with that Frasier person.”
• Section C: “Don’t you even care what your grade point
average is going to be?”
“Don’t you even care whether you get into
a decent graduate school or not?”
“Don’t you even care that other students in
this class must sit and wait while I answer
your continual questions?”
• Section D: “Even an undergraduate should be thor­
oughly familiar with every word in the
official catalog of this institution.”

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 College Students

“Even a chemistry major should have some

idea who Rimbaud was.”
“Even a student with problems like yours
ought to know at least the basic elements
of English grammar.”
© Section E: “Everyone understands why you are having
a hard time keeping your grades up to the
minimum level at this school.”
“Everyone in this class understands per­
fectly why you feel obligated to disrupt
every class meeting with foolish behavior.”
“Everyone understands why you always
feel forced to display your brilliance and
make all the other students feel inferior.”
® Section F: “A student who really wanted to do well
in life would have better sense than to
choose a dead-end major like you did.”
“A student who is just not properly pre­
pared to do college work really can’t expect
to pass at a good school like this one.”
“A student whose outside obligations come
before academic work really has no place
in college, I’m afraid.”
• Section G: “Why don’t you try—just once—to get your
work in on time?”
“Why don’t you behave like other students
for a change and see what happens?”
“Why is it that every time I look up from
this desk, you are standing there waiting
for me to make some special arrangement
on your behalf? Don’t you ever think of
anybody but yourself?”
• Section H: "Some instructors would find it very diffi­
cult to believe that anyone who has almost

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 College Students

no grasp of the basics could have the gall

to enroll in Advanced Composition.”
"Some people in our class might think it
was pretty strange if they saw a student
shut himself up in the prof’s office for
hours at a time.”
"Some parents would make a real produc­
tion out of it if they spent thirty-five
hundred dollars a year putting a kid
through school and couldn’t even count on
that kid’s holding a C average.”

Remember, when you are trying to decide whether

utterances that come at you are attacks or sincere (though
perhaps unwelcome) efforts to help, listen for the stresses.
Identify the speaker’s Satir Mode. And work out the
presuppositions of the utterances. If you aren’t facing an
attack, don t respond defensively. If you are, and you come
out of it badly, write down what happened in your Journal
and work through it—what did you do wrong? Sometimes
the answer will be “Nothing.” Sometimes you will simply
be up against greater experience, greater knowledge or
sophistication, or greater force, and you will lose in spite
of having done just what you should. But at least know
what happened, and learn from it. If the person who
trounced you is one you re going to have to encounter a lot
while you re at college, put a warning symbol beside him
or her on your network diagram to remind you that this
one means trouble. Then you will be wary when you
approach that individual again.
Liars, especially, should be circled in red or marked
with an X or whatever identifying device you prefer. For
example, instructors who say there will be no final and
then give one, staff who tell you that you have filled out a

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 College Students

form properly and then not only bounce it back at you but
charge you a late fee for doing it “right” the second time,
students who borrow your notes or your books with a
promise to return them and then don’t. Such people are
liars, and they are to be found on every campus. Getting
taken in by them over and over again because they are
charismatic liars or because you can’t be bothered to keep
track of who they are is a foolish way to go through college.
(If you find the term “unreliable people” less abrasive
than “liars,” use that. Just identify them.)
And while we’re on the subject, be sure you. identify
the “Good Guys” as well, whatever their sex. (A generally
reliable source of information on all these matters is other
students, when they agree in large numbers. Don’t take
the word of one or two individuals, who may have turned
a single experience into a general pattern in their imagi­
nations.) It’s important to know which instructors can be
counted on to play fair, which staff members really' will
look over the forms you turn in carefully to be sure they’re
properly done, and so on. This is valuable information.

Now I have twelve rules—very basic and elementary

rules—for you to use in your verbal interactions with
faculty members, at any level. They are as follows:

RULE 1

Be sure that the instructor knows what name is attached

to your face, and vice versa. You may think that is auto­
matic, but it isn’t; and it’s crucial. When the instructor is
filling in final grades, and Student X has a point total that
puts him or her right on the border line between a C and
a B, a decision has to be made: Is there any reason to give

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 College Students

this student an extra point or two and bump the grade up

to a B? If die instructor can’t even remember who Student
X is, which is not at all unlikely if he or she teaches one
hundred or more students every term, no such reason will
come to mind. It may not be fair, but it’s human, like die
instructor.
Make a point, therefore, of going to the instructor’s
office at least once during die term, during regular office
hours, and introducing yourself. Have a reasonable ques­
tion to ask if possible; if you can’t think of anything, just
Level. Say: “I’m here to introduce myself.” Be sure that
you are recognized and will be remembered.
Obviously, if you are the class superstar, this rule does
not apply' to you, and you needn t take up the instructor’s
time. It is one of the great unsolved enigmas of academic
life that it is almost always the straight-A student who
does drop by—usually to ask if he or she ought to do an
extra-credit project.

RULE 2

Eliminate, forever and ever, from your verbal behavior the

mannerism linguists call Hedging. Typical Hedges are

• “I know this is probably a stupid question, but...”

• “I’m sure everybody else knows the answer to this question
except me, but...”
• “I know I’m wasting your time asking this question,
but... ”
• “I know this is against the rules and there’s no point in
even asking for an exception, but...”
• “I know you said we couldn’t turn in our papers late,
but... ”

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 College Students

© “I know you probably already told us this, but...”

(and so on ...)

These utterances are exactly equivalent to wearing a big

sign that says, “Please kick me—I would love to be a
victim.” Get rid of them.

RULE 3

Never use any verbal mode or pattern with an instructor

that carries the message “Okay, we’re equals. No need to
make any concessions for me, because I can do anything
you can.” Unless an instructor is a verbal bully, he or she
will have a rule that says you don’t humiliate students in
front of other people or make fools of them in ways that
will fester and hurt. This rule is from the “Pick on People
Your Own Size” Popular Wisdom collection. If you sus­
pend this rule by making it absolutely clear to the instruc­
tor that, so far as you’re concerned, you two are the same
size (or you’re bigger), then anything goes. And the
chances of you winning the resulting encounters are about
one in one hundred thousand. The instructor has all the
power, and you cannot win this one, whether you are right
or not.
If you break this rule, of course, you can forget about
Rule 1 for the instructor in question—you will be remem­
bered. Some students try to wiggle their way around this
rule with Hedges. That is, they say, “I know you’re the
one with the Ph.D. in here, and I’m probably crazy to say
what I’m going to say, but I’m sure that what you told us
is not the generally accepted position on that matter in
the discipline.” Never use Hedges, period. And please
notice the strangeness of that utterance—it Placates all
the way up to “but I’m sure” and then moves into a

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 College Students

vocabulary and style associated only with academic dis­

course at an advanced level. This is well on its way to
Distracter Mode.

RULE 4

Remember that if you accepted an arrangement of some

kind in a class or office session and did not protest it, you
are stuck with it. If you sat through the opening six weeks
and never once asked what the grade would be based on,
and it is announced in the seventh week that it’s based on
a final exam and four term papers and two oral presenta­
tions, learn from that. It is the faculty' member’s obligation
to make clear what is expected of you very early in the
course. If that obligation is not fulfilled and everybody
just sits there, then it is assumed that you have all agreed
to that arrangement. Complaining won’t help; the instruc­
tor will add two more papers and a field trip, and you have
not one toe to stand on. The time to raise objections to
course requirements is in the first week, preferably in
office hours—if you don’t know what the requirements (or
the office hours) are, you can’t do this very effectively.

RULE 5

When you want a faculty member to do something for

you—take you on for an independent study course, write
you a letter of recommendation, etc.—take with you every­
thing you can prepare in advance and be ready to present
it. If it’s a letter you want written, have all the information
needed, an addressed envelope with a stamp on it, and
anything else that might be useful. The fact that you hied
to make it convenient is what counts, even if you have

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 College Students

made a mistake and it has to be redone. Never try any of

the following:
• “I want to do an independent study with you, and I came
to see if you had any good ideas for one.”
• “I want to do a term paper for extra credit, and I came by
to see if you cou'.d suggest a good topic.”
• “I know our papers are due tomorrow, so I thought I’d
better come by and ask you for a couple of topics I could
write on.”
• “You don’t remember me, but I had a class from you three
years ago, and I can't find anybody else to ask for a letter
of recommendation.”
Students do these things—frequently—and thereby
win themselves permanent exemptions from Rule 1. In
justice to the helpless student who really and truly cannot
think of a topic for the paper or the study and is not the
sort of idiot he or she will be taken for if one of the
sentences just listed is used to convey that message, here’s
what you should do. Go in and suggest a topic that you
know the instructor will reject—that should be easy. The
instructor will then make an alternative suggestion, and
you have not made a fool of yourself. As with the response
to the Section G attack, there is always the remote possi­
bility' that your anthropology professor will leap at the
chance to do an independent study project with you on
French milk jugs in the Middle Ages, and if that happens,
you had better go ahead and do it. You are still better off
than you were with no topic—and you haven’t broken any
of the rules.

RULE 6

If you behave like a doormat, expect to be stepped on and

don’t complain about it. Placating will get you stepped on.
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For example:

Instructor: How many pages of reading a week do you

think would be reasonable for your project,
Miss Z?
Student: Oh, I don’t know anything about that! You’re
the expert! Whatever you say is fine with me!
Instructor: I think one hundred pages a week should about
cover it, then.

If this happens to you, remember—you asked for it.

RULE 7

Before you alienate a faculty member for a stupid reason—

such as how good it would make you feel to demonstrate
to the entire class what an idiot he or she is—remember
this: The day is almost certain to arrive when you need to
ask that instructor for something. A letter of recommen­
dation. A job. An incomplete grade. Permission to take an
exam late. Something like that. When that day comes, the
answer will probably be no.
I am not talking here about alienating instructors for
good and sufficient reasons. There are some—matters of
principle for which the consequences are a risk you take
as an ethical position. They are very different; there’s
nothing ethical about humiliating someone in public.

RULE 8

Never let an instructor find out that you have not read
whatever it was that you were supposed to read, unless
you’ve been asked directly and would have to lie to
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conceal that fact. (If you let yourself be manipulated into

a corner like that, you need to review your verbal self­
defense skills and find out where the opening is.) This
goes for the description of the course in the catalog, the
class syllabus and the sheet of course requirements, the
dittoed reading list, and so on, just as much as it does for
the assigned reading. Ask a question about the item you
haven’t read; ask for clarification, explaining that you’re
not sure you understand; but for heaven’s sake, if you
failed to read something and are in trouble as a result,
don’t mention it.

RULE 9

If you aren’t sure whether you were ever given anything

to read about some basic information item for the course
or can’t remember whether the instructor ever said any­
thing about it in class, do not ask the instructor. Ask
another student, preferably the superstar mentioned pre­
viously. It is unutterably absurd to go down in history in
your instructor’s memory as the student who, on the next
to last day of the term, raised a hand and asked, “Is there
a final exam in this class?”

RULE 10

Never argue with an instructor in front of other students

or other faculty or other anybody. (The only exception is
the rare case in which it really is a matter of principle.)
Let’s assume that die instructor has made a mistake, and
knows it; and that you have challenged him or her in front
of the entire class, and you are right. You have now created
a classic Cornered Carnivore Scene, and if you are eaten
alive do not expect sympathy. There is no way on earth to
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predict what a faculty member in this kind of trap will do,

and some of the possibilities are more than bizarre.
What do you do about your obligation to be sure that
the rest of the students share your correct information
instead of the instructor’s misconceptions? This is an ideal
opportunity to apply Rule 1; drop by the instructor’s office
and discuss the disputed infonnation. You say, “You know,
I read an article the other day that completely contradicted
what you said to us this morning about the Beetlehopper
Hypothesis, and now I’m confused. If you’d discuss it with
me for a few minutes, I’d appreciate it.” The two of you
are now alone, the instructor can admit the error if there
is one and will usually pass the correction on to the rest
of the class. (Properly, you should be credited when this
happens; but if you aren’t, the kind of nonverbal behavior
necessary to get across to the class that you knew it all
along is not appropriate. If it matters to you, you can always
brag about it later—not in class.)
You will miss the glory of the big in-class duel, but
the situation will have been taken care of with no loss of
dignity to anyone. If this doesn’t work, and the instructor
persists in teaching what you know to be false infonna­
tion . . . that is what counselors are for. Go talk it over with
one.

RULE 11

If you are a female student, do not ever present as an

excuse for anything or a reason for asking for anything any
of the following: (a) your menstrual period, your meno­
pause, or your hysterectomy; (b) your pregnancy or your
childbirth; (c) having been up all night with a new baby
for any number of nights; (d) all your children having
come down with the mumps, intestinal flu, and so forth. If
you are a female student, I don’t expect you to like this
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one little bit. If a male student asks for an extension on a

paper because he has had an appendectomy, he will
probably get it. This rule is one of those things that is so
incredibly unfair that it defies description. Nevertheless,
please remember what you are up against—two items from
the Popular Wisdom chest: (a) women don’t do well in
school because of their “female” problems; and (b) women
with children should not try to go to school because they
won’t be able to cope with both the schoolwork and their
maternal duties. Every time you present one of the excuses
on that list, you are reinforcing these two ideas, and you
are doing no female student—yourself included—any fa­
vors. (If you are a male student who has been up with a
baby for four nights in a row, you are probably safe with
that excuse; it is perceived very differently.) My personal
advice, with which many' people would undoubtedly dis­
agree, is that you should grit your teeth and bear it. The
stereotype of the female student who enrolls year after
year and always gives up in the first few weeks because
she simply can’t manage one of these “female problems”
and academic work as well is a Unifying Metaphor that
needs to be destroyed.

RULE 12

Sometimes, in spite of all your best intentions, you find

yourself in a situation where you have really fouled it up.
You are 100 percent in the wrong, you have no excuse for
what you’ve done, and disaster approaches. Let us say, for
example, that you enrolled in a class, went to it three or
four times, did none of the work, forgot to drop it before
the deadline, and are going to flunk. Or let’s say that you
challenged an instructor on some information and got
nowhere trying to convince him or her that you were right;
then you talked to a counselor, who got nowhere trying to
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convince you that you were wrong; next you spent quite a
lot of time doing your duty to the other students in the
class by telling them individually that the instructor is
completely' confused; and now, much too late, you have
discovered that it is you who are in error. Either of these
will do as a standard example of impending academic
doom.
In such a case, there’s only one thing you can do, and
you’re not going to like it. Go to the instructor’s office
hour, sit down, and Level. Say that you are there because
you’ve done whatever ridiculous thing you have done, that
you already know you have no excuse for it, and that you
have come in to clear it up as best you can. Do not
rationalize, do not talk about how this would never have
happened if it hadn’t been for some other instructor’s
behavior; do not mention something the instructor you are
talking to should have done to ward this off; do not, in
other words, try to spread your guilt around. Level and be
done with it.
Be certain you aren’t Placating, now! There’s a big
difference between a Leveler’s “What I did was stupid,
and I’m sorry I did it, and that’s why I’m here” and the
Placater’s “I know you won’t have any respect for me ever
again after the awful, terrible thing I did, and I don’t
blame you one bit, and I’m so ashamed that I’d go kill
myself except I’m so stupid I’d probably do that wrong,
too, and if you threw me right out of there this minute, it
would serve me right.” Please don’t do that last routine;
it’s nauseating.
When you go in and Level about your mistake, any
number of things may happen, and you’ll have to deal with
them on an individual basis. Again, that’s why colleges
have counselers and ombudsmen and deans of students
and advising centers. They are there to try to help you
when you are in over your head. But first, you have to
follow Rule 12 and see what happens. Given a decent set
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of odds, you’ll be able to handle the consequences your­

self; if not, it’s time for an expert. Any other strategy,
however, is certain only to make things worse.

It may help, as you look over these twelve rules, for

you to remember a few things that tend to be lost in the
academic shuffle. One is that the whole situation is artifi­
cial. You are an adult, probably an adult with adult re­
sponsibilities, often an adult accustomed to giving the
orders and having them obeyed in at least one situation in
your life. At college you are suddenly in the position of a
child again in many ways, subject to the sort of sudden
whims and irrational incomprehensibilities you associated
with grown-ups when you were chronologically a child. I
do not intend to try to explain to you what lies behind the
absurdities you must deal with, most of which will be
blamed upon “computer error.” It would require a sepa­
rate book. But keep firmly in mind that your situation, like
childhood, is temporary. You will not be here, in what may
seem to you not a temple of learning but a vast mental
hospital, for more than a specific number of years, deter­
mined by your educational goal and your skill with the
catalog. Say to yourself sternly, on the day when you are
told that the twelve units of French which you were last
year solemnly assured would allow you to graduate are no
longer enough—you need three more units—and that
whoever told you that twelve would do must have obtained
that information from a bulletin that contained several
“computer” errors: “This, too, shall pass. I do not have a
life sentence at this place; I will be able to leave here and
go on to other things.”
11 that doesn’t do it, try shock therapy. Choose any
incredible disaster that does not apply to you, and say to
yourself, sternly, “I could have a real problem. I could
have an incurable fatal disease. I could be on Death Row
awaiting execution.” Something of that kind. The point of
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this is to restore your sense of perspective, so that you do

not have a nervous breakdown or assault an evaluations
clerk over three units of French.
You must also remember that you are normal. That is,
although the life of a college student may have been
represented to you as a glorious series of wondrous events,
the honest truth is that it rarely is that way. If it is true for
you, be grateful. You are singularly blessed. Ordinarily
only students in midstream—about halfway along toward
their goal—have this kind of blessing vouchsafed them.
For tlie student who has just started and therefore knows
nothing at all about most things; for the student who is
nearing the end of the academic trek and therefore nearing
the day when all the accumulated “computer” and other
errors will suddently loom up cumulatively like Mount
Everest; for either of those types of student, the following
situation is normal.
You are exhausted; you are nervous; you are under
stress; you have headaches and colds and rashes and
stomach upsets; you have no confidence in yourself; you
have no idea what ever made you start this process, and
you are certain that whatever it was, you were out of your
mind; and in any case, you are out of your mind. If you can
accept the fact that this is the typical internal state of the
college student, and if you are not in need of professional
help, most of that list will melt away. You will look around
you, you will talk to other students, you will ask faculty
members young enough to remember being students, and
you will find that there is nothing unique about your state.
Everybody either feels that way, or did feel that way, as a
student. And everybody did make it through college, go
on to become a real person, turned out to be sane, stopped
having colds and rashes and headaches and stomach up­
sets, and so on. Talk to a few people instead of listening
only to your own internal repeating tape. And if indeed
you do need professional help, if finding out that you are
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one of a vast crowd of people in your state of mind and

body doesn’t help, go get that professional help at once.
Finally, there is a mysterious phenomenon that will
serve to finish off this chapter. I can only warn you about
it, in die hope that foreknowledge will help you deal with
it when you must. It applies primarily to graduate students,
or students in intensive preprofessional programs such as
prelaw, premedicine, and the like. For some reasons that
I cannot hope to explain here, professors in these programs
have usually developed a technique that is as insidious
and subtle as time-release arsenic capsules. Some of diem
know they are doing it and are proud of it; others don’t.
Some do it because they consider it their duty' to their
students; others do it because their profs did it to them;
others do it for no discernible reason. Whatever the mo­
tivation, die effect on die student is the same, and it goes
like this:

If you don’t get an A in every course you take; if you don’t

get an A on every paper you write; if you don’t win every
prize and fellowship you apply for; if everything you submit
for publication is not accepted (and so on); unless, to make
it short, you are able to walk on water, you will feel an
incredible burden of guilt. You feel that you have failed
your professor and let him or her down. If you are enjoying
yourself, no matter what you are doing or where you may
be at die time, along comes the same burden of guilt—you
should not be enjoying yourself. If you were living up to
what you owe your professor, you would be reading the
professional literature or writing a paper or giving a talk.
At this point, you cease to enjoy yourself and might just as
well give up and go write a paper, read something, reread
something you’ve already read ... anything to relieve die
guilt.

This state is achieved by verbal manipulation, on all

channels, and is widely alleged to do the student good “in
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the long run.” Someday, in a book on advanced verbal

self-defense, I will take the opportunity to explain how to
escape it. But here and now, I can only let you know that
it exists, that unless you are extremely lucky, it will have
to be faced someday, and that the better prepared you are
in the skills of verbal self-defense, the better your chances
are of knowing what to do when that day comes.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Books:
Greer, Colin. The Great School Legend. New York: The Viking
Press, 1972. (This is a well-documented analysis of a
number of myths and misconceptions about American ed­
ucation. Highly recommended.)
TOFFLER, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam Books, Inc.,
1972, pp. 398-427. (This chapter, called “Education in the
Future Tense,” discusses some of the changes that appear
to be necessary if die academic system is to keep up with
the real world.)

Articles:
Feder, Bernard. “How to Pass Without Actually Cheating.”
Human Behavior, June 1977, pp. 56-59.
Moll, Richard W. “The College Admissions Game.” Harper’s,
March 1978, pp. 24-30.

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 Special Chapter

For Men

16
It is my experience that only two types of men come to
talk to me about verbal self-defense (usually after attend­
ing one of my workshops or seminars by mistake, under
the impression that it was on some topic such as making
a fortune in real estate).
The first type, and by far the most common, is the
male who drops in specifically to inform me how very
wrong I am. It may be, he tells me, that there are a handful
of males in this country who are given to verbal bullying;
after all, there are one or two rotten apples in any barrel.
However, he tells me, such creatures are rare. (And, he
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adds, that’s surprising, considering what they have to put

up with.) The last thing he wants to tell me, as he leaves,
is that above all I must know that he has never in his
entire life carried out an act of verbal abuse, nor does he
ever intend to. “And,” he asks me, “don’t you even care
about the terrible effect of this nonsense you’re telling
people?” Exit, grim of face, duty done. (I have reached an
age that prevents him from pointing out that I shouldn’t
worry my pretty little head about these things, or from
patting me on said head as he goes by. Thank goodness.)
The second type is the male who arrives almost
distraught, to tell me that for the first time in his life he
realizes that he is a verbal bully, that he does it all the
time, that he is perhaps raising his son to be a verbal
bully, too, and what the devil is he supposed to do now
that I’ve ruined his life? Sometimes he exits and some­
times he stays; and if he stays, we talk about it in roughly
the way this chapter will read.
If Type I Male is absolutely sincere in what he says
to me, he has no new problems. He is a confident and
aggressive male, going about his business as usual. If he
is not sincere but is hying hard to convince himself, then
he has several new problems. One is the remolding of the
little portion of his self-image that has been jerked about,
so that it functions as it did before—confidently. Depend­
ing on how intelligent he is and what his principles are,
this will vary in the amount of time and energy it requires.
I do believe that the most common resolution is about a
five-minute self-dialogue such as this one:

“Could I possibly be a verbal bully? Me? Me, the guy who

always remembers his mother’s birthday? Me, the guy who
always goes to that school play the kids are in, no matter
how stupid it is? Me, the guy that never opens his mouth,
no matter how many dumb things the other guys on the
team do to wreck our chances for the season? Me, the guy
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that everybody knows you can count on in any crisis? Me?

Naaah. Impossible.”

Any number of aunts, grandmothers, fathers, neigh­

bors, pets, housemothers, friends, houseplants, or what­
ever you like, can be fit in there, as appropriate . . . and
it’s over forever. If it takes a little longer, he may have to
put in some time keeping the walls up around the image
for a while. For example, if he suddenly hears himself
saying, “If you really wanted to ... ” and gets an odd
feeling that that ought to mean something to him, he’ll
have to lay on more mortar fast. And he will have to deal
with the minor burden of having engaged in self-doubt,
however briefly, and explain to himself how he could have
fallen for anything so trivial.
Type II Male has a larger problem. If he is now aware
that he is a verbal abuser, he has to make a choice—to go
on that way, knowing it, and live wit!) what that means in
his life, or to change it, which he suspects may be even
worse than the first alternative. There is his self-image to
be considered, you see, and his very real worry that if he
changes it, he will somehow be less a man. “Gentleman”
is one thing in his vocabulary; “gentle man” may be quite
another. And then there is the burden of guilt. All his life
he’s been doing these things without realizing it—or did
he maybe realize it all along and was enjoying it?—and he
can’t undo any of it. It’s done. Over.
At the end of both this chapter and the chapter for
women that follows, I have listed as a suggested reading
an article by Susan Sontag called “The Double Standard
of Aging.” Usually, where these readings are concerned,
I really am only suggesting that you go to them if they
happen to interest you. This one, however, is the clearest
and most compelling description I have ever read of the
problems of both masculine and feminine self-image in

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America and of what the threat to that self-image can mean

for both sexes. Do not let its title mislead yon. If you are
a man, you need to know what it says about men—and
perhaps, even more, what it says about women. (If you are
a woman, the same thing is hue, in reverse.) This one
suggestion, then, falls into that class of things usually
phrased like this: “You are strongly urged to read the
article, as a supplement to the chapter.”
From a man’s point of view there seem to be two
basic problems with the art of verbal self-defense. First,
are you a verbal aggressor, even a verbal bully, or aren’t
you? How can you tell? Second, if the answer to the first
question is yes, what are you going to do about that and
how are you going to go about it?
We can best begin by' going around the Octagon, with
examples. The question to ask yourself, as you read these
utterances, is not “Do people ever say these things to
me?” I’m sure they do. These are the kinds of verbal
battery everyone, male or female, encounters in daily life.
Instead, ask yourself whether they are utterances you
would use in speaking to other people; that’s what you
need to find out.

• Section A: “If you really wanted me to get ahead,

you’d make an effort to be polite to my
friends, no matter what you think of them.”
“If you really wanted me to get through
school, you wouldn’t always be on my back
about helping you around the house.”
“If you really cared anything about having
a winning team, you wouldn’t give me
some phony excuse every time I call you
for practice.”
• Section B: “If you really appreciated what I’m trying

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to do for you, you wouldn’t want to lie

around on the beach all the time when you
should be working.”
“If you really had any consideration for
your mother, you wouldn’t want to quit
your job.”
“If you really intended me to have a fair
shake in this job, you wouldn’t want to see
me driving an old beat-up clunker like
this.”
© Section C: “Don’t you even care if this place always
looks like a tornado just went through?
“Don’t you even care if your driving is
going to double our insurance premiums?”
“Don’t you even care if I don’t get my
fellowship just because you gave me one
lousy C? Do you get a kick out of seeing
me lose something I’ve worked for for four
years, because of five lousy points on a
test?”
• Section D: “Even a woman ought to know that unless
I go to this conference I’m not going to be
promoted. It’s not exactly secret informa­
tion.”
“Even a -seoen-year-old should be able to
understand that money doesn’t grow on
trees.”
“Even a music major should be able to get
through algebra without pestering his
roommate all the time, it seems to me.”
• Section E: “Everybody in this house understands why
you’re so impossible to get along with,
darling—don’t worry about it.”
“Everybody in this fraternity knows why

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you always spend every party sitting all by

yourself—and we sympathize. No kidding,
we really do.”
“Every student in this school understands
perfectly why most of the people who en­
roll in your classes drop out in the first
week, Dr. Jones.”
O Section F: “A woman who cared anything at all about
having a meaningful relationship with an­
other person would realize that there has
to be some give and take on both sides.”
“A boss who had any consideration at all
for tire welfare of the employees would
stop and think what it’s like to work in a
place like this.”
“A person whose salary is paid by the
taxpayers of this state should keep in mind
that he is paid to serve, not to boss people
around.”
® Section G: “Why don’t you ever act like other wom-
en?”
“Why don’t you ever consider the effect of
the things you say on other people? Don’t
you ever listen to yourself?
“Why are you always criticizing me for
everything I do instead of taking a good
look at your own behavior? Answer me
that!”
® Section H: "Some men would never in a million years
believe a story like that one you just told
me, honey.”
"Some officers might be inclined to be a
little hard on a driver who seemed to have
trouble staying in her own lane.”

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“Some fathers might find it a little hard to

understand why a kid big enough to have
a driver’s license can’t find his way out to
the trash, you know?”

Well—is that you talking? And if it is, do you care?

(Please notice that I am Leveling. I am not saying, “Don’t
you even care? I’m just asking.) If you don t care, the
issue is closed, and that is your business, not mine.
Assume that you do care, on the other hand. You’ve
read a lot of pages on how to defend yourself against other
people who say these things to you. Let’s concentrate now
on how you stop if it’s the other way around. How do you
throw out all those patterns of speech that have been part
of your personality for so long? And how do you do it
without creating havoc in your life?”
One tiling that won’t help at all is to keep the same
patterns, with the same stresses, and throw in little verbal
lovepats to soften the blows. That’s hitting somebody with
a stick and then kissing the bruise to make it better. For
example:

“Sweetheart, you know I wouldn’t hurt jour feelings for

anything in the world—you know how much I love you—
but if you really wanted me to get through school, you
wouldn't always be on my back about helping around the
house.”

That is no improvement. It may confuse the woman you’re

speaking to, since with the sloppy stuff at the beginning
it’s even harder for her to figure out why she feels like
killing you when you’re being so nice. That makes it worse,
not better.
Another thing that won’t help is tacking a cancellation
clause on the end of your remarks. First the utterance,
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then “and if that sounds like I’m trying to be mean or

something, I want you to know that I don’t mean it that
way.” This becomes incredibly obvious after the second
or third time.
I have a radical suggestion to make instead. Just make
up your mind that you will eliminate the patterns on the
Octagon from your speech. Not overnight; that’s impossi­
ble. You’re trying to break habits you’ve built up over
years. Not without forgetting and having to start over
many, many times. You are allowed to be human. What
matters is for you to decide that those eight types of
utterance are going to be absent from your speech from
now on, and mean it. Every time you hear yourself use
one, notice it; pay attention to your speech. If you’ve been
doing this twenty' times a day and in the first month you
cut that down to sixteen times, that’s progress. You have
your whole life in which to make the change. If you were
able to make it overnight, as a matter of fact, you’d
probably scare everyone who knows you. They’d think you
were coming down with something, slipping into nervous
collapse, or concealing some awful secret. The fact that
the process of change will inevitably be gradual is a piece
of accidental good fortune; be grateful for it.
Use your Journal. Take every one of those examples
from the Octagon; assume that you want to get across the
message they contain but that you want to do it without
verbal abuse; and work on them until you’ve found a
satisfactory new way of saying that chunk of meaning. For
example, from Section H:

“Son, you know, I’m having a hard time understanding

something. You have a driver’s license, and you use my car.
I understand that. I pay for die gas and die insurance, and
I understand diat, too. But when I ask you to take the trash
out, I don’t get any results. The two things don’t fit together
in my head very well. How about explaining it to me?”
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This is Leveling, and it should work. Just be sure you

don’t add any Popular Wisdom to it along the lines of:
“After all, if you expect to be granted privileges, you have
to realize that with every privilege there also comes a
responsibility.” Your son has heard that until the first two
or three words are enough to make him throw up, and it
will immediately cancel any possibility of his discussing
the chores problem with you. Depending on his age and
patience, you will get one of the following back:

• “Aw, Dad, you’re always on my back.”

® “I don’t know. I guess I’m just a creep. Okay?”
• “All right, I won’t drive your car anymore. Okay?”
• “Maybe when I grow up I’ll understand.”

While you’re throwing things out of your verbal-be­

havior chest, you might also throw out all the platitudes.
They’re useful only if you use them about once every
three years, and in a situation for which they are the one
and only perfect response. If you use them all the time,
you may find them hard to give up, and I have a helpful
trick for that. If I knew where I learned it, I would credit
its author, but I first heard it years and years ago. It is a
totally empty Popular Wisdom line that means nothing at
all and goes like this:

“You can’t tell which way the train went by looking at the
tracks.”

As a verbal self-defense measure, this line is a useful

response to anybody else’s fatuous remarks. It usually
provokes a long silence, and then—depending on the
generation you’re speaking to—either “You know, there
may be a good deal of truth to that” or “That’s deep.”
Every time you hear yourself say one of those platitudes,

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add to it—unless you’re in a situation in which it would

be dangerous to do so—“And furthermore, you can’t tell
which way the train went by looking at the tracks.” This
should break you of the platitudes because it will make
you feel silly and draw your own attention to the habit.
I am taking it for granted that you have already thrown
out al) the obvious things such as yelling at people,
swearing at them, and calling them names. No more
‘Look, stupid ...” and “You idiot, why don’t you look
where you’re going?” and all the way up the line to such
elegant epithets as “Cretin! Pedant!” (Those are Academic
Macho.) If you’ve been carrying on in this fashion, you
have nothing to lose by giving it up, I assure you.
It will help to have somebody’s aid in your project for
change. Not somebody who’ll jab you in the ribs every
time and say, “Frank! You’re doing it again/” in front of
the whole world. Something more useful is needed, and
more discreet.
As a young wife (a disgracefully young wife) I found
myself suddenly dumped into a social milieu for which I
was completely unprepared and in which I was absolutely
terrified. What I did, in that state of terror, was adopt a
manner that was so arrogant and so phony (complete, as I
recall, with a phony British accent) that everyone thought
I was intolerable. This did achieve one of my goals, which
was to keep them away from me and let me huddle in a
corner in peace; but it wasn’t a very productive strategy
for me as a person, and it embarrassed my husband.
We worked out something that helped a little. The
moment he noticed me starting that behavior pattern or
heard that phony accent, he would say something to me
very softly—but he would call me “Margaret.” It didn’t
embarrass me, and nobody else heard it, but it made me
aware of what I was doing. Some evenings I was called
“Margaret” as many as fifty times. If you have a trustworthy

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“Significant Other” available at home, office, school, fac­

tory, or somewhere else convenient, work out an unobtru­
sive signal of that kind for them to use. It will help.
It will be obvious to you that your goal, particularly in
those situations in which you are the dominant person in
the conversation, is to switch to Leveler Mode whenever
possible. Much of the time it will be neither safe nor
possible, because you will be swimming among the sharks
like everybody else. But it is essential that you always be
able to work out what the Leveler equivalent for an
utterance would be if your situation allowed you to use it.
Rewriting all those examples at the beginning of this
chapter in Leveler Mode is an excellent way to acquire
this competence.
And I promise you, if you do no more than throw out
the eight verbal patterns from the Octagon, the yelling
and name calling, and the Popular Wisdom platitudes, you
will have decreased the amount of verbal violence in your
speech by a tremendous amount. That is genuine progress,
and something to be proud of. One of the effects it will
have is that, to your amazement, other people around you
will stop being so irritating all the time. (This is of course
partly a matter of your perceptions and partly a matter of
theirs.) You are using verbal self-defense strategies when
you are not the dominant speaker, and eliminating the
abusive techniques when you are, and there is no way that
those two factors in combination can fail to lower the
tension in your verbal confrontations by about 50 percent.
You’ll run into people for whom it will do no good at all;
that’s inevitable. But let’s not underestimate the value of
a 50 percent improvement.
Last stop on the line is Guilt Station. What do you do
about the problem of guilt? I have no instant solutions,
and no tricks here. I can tell you things you must not do.
For instance, you mustn’t sit and go on and on to either
yourself or others about what a monster you have been.
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That is useless and boring, and soon people will either

start avoiding you or agreeing with you. On the other hand,
if you really need to talk about tins, if you wake up every
morning with the problem on your mind and a session or
two with a tolerant friend doesn’t help, don’t ignore that.
Go to someone who knows how to deal with such problems
(by which I do not necessarily mean your friendly neigh­
borhood eighty-dollars-an-hour psychotherapist). If you are
a student, see a counselor. See a minister or a priest or a
rabbi. Go to a crisis center or call a hotline. But don’t
ignore it. That much guilt you should not be feeling, not
once you’ve realized what the problem is and begun
working to change it. The time twenty years ago when you
called the handicapped child in your second-grade class
“Creepy' Crip” should not be haunting you now.
A certain amount of guilt is normal and has to be
lived with and worked through. If you had been hitting
people with a baseball bat all unawares and were suddenly
made to realize what you’d been doing and were persuad­
ed to stop it, you would feel guilty. If you didn’t feel that
way, that would be worrisome. As pain comes along to tell
you to keep your finger off that hot stove, guilt comes along
to remind you not to whack other people, physically or
verbally. Expect it, deal with it, and do the best you can.
That’s all anyone has the right to ask of you.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Simpson, Tony. “Real Men, Short Hair.” Texas Coach, May

1973; also in Intellectual Digest, November 1973, pp.
76-78 (slightly abridged). (One of the best brief examples
I know of the demand for masculinity at its stereotyped
extreme.)
Sontag, Susan. “The Double Standard of Aging.” Saturday
Review, September 23, 1972, pp. 29-38.
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For Women

17
If you are a woman who is given to being a verbal abuser,
or if you cannot be sure whether that is true of you, the
first thing for you to do is read Chapter Sixteen, the special
chapter for men, and adapt it to your needs. (The differ­
ences are trivial; for example, you are perhaps less likely
to swear at people than your male counterpart is.) If you
are not in that situation, however, stay with me.
The two basic problems which you are now facing,
unless you are very unusual, are these: (a) realizing that
you are the victim of verbal abuse when that is in fact the
case; and (b) dealing with the guilt you feel when you
defend yourself. Both are tied inextricably to your image
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of yourself as a woman, and for a superb discussion of this

I urge you to read the article by Susan Sontag listed in the
suggested readings at the end of this chapter.
People do abuse you verbally. It happens a lot. It is
expected to happen and considered to be the normal state
of affairs. I am repeating myself only because I know what
I am up against here—the weight of as many years of
intensive cultural conditioning as your personal age at this
reading.
How did you get this way? How, precisely, did you—
a woman of intelligence and common sense—acquire the
sort of mentality that makes you not only unaware that you
are being mistreated but grateful for the mistreatment and
bitterly angry with anyone who tries to take your part
against your abuser?
It begins in infancy. You are “Daddy’s little sweet­
heart” and “Mommy’s darling little baby girl.” It goes
with the nursery rhymes and the picture books, where the
princes and pirates and even the little boys go off to sea
and derring-do, while the women sit on cushions and sew
fine seams and live upon strawberries, sugar, and cream.
It goes with falling down and being picked up and cud­
dled, while you see your brother told sternly in the same
situation that boys don’t cry. It follows you into your basic
readers, in which all nurses and teachers and secretaries
are female, and professors and truck drivers and executives
and important people doing important work are male. In
your spelling book the consonants are male, and they are
reliable. The vowels are female, they can’t be counted on
for anything, and they get kicked around by the conso­
nants.
It follows you through high school, where the boys
play games while you cheer and twirl your baton. It
accompanies you to church, where anything divine is male,
and one gathers generically in fellowship while wishing
goodwill to all mankind. It follows you into marriage
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where you are “the little woman” and frequently “the

little mother.” (Any current issue of Modern Bride would
provide yon with interesting examples here if you happen
to be of the opinon that the rose-covered cottage and the
rose-covered bride no longer exist.) You see a pair of books
on the stands: One is called How to Pick Up Men, while
its “companion” volume is How to Pick Up Girls.
The housewives on your television set are fascinated
with the insides of their toilet bowls and the choice of one
laxative over another. In committee meetings, it is taken
for granted that you will take the notes and pour the coffee.
If you have a secretary and treat her as secretaries are
customarily treated by male bosses, you will not keep her
two weeks—because you are “abrasive.” The men you
work with wear the same suit every day of the week and,
for all you can tell, the same white shirt and the same pair
of shoes—so long as the tie changes thrice weekly, they’ve
done their duty. Try that yourself and you are “letting
yourself go.” Show any human frailty and you are “acting
like a woman, which is repulsive”; show no human frailty
and you are “acting like a man, which is repulsive in a
woman.”
Manage a career and a home and your children and
keep yourself “well preserved,” and you will be admired.
Let any of that get to you and you will find that it’s well
known that women are always sick, always emotional, and
usually hysterical. You may expect the man in your house­
hold to mow the lawn, but do not ever ask that dirty
diapers be changed, that vomit be cleaned up, that cabi­
nets be cleaned out and straightened, or that toilets be
cleaned. Anticipate hearing from males in your house, as
you return from work, that they have perhaps done the
laundry “for you.”
Nor will this improve as you grow older and become
a “dear old tiling.” If you outlive your husband, you will
be expected to miss him. You are expected to miss the
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children who demand of you a continual state of subser­

vience. The cartoon strips in which elderly mothers are
abused by loutish sons are supposed to make you laugh.
When you are all alone, and could at last do something
you want to do, you are expected to grieve over your
“empty nest.” If it was always empty, you will have been
pitied all your life and you will die pitied. Nothing is more
repulsive than a really old woman; she will be hidden
away' in a rest home unless she is poor, in which case she
may become a “shopping-bag lady.”
If you have a Ph.D., in no matter how prestigious a
field, and you go into a hospital, expect the nurses and the
doctors to refuse steadfastly' to address you as “Doctor.”
(I assume that this may not apply if you are a “real”
doctor—that is, if your degree is in medicine.) Expect your
own doctor to call you by your first name (or “Miss/Mrs.”)
regardless of your professional status. Know that a wizard
is glamorous and wondrous and awesome, and that a witch
is an ugly, wicked old hag to be relentlessly hated.
Enough? I do certainly hope so, because I am begin­
ning to bore myself. But it is the awful truth, and I rather
expect it will remain the awful truth no matter how many
Equal Rights Amendments may be passed. And I am
surrounded by women who are convinced that they are
totally free of any effect from all this cultural conditioning.
I am not referring just to the woman who did not
finish high school, has perhaps never held a job outside
her home, has raised three hulking sons who still bring
her all their laundry to do, and is now a widow on Social
Security. I am also speaking of women who consider
themselves liberated, have advanced degrees, are success­
ful in professions and trades ordinarily considered the
province of men, and have never, for all I know, even
seen an issue of Modem Bride.
Let us suppose that such a woman has been told by
a male friend that he may call her this weekend and they
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might then go somewhere. Let us suppose that such a

woman had already made plans to go that weekend to a
conference which would be useful to her in her career, at
which she would enjoy herself, and for which she has
already paid. Who will sit home all that weekend by the
phone, on the off chance that it will ring? Quite right, she
will. And the fact that, when he does not call, she greets
him on Monday morning with a thoroughly assertive “You
bastard!” does not in any way differentiate her from that
elderly widow I just mentioned. A braless woman sitting
at the wheel of a two-ton semi, thinking to herself as she
maneuvers that truck skillfully down the highway, “Oh,
lord, will he call?” is not liberated. She has just been
given different toys to play with.
It is a rather well-kept secret that most males in this
country are delighted when women are sufficiently in­
volved in some project, such as the ERA, that it is possible
to keep them busy with that and keep their noses out of
what is really happening. The longer such a project can
be made to drag on, the longer it can be expected to serve
as a distraction and “keep the ladies out of trouble.” If it
gives those same ladies the feeling that they are striking
effective blows for their sex, so much the better. Unfor­
tunately, ugly as they are, the true mechanisms that main­
tain the position of women are not legal ones, but linguistic
ones.
It is a source of never-ending amazement to me that
when I devote a day or two in my linguistics courses to
verbal self-defense each and every academic term, the
males in the room never open their mouths to object to
anything I say. They do not have to. They lean back in
their chairs and smile at me, politely, and we wait for what
we know will happen; and it always does:—the female
students defend them. Passionately. There may, they de­
clare, be some men such as I describe, but not their father,

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brother, boyfriend, husband, dentist, lawyer, mechanic,

and so on. They will willingly sit and hear me say that
other women attack them verbally, and they will remem­
ber incidents in which their mother or sister or female
friend turned on them with one of the Octagon attacks.
But they' claim staunchly that men who do those things
are very rare and that even those who do them don’t know
they are doing anything of the kind and therefore can’t be
criticized for it. The only exceptions will be the militant
feminists in the room, who will deny that women ever do
such tilings.
What is to be done about all this? Listen. Pay atten­
tion. Are you or are you not being subjected to verbal
abuse? One time around the Octagon, with examples, may
help; do people say things like the following to you with
the stresses indicated?

© Section A: “If you really eared anything about my

feelings, you wouldn’t embarrass me in
front of my family by saying tilings like
that.”
“If you really wanted the kids to be
healthy, you wouldn’t let them have all that
junk food.”
“If you really had any interest in seeing
the Women’s Studies Department succeed,
you’d come in and type mailing labels on
Saturday like everybody else.”
O Section B: “If you really understood the meaning of
the simplest philosophical concepts, you
wouldn’t even want to join that group.”
“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t want
to take tennis lessons when you know I
need the car.”

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“If you really were interested in a career,

you’d go to secretarial school, where you
belong.”
O Section C: “Don’t you even care if your mother is in
there this minute crying her eyes out be­
cause you’re breaking her heart?”
“Don’t you even care if this company lost
a major contract just because you refused
to work overtime yesterday afternoon?”
“Don’t you even care if your children’s
teeth all rot because you use that cheap
toothpaste?”
© Section D: “Even a woman ought to be able to write
a term paper that is at least comprehensi ­
ble.”
“Even someone with no more concern for
the feelings of others than you have should
be able to appreciate the fact that we can’t
always have everything we want in this
life.”
“Even woman lawyer should be able to
understand that a judge is entitled to be
treated with respect in his own courtroom.”
• Section E: “Every nurse on the floor knows what your
problem is, dear—don t you worry about
it.”
“Every member of this club knows why
you feel obliged to make us all look foolish
with your ridiculous behavior, and we for­
give you.”
“Everyone understands, sweetheart, that
when a woman reaches a certain age, she
just isn’t really herself. Indulging you is
our pleasure, believe me.”

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Section F: “A woman who expects to be treated with

respect should learn that only ladies are
accorded that sort of treatment.”
“A woman whose greatest pleasure in life
is causing trouble and alienating people
should not be surprised when they grow
tired of tolerating her eccentricities.”
“A woman who can’t even balance her own
checkbook would probably be better off
keeping her mouth shut about insurance
policy choices, it seems to me.”

... . don’t you even try to do something

Section G: “Why
about the way that child plays her stereo?
We have to live in this neighborhood, you
know.”
“Why don’t you ever pay attention to the
instructions I give in class for doing the
homework?”
“Why don ’ ’t’ youi ever make something dif­
ferent to eat for a change, sweetheart? I
mean, there are only just so many ways a
person can eat hamburger.”

© Section H: "Some men would find it a little hard to

understand why a woman who’s capable of
running her own business can’t even get a
meal on the table before nine o’clock.”
"Some kids would think it was pretty weird
if their mother wouldn’t go to the PTA
picnic.”
"Some people would think it was really
strange if they asked to spend a couple of
days with a friend and got turned down
just because of a thesis.”

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If none of these patterns of speech are ever used

against you, not in your personal relationships, not at
school, not in your work, not anywhere, you have my
unreserved admiration. You are clearly someone who “has
charisma’’ in abundance.
The solution to the problem is not for you, as a
woman, to quickly learn how to use all these Octagon
patterns against women, men, children, and your reflection
in the mirror. You are not trying to go from a situation in
which you are described by everyone as a “nice lady” to
one in which you are perceived as a poor excuse for a
bullying man. This is all too often where assertiveness
training seminars lead you. I am not criticizing such
groups; they may be extremely valuable, even if they do
no more than teach you to say no once in a while. But
there is a great potential for distortion here, and I would
like to try to take you through it logically if I can.
Take as a given that men are brought up to be verbally
abusive, usually without conscious awareness of that fact.
Take as a second given that women don’t approve of that
and think it should be stopped. What conceivable sense
does it make, then—with those first two premises in
mind—to train women to behave in a way that it has
already been agreed is indefensible in a man? If a swear­
ing, yelling, swaggering man is an offense to tlie eye and
ear, what is the excuse for a swearing, yelling, swaggering
woman?
Even if it were possible for women to upset the
political, economic, religious, and bureaucratic founda­
tions of this country and to take over the present position
held by' men, what would have been accomplished if the
result were only an exchange of roles, with women as the
abusing group? The point of liberating women, it seems
to me, must be to produce a better state of affairs, not a
mirror image of the one now being objected to.

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Verbal self-defense, as taught in this book, and prac­

ticed as carefully and as thoroughly as your ballet or your
running or your harpsichord—plus the scrupulous elimi­
nation from your own verbal behavior of the patterns on
the Octagon—should produce not a poor imitation of an
abusive male but a truly self-confident woman.
The second question—how do you handle the guilt?—
is not easy to answer. It will be much harder for you than
for a man, because cultural specifications for women focus
on service, dedication, and never making waves. If it is
more than you can manage by yourself, seek out expert
assistance from a counselor or religious adviser. In any
case, know that it will come, and be prepared to work your
way through it. All your life you have been trained in the
ideas that (a) if anything goes wrong, it is your fault; and
(b) it is your duty in life to see that nothing ever goes
wrong. To realize that you have not been a nice lady, but
have defended yourself and perhaps done so in a way that
will be remembered, may turn out to be a heavier burden
than you anticipated.
A situation that I encounter frequently is this one: A
woman finds herself in a verbal confrontation with a man
and, for once, defends herself. Then she goes home, and
the guilt begins. For hours she torments herself, thinking
how she must have hurt this man, what wounds she must
have inflicted, how cruel she was, and so on. At last, when
she can stand it no longer, she calls him up and confesses
how sorry she is to have said such awful things to him.
Whereupon he says: “Huh? What did you say?" He doesn’t
remember, you see. He will have assumed that she was
playing the same game he was, and unless she went
beyond self-defense and launched some truly nasty coun­
terattack, he will have forgotten the whole episode in
thirty seconds. The woman has now made a fool of herself
by apologizing to this person for causing him pain when

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he was in no pain whatsoever. And she will pay for that in

various ways, most of them self-inflicted.
Verbal self-defense is a gentle art. Even a nice lady is
allowed to use it.

There are three traps I want to warn you not to fall

into, by way of tying up this chapter. One is the Women’s-
Language Trap; one is the Wonder Woman Trap; and the
last is the Circular “I Can’t Win” Trap. The first is minor,
but the other two are grave and ever-present dangers.

THE WOMEN’S-LANGUAGE
TRAP

Recently there has been much research by both linguists

and other social scientists on patterns of language associ­
ated with the sex of the speaker of English. Some basic
references from this work are listed at the end of this
chapter. This research has turned up some proposed
characteristics of “women’s speech” that are claimed to
be absent from “men’s speech,” including the following:

1. intensives such as “very,” “extremely,” “really,” “terribly,”

“awfully”
2. tag questions, such as “I should leave, shouldn’t I?” and
“That’s too loud, isn’t it?”
3. specialized vocabulary such as “mauve,” “dear little X,”
“teeny-weeny,” “simply darling,” “chatter”
4. never being allowed to finish sentences, because of the
toleration of constant interruption

This research is worthwhile and should certainly be pur­

sued. Some cautions are necessary, however; and because
it will be some time before they trickle down from the

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scholarly journals into the general media, I would like to

make them here.
First, intonation is crucial to these alleged character­
istics. I have heard very strong, masculine, thoroughly
male males (in the stereotypical sense of all those terms)
use every item on the women’s-language list, including
“teeny-weeny,” without being perceived as effeminate
or odd. There is a vast difference between saying “Mary
is a simply darling person, and I enjoy being with her,”
and saying “Mary is a simply darling person, and I just
love to be with her!”
Second, I have a strong suspicion that the reason
women are so much more often heard using these items
in mixed groups than the men they are being compared
with is that the characteristics listed are representative of
subordinate individuals. Since women are more frequent­
ly the subordinates in almost any mixed group, the statis­
tics that come out of the research will tend to support the
hypothesis. A clear distinction has to be made between
phenomena of this kind and a situation such as one finds
in Lakhota Sioux, in which a woman asking a question
must use a different word to mark the sentence than a man
does, otherwise the sentence itself is ungrammatical. For
an American man to say, “What a dear little doily!” may
be strange, but the man has not violated a rule of grammar
in the sense of the Sioux example.
If the “women’s language” hypothesis for English is
taken too seriously at this early stage—which is something
not intended by the researchers, I am sure—there may be
a tendency for women to try to cut out of their speech the
“female” characteristics, on an arbitrary basis. The idea is
that this will cause them to be perceived as less subordi­
nate, more confident, more competent, and so on. The
results of such attempts, when I have sat and watched
them, have almost without exception been either embar-

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rassing or ridiculous. You have only to imagine a woman

who is determined to interrupt as frequently as possible,
rather than allow herself to be interrupted, while the
dominant individuals in the confrontation continue to try
to do their usual quota of interrupting, in order to imagine
the chaos to which this can lead.
Until this research has been carried considerably
farther, I have a suggestion. If your skirt is mauve, and you
know it is, don’t be afraid to say so. “Hell, I don’t know
what damned color the fool thing is!” doesn’t sound
assertive; it sounds absurd.

THE WONDER WOMAN TRAP

In almost any Network on which you find yourself, there

will be an opportunity to fall into this trap. It goes as
follows. Most of the members of the network are male,
and all of them already have a certain amount of status.
You, the woman, enter this group, and it is made clear to
you that directly ahead of you—and determining your
eventual status—is a set of hurdles. The hurdles may be
salary steps or tenure review or a probationary year. A
position at a fast-food place will offer precisely the same
sort of hurdles as one at the most prestigious place of
employment, but the labels may differ.
Because you are eager to jump the hurdles and move
up the network in status, you accept with gratitude all
sorts of small duties and assignments that are offered you.
They will be presented as opportunities, things that the
higher-status seniors present would like to do themselves
but are willing to pass on to you because they want to see
you get ahead.
And then one day, six months or a year later, you will
wake up one morning and realize that—whatever the

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network—you are doing vast amounts of work, much of it

dreary detail work that nobody enjoys doing. Furthermore,
you are buried in an impossible schedule that endangers
both your health and your sanity, and there is no sign of
any end to it. Every new dreary task is passed on to you
because (a) the precedent has been set; (b) you are clearly
so good at all these things and so delighted to do them;
and (c) you fell for it.
This ancient ploy began in the home and still contin­
ues there, where Dad invites twenty' people for dinner
without asking the “little woman” first because, he will
be happy to tell you, there is nothing she loves more than
getting out there in the kitchen and cooking for a bunch
of people. And boy, can she cook! Little boys learn the
routine well before puberty', when they are discovered to
be incapable of doing the dishes—they break them and
put spoons down the garbage disposal—but their sister is
very good at dishes and doesn’t mind doing them.
Do try not to fall for this one. You can be sure that the
credit for the magnificent way you handle everything piled
upon you, as well as your “input” to statements of all kinds
that issue forth from your unit, will go not to you but to the
organization inside which you are busily playing Wonder
Woman. If you don’t notice, you’ll spend the rest of your
life like that. And when you finally have to be dispensed
with, it will be acknowledged that heaven only knows
how they will get along without you—but it will be too
late.
Getting out of this trap if you are already in it is a
matter requiring careful planning and advanced skills. The
most useful clue I can give you is to get out your Network
Diagram and take a long, hard look at it—from your central
position as Wonder Woman, who can always take on just
one more task and manage it somehow. If an escape route
exists, that is where you will find it. Certainly, you can

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prevent the situation from escalating. The next time you

are approached with a new little plum, you can say that
you’re sorrv, but you can’t take that one on. And stick to
that.
And by the way, spotting a new incoming female on
whom you can dump your burden before she catches on is
not an ethical solution, however tempting it may be.

THE CIRCULAR “I CAN’T WIN”

TRAP

This last one, like the Wonder Woman Trap, comes out of
the cultural conditioning of women. But it has in it a heavy
interlarding from a kind of instant feminism. It turns up in
women who have read one feminist book or three issues
of Ms. Magazine or taken one women’s studies course and
have nothing like an understanding of the issues. And it
goes like this:

“Because I am a woman, nothing I do has any chance of

succeeding, so there’s no point in my even trying to do
anything—hut it’s not my fault; and it’s not because I
couldn’t be a great writer or judge or engineer or scientist
or anything 1 want to be—it’s because I’m a woman, and
nothing I do has any chance of succeeding.”

That will go around and around forever, and it will provide

you with an excuse to do nothing for the rest of your life.
You can use it as an excuse not to take an exam, an excuse
not to cook dinner, an excuse not to apply for a job, an
excuse not to take a statistics course, an excuse for any­
thing.
It can serve as an excuse for always putting forth the
minimum effort possible and as a reason for every failure
you have. And it is utterly phony. While it is true that it is
292
 For Women

harder for a woman to succeed in most areas involving

prestige and power, it is not impossible. It may take more
work than woidd have been demanded of a man. If you
don’t choose to put forth that additional effort, fine. If you
want to claim that it’s unfair that it should be required of
you, that’s also fine. 1 agree with you. But be honest with
yourself. When you write a shoddy' paper and it comes
back with a D on it, it probably' has that D because it is a
shoddy paper, not because you are female. It may be that
the same shoddy paper from a male student would have
had a C on it. That’s possible. But if you do A work, and
do it consistently, you will eventually' get your A’s.
Don’t let this become a kind of permanent crutch that
you lean on. It will only turn you into a bitter, crippled
person, and you don’t need it. Learn to defend yourself
instead.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED

READINGS

Books:
Lakoff, Robin. Language and Woman’s Place. New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1975. (This brief book is
one of the landmark publications in research on the char­
acteristics of female speech behavior.)
Miller, Casey, and Kate Swift. Words and Women: New
Language in New Times. New York: Anchor Books, 1977.
Ruether, Rosemary, ed. Religion and Sexism. New York:
Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1974. (This collection of articles
takes up the religious and ethical sources of sexism, with
much useful material on linguistic phenomena.)

Articles:
FLORMAN, Samuel C. “Engineering and the Female Mind:
293
 For Women

Why Women Will Not Become Engineers.” Warper’s, Feb­

ruary 1978, pp. 57-63.
Kramer, Cheris; Barrie Thorne; and Nancy Henley. “Per­
spectives on Language and Communication." Signs 3, no.
31 (Spring 1978): 638-51. (This article may be difficult to
find. However, it is a painstaking review of the various
research studies into sex differences in communication and
well worth seeking out. Highly recommended.)
“The New Housewife Blues.” Time, March 14, 1977, pp. 61-69.
Parlee, Mary Brown. “Women Smile Less for Success.”
Psychology Today, March 1979, p. 16. (A discussion of
male-female nonverbal behavior and its effect on percep­
tion of status.)
Richmond-Abbott, Marie, and Nadean Bishop. “The New
Old-Fashioned Womanhood.” Human Behavior, April
1977, pp. 62-69. (A careful discussion of the various sys­
tems now proposed for training women to center their lives
around home and family. Highly recommended.)
Sontag, Susan. “The Double Standard of Aging.” Saturday
Review, September 23, 1972, pp. 29-38. (This article care­
fully analyzes the problems of self-image in both men and
women and traces the development of such problems
through various stages of life. I cannot recommend it too
highly.)
Wills, Gary. “Feminists and Other Useful Fanatics.” Harper’s,
June 1976, pp. 35-42.

294
 Conclusion

Emergency
Techniques

18
This final chapter is a collection of techniques to be used
in genuine emergency situations. With any luck, you’ll
never encounter most of them; but one or two are bound
to come your way. I want to make it clear that what I offer
you here are only stopgap measures, and that some of the
emergencies are more dire than others. You should not,
therefore, look upon the suggestions I make as fail-safe
techniques. They are nothing of the kind.
If a surgeon tried to tell you over the phone how to
do an emergency appendectomy or a flight controller tried
to talk you down at the controls of an airplane when the
pilot had collapsed and you knew nothing about flying,
295
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

neither would try to fool you into believing that everything

was perfectly all right. The techniques that follow are
analogous to such situations, except that only one could
be called a matter of life and death. They are listed here
in what I perceive as the order of their danger to you and
their likelihood of occurring in your life. The most likely—
and least dangerous—appear first.

What to do when you encounter a master of verbal

manipulation who knows what you’re doing and does it
right back at you. It depends. If the two of you are alone,
you probably have little to worry about. You will go a
round or two, perhaps have a good laugh, and then switch
to Leveling; no harm done, no harm intended. Or else you,
as a beginner, will be shown a trick or two, put in your
place, and then the two of you will switch to Leveler
Mode.
Unfortunately, this happens more often in public, in
situations that may make it awkward for the other person
to follow his or her natural inclinations. In this case, once
you realize what you are up against, you have only one
safe strategy—and even then its safety will depend on the
ethics of your opponent. Nevertheless, this is what you
must do: Rely on the expert to get both of you out of it
safely. Go to Computer Mode, pay close attention to the
clues the expert feeds you, don’t betray by word or move­
ment or expression any amazement you may feel at things
that happen as the situation develops, and trust the ex­
pert’s superior skill. Any attempt you make to “help” is
likely to make it impossible for him or her to carry out the
necessary moves. Don’t just do something, sit there.
I suffered a lot of unnecessary knocking about as a
beginner before I realized at last that my attempts to help
the expert present were only creating problems and mak­
ing things worse. I learned the hard way and would like
to save you that.
296
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

How to handle an angry group. All the confrontations

described in this beginner’s manual have had to do with
you as novice versus one or perhaps two or three other
people. It does sometimes happen that you must face a
really furious group of people, perhaps quite a large group.
For instance, as a teacher you may have to face a room full
ot angry students or angry parents. As a speaker, you may
have to face an outraged audience. As the president of any
organization, you may have to face a group of angry
members.
First, let the group exhaust its anger if you can. (This
rule often applies to angry single individuals who outrank
you markedly in status as well, by the way.) You can take
quite a lot of verbal garbage—the equivalent of thrown
tomatoes and lemon pies—without allowing it to destroy
your calm, if you make up your mind to do that. It must not
be allowed to go on forever. And it must not be allowed
to go on if it becomes clear that it is only feeding the
flames. But in most cases, letting half a dozen people stand
up in your audience and tell you what a mess you are and
in how many ways you are that kind of mess, while you
listen in polite and neutral silence, will lower the tension
in the room and make everyone more willing to be reason­
able. (Note: If professional agitators are involved, this
won’t help. Beginners have no business dealing with
professional agitators and hecklers, just as those who can
swim only' three laps have no business trying a swim
across the English Channel. If this is what you face, leave
and let the audience and the pros work it out for them­
selves. That is the only sensible action for you to take.)
When the half-dozen representatives of the group’s
anger have been heard and you have exhibited your will­
ingness to let all sides of the question be aired, the next
step is to behave precisely as if the group you face were
only one person. This is not as strange as it may seem,
since by this time a mob personality will usually have
297
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

How to handle an angry group. All the confrontations

described in this beginner’s manual have had to do with
you as novice versus one or perhaps two or three other
people. It does sometimes happen that you must face a
really furious group of people, perhaps quite a large group.
For instance, as a teacher you may have to face a room full
of angry students or angry parents. As a speaker, you may
have to face an outraged audience. As the president of any
organization, you may have to face a group of angry
members.
First, let the group exhaust its anger if you can. (This
rule often applies to angry single individuals who outrank
you markedly in status as well, by the way.) You can take
quite a lot of verbal garbage—the equivalent of thrown
tomatoes and lemon pies—without allowing it to destroy
your calm, if you make up your mind to do that. It must not
be allowed to go on forever. And it must not be allowed
to go on if it becomes clear that it is only feeding the
Hames. But in most cases, letting half a dozen people stand
up in your audience and tell you what a mess you are and
in how many ways you are that kind of mess, while you
listen in polite and neutral silence, will lower the tension
in the room and make everyone more willing to be reason­
able. (Note: If professional agitators are involved, this
won't help. Beginners have no business dealing with
professional agitators and hecklers, just as those who can
swim only three laps have no business trying a swim
across the English Channel, If this is what you face, leave
and let the audience and the pros work it out for them­
selves. That is the only sensible action for you to take.)
When the half-dozen representatives of the group’s
anger have been heard and you have exhibited your will­
ingness to let all sides of the question be aired, the next
step is to behave precisely as if the group you face were
only one person. This is not as strange as it may seem,
since by ‘this
------ .’ I: time-? a mob personality will usually have
297
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

developed. It will be a Blamer Mob, a Placater Mob, or

some other type. The only difference between such a mob
and an individual is the ease with which the mob can be
led—and the question is only whether you are going to
lead it or whether somebody else is. Use everything you
know about being charismatic. If things begin to heat up
in spite of your efforts, switch to Computer Mode and be
just as meaningless and abstract as you possibly can be.
Above all, don’t lose your temper or show any sign
that you are distressed. An expert can Level with an angry
group and get away with it, but novices are trampled into
the earth that way. Don’t try it, unless it simply appeals to
you as an experiment and you are willing to trade the
consequences for the experience.

How to handle a Sitting Duck. Every now and then

yon will be faced with a moral dilemma—an ethical emer­
gency. Somewhere in one of your Interaction Networks, at
either your own level or slightly above it, there will be a
pathetic example of someone you could easily take apart
and make a pale gray smear of, verbally. Furthermore, this
person will persist in begging to be treated that way. He
or she will continually carry out what Sitting Duck per­
ceives as strikingly clever verbal moves against you and
will wait confidently for you to come back with your move
and be carried away bleeding.
Once you spot this person, you have only once choice,
and it isn’t pleasant. Ignore Sitting Duck. There is no
honor, no victory, and no decency, in using your superior
strength and skill against someone of this kind, and you
must not stoop to it no matter how strong the temptation.
Maintain Computer Mode, never lose your temper, and
wait. In time, the Sitting Duck will destroy itself, and it
will be remembered that you never deviated from the
proper ethical position. (By “in time,” I really mean “in
time.” It may take years, during which you will take a lot
298
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

of heat and listen to many unpleasant words. If you don’t

care for this, take Harry S. Truman’s advice and get out of
the kitchen if the heat is too much for you.)
You will frequently be challenged by other people,
who will call what you are doing cowardice or hypocrisy
or professional suicide or accuse you of “being a martyr,”
and other similar epithets. Some of these people will be
well-meaning friends, and some will be pretending to be
well-meaning friends; it makes no difference. You look
them calmly in the eye, you inform them that you haven’t
the slightest idea what they are talking about, and you
stick to that position. It is cheap to use your skills against
people who cannot defend themselves against you when
it is you personally that they are attacking. Don’t stoop to
that, and the day will come when you’ll be very glad you
didn’t.

Hotv to handle the total communication breakdown.

Sometimes, nothing works. You say something, making the
proper move specified in your manual, and nothing hap­
pens. You get an icy silence, a blank look, folded arms.
You try another move—you try Leveling, perhaps. And
still nothing happens.
What this means is that you are lacking some vital
piece of information. You have broken a rule you know
nothing about, perhaps because the other person is from
a different cultural group than you are, perhaps for entirely
personal reasons.
In this situation you have only one appropriate re­
sponse. You become absolutely silent, too. And you wait.
Somebody will break eventually and either say something
or leave. You can hope that the somebody will not be you
or that the other person will offer you the missing infor­
mation you need. If not, please remember—you cannot
win them all.
If this happens to you in a situation in which you are
299
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

facing a group and you have a responsibility' to fulfill—for

example, you are there to try' to convince management that
your union is entitled to a wage increase, or you are there
to try to convince a faculty committee that a change should
be made in an academic requirement—be sure that you
make your position clear before you resort to silence. Say,
unambiguously, “What I’m here for is to talk about a wage
increase. I’m willing to listen to what you have to say and
I’m willing to enter into a discussion. If you don’t want to
say anything, I’m also willing to wait.” Then sit back and
say nothing more. It’s their move.

Reverse-signal technique. What on earth do you do,

as a beginner, if you must represent a position with which
you disagree and you dare not refuse to do so?
This happens. In this real world, where people have
families to feed and jobs to hold down and all sorts of
legitimate pressures and threats hanging over them, this
happens. Pretending that it does not, or that most people
are capable of being saints and standing by their principles
regardless of the cost, is absurd.
Assume that you are a student teacher and you have
been told to convince the parents of your students that the
book you’ve been ordered to use in your classroom is a
good one, though you yourself think it is a dreadful book.
If you say you won’t use or defend the book, you’ll flunk
student teaching, you won’t get your teaching credential,
years of school at considerable sacrifice for your family
and yourself will have been wasted, and somebody else
will move in and defend the book as ordered. That person
will pass student teaching, get the teaching certificate, and
so on.
This is an awful moral dilemma, and I don’t intend to
hand down moral doctrine. Unlike the Sitting Duck situ-

300
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

ation, tlie issues are not clear-cut. I once compromised in

a situation like this, long ago, because I had three small
kids to feed. I despise myself for it to this day; but if I had
it to do over again, I rather expect I would only do what
I did then. It isn’t fair—you should not be put in such a
bind. But I assure you that when something unpleasant or
unpopular must be transmitted to a group, it is frequently
a task that nobody high on the power hierarchy will touch;
thus, it is delegated” down the line until it arrives at you.
The question then becomes: In a situation where you feel
you have no choice but to compromise your principles, is
there any way you can do that without sacrificing the
entire ball game?
Yes. There is a technique from espionage and adver­
tising—a curious but much-related pair. It requires careful
advance preparation but is certainly not beyond your skills.
Write down what it is that you are expected to say—
the part where you defend the book you despise, for
example. Then consider your audience. Think of every­
thing you know about them, their likes and dislikes, and
especially' what words are likely to have a negative cultural
loading for them. Make a list of those words (leaving out
curses or ethnic slurs, of course.) Now go back to your
speech and very carefully salt those words through it
wherever you can. Your goal is to make the audience leave
convinced that they have heard you speak for the book
you hate—since that’s the compromise you have been
forced to—and prepared to claim that they heard you speak
for it, but convinced that they hate that book. In other
words, you have done your best and you have failed; that
can happen to anyone.
Let me give you one concrete example. I don’t expect
to find myself in a position where I feel that I must face
a group of angry students and argue for a particular

301
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

curriculum change that I am in fact against. I don’t think

that’s going to happen to me at this stage in my life.
However, if it did happen, I would know what to do.
On my campus, which is a huge urban multicultural
campus with only about ten thousand parking spaces for
at least fifty thousand people with cars, the parking prob­
lem is a Unifying Metaphor to end all unifying metaphors.
It is a rare day when any student does not have at least
one negative incident in his or her life that is due entirely
to the shortage of parking space (and the absence of
adequate public transportation). I would therefore get up
before the group of students and present the new curric­
ulum change entirely in speech patterns having to do with
being at the wheel of a car, successfully negotiating the
highway, finding a secure place to park, and so forth. (This
is frequently done with a “ship,” “a safe berth,” and
“bringing (X) into port,” but it takes little ingenuity to
shift your vehicular vocabulary.) I would hammer away at
the logical arguments for what I was against, since they
are known to have little effect on the audience for any
speech. And at the end the students would go out and vote
down the change in curriculum. They would probably not
realize that the source of their anger was my unrelenting re­
minders of the parking problem; and the superior who had
forced me into that corner would not be able to say that I had
not done my duty as ordered.
You might think that this could backfire on you, and
I suppose it is possible. You could overdo it to such an
extent that it would become parody—maybe. But you’d
have to work at it. It is frequently this technique that is
responsible for one astounding truth: Commercials that
people claim they hate usually sell more of the product
than the tasteful kind.

Spotting and dealing with the phony Leveler. Way

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 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

back at the beginning of this book I told you that there

was probably nothing more dangerous than the phony
Levelers. They tempt you—seduce you, actually—into a
position of total vulnerability. Then, whap! And it’s too
late.
The most obvious clues to identifying these persons
are the eight attacks on the Octagon, with the proper
stresses present, but a quite different vocabulary. The
phony Leveler will never come at you as any sort of overt
menace. Here’s a typical phony Leveler utterance:

“If you really wanted to have a meaningful relationship,

love, you would realize that it has to be based on a
foundation of complete mutual trust.”

And a few more . . .

® "Even someone as sensitive to others as you are should be

able to realize how much it hurts me when you keep secrets
from me.”
• "Some people might think that because you refuse to take
part in this discussion like the rest of us, you don’t really
want to be part of the group ... you know what I mean?”
• “Look, I know you’ve probably been shafted so many times
that you don’t trust anybody anymore. Everybody here,
including me, understands that, and sympathizes. We really
do. But a person who wants to get beyond the past and do
some genuine growing toward the future has got to be able
to give up these old misconceptions.”

Your tendency in response to such moves is to tell

your secrets, lay bare your confidences, and trust the
phony Leveler—often in front of other people. Then, when
it is too late, you find out that that is just what it was all
about, and now the phony has yon right where he or she
wants you. The phony Leveler will have a lot to say about

303
 Conclusion: Emergency Techniques

how “paranoid” it is of you to be so “emotional, distrustful,

unwilling to surrender your own preconceptions, and so
on. Frankly, being frightened in a collapsing building is
not paranoid; it is common sense. Being frightened when
you have reason to think you have a phony Leveler after
you is also common sense.
This is a situation in which it is better to be safe than
sorry. If you hear the Octagon patterns and you have a
funny feeling that things are not right, stay in Computer
Mode until you are absolutely certain where you are.
Nobody can hurt you more deeply, or more permanently,
than a phony Leveler whose spiel you fell for out of
innocence. You are entitled to refuse to risk that.

Verbal self-defense against physical violence. This is

the last one, and perhaps the worst. Let us hope that you
never encounter it. With all my heart I hope that you are
never a teacher faced by a student who outweighs you by
fifty' pounds and has a knife at your throat, or a woman
alone in a bedroom with a would-be rapist, or an elderly
man facing a drunken punk in an alley. I can hope nothing
like this ever happens to you, but I cannot guarantee it.
The attempt to counter physical violence with verbal
defense techniques is definitely not recommended for
beginners. But if you find yourself happed and you must
do something, here are my suggestions.
Go to Computer Mode and stay there. Most people
determined on hurting you physically are more interested
in seeing your fear and hearing you plead for mercy than
they are in the act of violence itself. If you show no
emotion and don’t appear to be either frightened or arro­
gant, you will keep them from achieving that goal. This
should win you some time, as they keep trying to get you
to show the terror that they want to see. It may be enough

304
 Conclusion. Emergency Techniques

time for someone to come to your aid. It may also convince

them to find somebody who is more fun to abuse than you
are.
Your goal is to keep the level of tension low, to keep
your attacker from panicking—a major danger, however
strange it may seem—and to win time. Be as absolutely
neutral as you possibly can. Do not Blame. Do not Placate,
whatever you do. Do not go to the Distracter Mode that
betrays inner panic. Stay in Computer Mode, verbally and
nonverbally.
In the hands of an expert, this will work. That is why
experts are sent to negotiate with persons who have shut
themselves up in buildings with hostages at gunpoint.
That’s why experts are sent to try to talk people down
from ledges and bridge railings when they are determined
on suicide. In a beginner’s hands, it may fail, but it is
worth a try. It is most assuredly safer than an attempt at
physical violence, unless you number karate among your
personal skills.
Do your very best to get your attacker involved in an
abstract discussion of violence—not the particular alter­
cation the two of you are involved in, but violence in
general, all in Computer Mode. The longer you can keep
the potentially violent person talking to you, the better
your chances of coming out of it without serious injury.
I am convinced that unless you are an expert at one
of the conventional martial arts, and totally capable of
defending yourself in that way, this is much safer than the
frequently recommended hatpins, bottles of spray chemi­
cals, jabs to the eyes or the groin, and the like. If you make
a mistake with one of those, you are not likely to get a
second chance. Just talking, on the other hand, is less
likely to be interpreted as an attack or to panic the violent
person you are dealing with.
Good luck.

305
 Index
A attacks. Section, (“If jou really—"), question words. 62
redirection of confrontation, 51
and Blamer inodes, 33 shift from Computer to Leveler, 64
principles, 34 when question, use of, 53-54
conditioning of males, 32 B arner mode, defined, 9
of women, 32-33 Blaming, Mother/Student script, 82-85
Confrontation One, 29-34 attack, counter to, 82-83
brawl, avoidance of, 83
tmd gtrik fedings, 30 complunentary Computer mode, 83-84
presupposition, 83
presuppositions, 28 reinforcement of attitudes, 84-85
results, 31 Body language, 192-4 (see also Body­
and trick moves, 29 placement; Mannerisms)
verbal Violence Octagon, 28 temis"?^ nonverBal channel, 193
A attack, Section, revised versions:
Computer type blocker, 34-35 Body placement. 202-6
mid cuteness, hazards in use, 36-37 and Computer mode, 203
father and clnl'd? psywar of. 35-36
and motion of other. 204
sell-practice. 37-38 oversimplification of, 202
Abstraction (see Computer mode, special1 personal space, 201
problems with; Nominalization) point to remember, 203
Angered group, dealing with. popularization, 203
aiKi "personality" of mob, 297-98 nile of thumb. 205-6
and venting of anger. 29i :lnd stupid moves, exam nple. 205
A sample senpts. Section, 42-46 Bre 299n3Q()'lta'’in coinnmunication,

SM**44
sucker punch, 43-44 C attacksjsection, ("Don't >ou care—?”),
Attack, knowing form of. 4
mid appropriate defense. 4 contrast with Section B, 66-67
Attack, recognition of occurrence, 3-4 crude response, nature of, 67-68
compared to mugging, 3
exunp’les. 65-66^
und moral fiber, attack on, 68-69
wu really—>1)11 one-time use, 70
wouldn't want— ). presuppositions, 66
presujiyosition one, questioning of,
Blaming, 50-51 Teacher/Parent confrontation, example.
caution alx>ut "tattletales,” 6-1
claim, existence of, 62 Charisma, nature of, 212-14
compliment, in Computer mode, 61 distinguished from coercion. 213
Computer mode, 52 defirKHl*. 212 Lx;VC,ing’214
confrontation 50. 51-52
and control of personal desires, ,o and logic, 212-13
counterattack, For emergencies. 54-
employee vs. supervisor, switching

and guilt burden, 55

catsaffta.
format. 292
and self-honesty, 293
and incidents discussion of, 63 College:
journal, 56-60
Leveler, phony, 54
and older woman stereotype, 51 normality in, 263
and Placater, phony, 54
Placating. 51
presuppositions, caution about,
MB temporary nature of. 262
presuppositions, wrong respons

307
 Index

College, confrontation (cont) female/female, 125

abstraction, Computer mode as gate to, female/male, 126
132-33
emergency phrase, 132 and lack of self-control, 126, 127
horrible example, 131-32 male/female, 12-1
College students: male/male, 124-25
and acceptance of arrangements, 255 patient, disadvantages of, 124
alienation, avoidance ol, 257
and arguments with instructor, 258-59 E attacks, Section Uj_Everyonc understands
and basic information, points to
rem eml xr, 258 arguments to avoid, 110
emergency Leveling, 260-62 beginner's move, use of, 112
female, tilings to avoid, 259-60 and compliments as psywar. 113
and Computer mode, use of, 112-13
313“
and inequality of power, 25-1-55
and dirty little secret, power of. 111
fillets, 107-8
and inclusion of addressee, 108

and Placating. avoidance of. 256-57, 261 presuppositions, 108, 110

atxl power networks, diagram of, 248 responses to avoid, 110.
and proper way to correct professor, 259 Einpfoyer/Employee confrontation, 122-23
and reading requirements, 257-58 and avoidance of assistance to opponent,
and steps to take on attack. 251
aixjVerbal Violence Octagon, 219-50,

and voluntary extra work, 255-56

tesfcii-23
nominalization, 123
Computer mixfe, 9-10, 13
advantages of, 13 F attacks. Section, ("A person who—"),
safety til, 13 128-48 (see also Computer mode,
Computer mixle, special problems with, special problems with)

abstract move, response to, 73-74

crying, avoidance of, 72-73 as full Computer mode, 128
group, containing two or more women, and new slots, 129
presuppositions, 130-31
honesty, doublethink alxnit, 73 and stacking, 129
males, tiewilderment by women’s
responses, 72
males, training of, 71 dignity, maintenance ot, 18-1
verbal confrontation, compared to sports,, favors, requests for, 185
pomposity, avoidance of, 187-88
women, and confnintation game, 72 switch from Computer to Placater,
women, resentment in, 7)
Conflict, with adept at verbal titles, use of, 184-85
manipulation, 296 and total loss by student, 185-86
Computer mixle, 296 Friend/fnend confrontation, 101-6
bait words, 106
Computer mixle as goal, 106
mid Leveler mixle as goal, 104
D attacks^Section, ("Even you should—"), points to avoid, 105

basicpattem, 87 G attacks^Si^tion, ("Why don’t you ever—

and Computer mtxie, 90-91
arguing against accusation, 152
lE^SsT 91-92
HusliandAVife, confrontation. 90-91
and disproof of claim, as response, 153
Employ er/Employee confnintation, and
insults in, 86 Blamer mixle, 155-56
journal, 96-100

a.rrr-89
practice, 94-95
HusbanilAVife confrontation, 153-55

presuppositions, 88-89,92-93 neutralization, 154-55

questions, as softeners, 94 practice, 156-58
Distractor mtxie, defined, 10
Doctor/Patient confrontation, 123-27
Computer mixle, 124, 125
308
 Index

CnUT’M®151 Males, contrast between, 11

and inner/outer conflict, 11
Males, when two tire in the same, 133-34
H attacks^Section, ("Some X’s would-"), biizzwwd masses, for emergency use,
anrLComputer male, as pseudospeech,
bask- format, 170
common reactions, 175-76 and denialofattack, 132,135
Computer mode. 174. 175
counterattack, .is blackmail, 176-77
demal response, 174
practice, 137-39
response to buzzwords, effects of, 135
HusbandAVife, male switches, 177 Motner/Daughter confrontation. 162-65
Blamer male, reinforcement of, 163
phoniness,^deliberate, 176 Klr^a165
Mother, winning of, 164
presuppositions, 173
Nominalization, 113-21
and abstraction, 115-16
Klima, Edward. 200 and Computer male, 116
examples, 114
Leveler mode

and negotiation, 12
Sato.114
nature, 115
and possessive marker, 115
Leveling, Doctor/Patient script, 79-82 practice, 116-17
and Doctor, in dominant position, 80-81 and predicates, 114
domiiuuice, attenipt to even up. 81-82 presuppositions, 114-15
Nurse/Patient confrontation, 100-104
and abstraction, 103-104
Mannerisms, 206-11 (see also Bodv Distraction, 101
language) Placater inale. 102-3
Computer male, major signs of, 208-9 mid rows, 101-2
and Computer male, as neutralizer of
Parallelism, 223-26
and charisma, 224
and eye contact as example, 209-10 and computer-generated speech, 224
and delegation of speechmaking, 221-25
and Leveling, 211-12 examples, 225-26
retaliation. avoidance of, 208 and language fonn, 223-24
and pattern, maintenance of, 224
MechamoCustomer confrontation, 188-91 I’honv Leveler, (joints to remember,
and abstraction. 189-90
and Blaming, disaster of, 190-91 clues, 303
and Leveling. 188-89, 191 danger of, 304
Men, points to remember. 266-77 Placater male, defined, 8-9
and assistiuice from other, 275-71
16 example, in speech, 8
basic problems, 269 Policeman/Driver conf mutation, 146-48
cancellation clauses, 272-73 and Bliuuer male, 148
aial dominant speaker, 276 challenge to policeman, 146
elimination of patterns, 273-74 and discussion shift, 147
guilt, elimination oi. 276-77 and respect, proper, 146
Leveling example of, 273-74, 276 Power networks, and administrative
I opt liar Wisdom, avoidance of. 274 assistant, example of. 240-44
anti self-image, male, 268 absence of other assistants. 241
venial bully, aware. 268-69 and avoidance of dead-enders, 243-44
venial bully, unaware. 266-67, 268 multiple assistants, 240-41
and verbal lovepats, 272 a,24^ ll|3r" c‘*’an8es' Questions to ask,
Metaphor, unifying, 226-30
and charisma, 230 and support structures, 244-45
familiarity with, 228 and verbal interaction, 242
atKint^ative Presuppositions, example I OW235U7o’rkS'and VCrbul interaction’
Western Frontier, as example, 226-27 diagram, 236

309
 Index

Power networks, interaction (cont.)

diagrams, practice at drawing, 239 20-21
and multiple levels, 238 Section E, Computer/Blraner, 21
special situations. 237-38
types of relationships, 237
unconsciousness of. 235
iS&.M'^- 22
and reversed statements, 22
universality of, 236 Section H, Computer/Bl.imer, 23
in your mind, 240 advanced fonn of attack. 23
Presuppositions. 15-16 Violence-.^shyJcul, and self-defense,
as absent from overt speech, 16
ignorance of, 16 raid abstract discussion, 305
aggressor, avoidance of causing panic in,
Response, following through, 5-6
and women, pressure on, 5 aggressor, urges of. 305
and violence prevention, 5
Retaliation, avoidance of, 208 230-33
Reverse signal technique. .'100-302 “Anglo, example of, 231-32
example, with unified metaphor, 302 and chansina, 230
and moral dilemma, 300-3U1 and Computer mode, 233
semantic loadings, 301 Em^loyer/Eniployee confrontation,

Salesi»erson/Customer confrontation, l-KJ

and attempt to use guilt. 143-44 cassette recorders, use of, 196-97
customerjoss of argument by. 145-46 and feedback in mind, 198-99
reversal of attack, 144-45 and friends, action of. 19g 198
Sensory mixle. matching of, 216-21 and others' judgement. 195
phoneticians, 194
predicates, examples, 219 points to remember, 197. 198
predicates, tyqies of, 218 quaiity’194 ~
points to remember, 217-18
Teacher/Bill confrontation, mismatch and self-interest, 195
and self-perception of voice. 19b
translation, examples. 220 and self-review, 199
and true verbs, 218 and unpleasant voice, 196-97
Sensory modes, preferred, 214-16
Woman/Mrai confrontation, and Blomer
mode, 165-69

SiS^te"S
projyer
“t288'99
handling, 298-99
and mutual Blaming, 167^68
and neutralization, 166-67
Son tag, Susan, 268 Wonien's-Language trap, 288-90
Stress, 199-202 and deletion of female character from
attention to, 202
raid English speakers, 200
example, 200
h.lEfcSa
intonation. 289
sentence set, range of effects, 200-201 and subonlination, 289

Utterances^ systematic organization of, ^aye^a"^'

conditioning, process of.
278-93
278-79
and example, 222 distraction of, 281-82
and rhetoric class, 222 double binds on. 280-81
and guilt feelings of, 287-88
Verba) abuse, 1-3 and self-confideiiee, points to remember,
nature of, 2 286-87
Verbal Violence Octagon: aixl subjugition by linguistics, 282-83
first steps in understanding, 17 Verbal Violence Octagon, 283-85
Wonder Woman trap, 290-92
defense against, 291-92
Seetion^B, overt Blraner statements. hurdles in group, 290-91

310
Most of us are under verbal attack everyday and
often don’t even realize it. In The Gentle Art of
Verbal Self-Defense you’ll learn the skills you need
to respond to all types of verbal attack. Specific
strategies for your defense include:
• Twelve rules of clear, effective interaction
• Recognition of five verbal modes—the
Placator, Blamer, Distractor, Computer, and
Leveler
• Tone of voice—make yours bolder and more
assertive
• Alternative scripts—better approaches to
common confrontation
• Body language—how it supports what you say
• and in special chapters directed to both men
and women, the author explains how women
have long been the verbal victims of men and
what both sexes can do to break this
destructive pattern

For information about the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense

Newsletter write to Suzette Haden Elgin, Route 4, Box 192E,
Huntsville, Arkansas 72740

■iBSiiiiii
ISBN 0-8805=1-030-7

iiiiiii i i i
 © 1980 by Suzette Haden Elgin
First published in the USA in 1980 by Prentice-Hall, Inc.

AU rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form or by any means without permission in writing
from the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 80-16184

This edition published by Dorset Press,

a division of Marboro Books Corp.,
by arrangement with Suzette Haden Elgin.

ISBN 0-88029-030-7
(formerly 0-13-351080-8)
Printed in the United States of America

19 18 17 16