Unclean Language

Extract from Less is More ... The Art of Clean Language
by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley

• To illustrate how easy it is to unwittingly interfere in a client's process, let's explore an example. A therapist could respond in a number of ways to the following statement:
  
  Client: I'm stuck with no way out.
  
  Therapist 1: Have you got the determination to walk away?
  
  This intervention uses very unclean language as it:
• implies the solution for the client is to be away from their current condition
• imposes determination as the resource required
• assumes the client will 'walk away' (rather than leaping, soaring, melting, evaporating, etc.)

Also the client might well presuppose they have insufficient of the determination required, because if they had enough, they would have already applied it, wouldn't they?!

Therapist 2: What would happen if you could find a way out?

This is cleaner language as it mostly uses the client's words. However, you may have noticed the embedded command, 'find a way out'. The therapist has assumed the solution of 'finding' on behalf of the client. While this may produce a useful outcome, does the therapist recognise they have just imposed their model of the world on the client?

You may also notice in both of the above examples the client's perception has been subtly ignored. The client has said there is no way out of stuck. Our experience indicates it is highly therapeutic to begin by fully validating the client's 'current reality' through the use of Clean Language (See example below).

Perhaps the deepest presupposition in both of the above interventions is that being "away" or "out" is good for the client, and many therapist's outcome would be to facilitate this.

David Grove assumes that if a client is 'stuck,' then there is valuable information in the stuckness. If 'stuck' is not honoured and explored, the client may well need to return to 'stuck' at a future date. This may explain why some apparently successful therapeutic interventions can have a short-lived effect.

Clean Language Questions
The aim of Clean Language early in the process is to allow information to emerge into the client's awareness by exploring their coding of their metaphor.
Let's revisit the above example, this time using Clean Language questions:

Client: I'm stuck with no way out.

CLQ: And what kind of stuck with no way out is that stuck with no way out?

Client A: My whole body feels as if its sinking into the ground.
Client B: I can't see the way forward. It's all foggy.
Client C: Every door that was opened to me is closed.

This gives the client maximum opportunity to describe the experience of 'stuck,' and therefore to gather more information about their representation of the Present State.

In case you don't get to read the whole article, that stuck . A slight emphasis on the word that, and maybe the word stuck subtly conveys your acknowledgement of the client's unique and specific stuck at the moment of saying the word. The client is not necessarily associated with stuck at the moment of utterance! S/he might, for example, be picturing a barrier - who know? Well, with the right / clean questions the client can.