The Meta-Model is a model of language that John Grinder and Richard Bandler developed by modelling the work of Virginia Satir. It is a very powerful model for recognising deletions, distortions and generalisations in a person's language, in order to recover the deep structure behind the surface structure of what they say. It also provides a set of challenges to these patterns so that the full meaning can be uncovered and the presenting problem can be properly understood.
When we speak, we produce a surface structure — an edited, simplified version of our actual internal experience. The deep structure is the fuller, richer representation beneath it. The Meta-Model gives practitioners the tools to bridge the gap between the two.
The three processes that filter our communication are:
Distortions Utterances where there is a distortion of reality. The listener (or speaker) takes liberties with how events are represented. Example: "She doesn't like me." — classified as a Mind Read. Challenge: "How do you know?"
Generalisations Utterances where the person experiences one thing and extends it to all things of a similar nature, forming a belief. Example: "Nobody can run a mile in under 4 minutes." Challenges: "What would happen if someone did?" or "Nobody?"
Deletions Utterances where key information has been left out, and recovering that information is necessary to understand the full meaning. Example: "She hurt me." Challenge: "How specifically?"
See also: Milton Patterns | What is NLP?