An important term to describe something you will encounter in verbal self-defense, i.e. the art of listening and talking to deescalate. Presuppositions are deadly when used in certain ways so it is best to come to understand how they are used in order to combat them in a conflict.
When you try to convey an assumption that one knows a thing beforehand at the beginning of an argument or action you are presupposing that this thing or action is already understood to be true. A bit confusing but important to know.
Presuppositions are used in the legal system to manipulate both witnesses and jurors. Attorneys use this method to put a person, unwittingly, into a position where their answers while answering a second part of a question actually causes the first part of that question to be assumed as a true statement. For example:
"Why did you steal the money?" This statement or question or both assumes the existence of money, that it was stolen and that someone, you in this instance, stole it, and that you, the thief, have a reason for stealing the money. There are about four assumptions in these six seemingly innocent words. This actually, depending on how you would answer it, represents a compound, unfair, inaccurate presupposition. This comes down to putting you on the defensive by having to refute it and if you choose only one of the four, initial and basic, assumptions then it leaves a listener to believe the other three.
Presuppositions are used all the time in communications. Mostly, they are fair, honest, and non-controversial in nature and are based on a common knowledge and an agreement of an observable fact. When used by unscrupulous persons for deceit, misdirection and manipulation of others it becomes problematic. More so in conflicts that can become physical, i.e. verbal self-defense or verbal deescalations.
You have to truly listen to what is being said/stated to perceive presuppositions. Some times when those presuppositions are directed toward you as the listener to get a rise out of you and cause you to act with your emotional driven monkey ego pride brain.
You have to remember and remain steadfast with the knowledge that for humans facing, especially emotional driven statements, presuppositions your mind truly assumes or gets caught up in a mind-sent of subconsciously accepting the speaker's point of view. Some believe when confronted by three or four presuppositions, it is impossible for the listener to NOT accept the assumptions/inferences made by the speaker. It is therefore, critically important, for a listener to recognize presuppositions before getting caught up in a flow of them causing you to fall into believing the speaker.
It is said by experts on this subject that this type of recognition and resistance to presuppositions must be continually practiced or you will likely start to believe presuppositions. What makes this extremely difficult is humans use presuppositions all the time in communications, both written and spoken, so that recognition takes on another context, identifying the negative types that would result in conflict.
Now, I say the next with tongue in cheek because I am not an expert on this, but both attorneys in the legal system as well as criminals often become experts with the skills and motivation to deliberately use presuppositions to persuade you to accept the speakers presuppositions, i.e. get you to be perceived as guilty or as a victim to act accordingly. It means in self-defense you have to practice recognition along with keeping the logical side of your brain in charge over the monkey brain side so that you can address the true meaning of what the speaker/writer is conveying or trying to use to persuade you to accept their side, etc.
Then there is the part that says in deescalation that use of presuppositions can be part and parcel to subtly affect the consciousness of the speaker thus causing a shift in their thinking to get them to settle down and thereby avoiding escalation to physical conflict. By learning about verbal self-defense you can use the natural use of presuppositions to deescalate a potential combatant to something else.
This warrants more study and research.
Bibliography:
Elgin, Suzette Haden, Ph.D. "More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense." Prentice Hall. New Jersey. 1983.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Self-Defense at Work." New York. Prentice Hall Press. 2000.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" Barnes & Noble. 1993.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Written Self-Defense" MJF Books. 1997
Elgin, Suzette. "The Last Word on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" Barnes & Noble. 1995
Elgin, Suzette. "Staying Well with the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense." MJF Books. 1990.
Notice: I can't say enough about the above series of books by Dr. Elgin. There is so much more than the subject of presuppositions in these books and the entire series goes a long way to learning to communicate let alone use those skills to deescalate.
http://www.angelfire.com/nd/danscorpio/presup.html
http://www.nlp-secrets.com/nlp-presuppositions.php
Caveat: this is meant to inspire those seeking to learn self-defense toward other means than physical techniques. it is meant for the individual learning self defense because for professionals things go a lot further than this method because professionals have to deal with a wider variety of conditions both environmental and psychological to deescalate a person from doing something that could cause them or others harm. This would be only a very first baby step ......
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