ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the filters affecting perception of reality. It introduces the Meta-Model as a tool for analyzing perception and meaning. The chapter gives practical examples of how language acts as both a means of and a limitation on communication. Two Americans, John Grinder, professor of linguistics, and Richard Bandler, his student, with a particular interest in cybernetics were approached by Bateson to model the language of some successful therapists. Modelling, as Margaret Berry states in her introduction to Systemic Linguistics, is now considered an important tool in linguistics, and is also central to Systemics. Cross-cultural communication is an extreme example of the fact that the world cannot be taken for granted. Intrinsic modal possibility includes ability and permission, and sets the limits to options as perceived by the speaker or writer. Austin introduced the concepts of 'performative utterances' in the early sixties, and his ideas were widely adapted through to the end of the seventies.
