What does the ‘clean’ in Clean Language stand for?
When people first hear the term 'Clean Language', they often think it means 'no swearing'. But 'clean' actually refers to the intention of a facilitator to keep their assumptions to a minimum. We achieve this by making sure everything we say and do is related to what a client has said or done. This means: choosing our questions only after the client has finished speaking; using a client's own words rather than paraphrasing them; only asking questions that are justified by the logic of what a client has said so far; making as few assumptions as possible about what a client means (and being ready to change those assumptions as more information is revealed); and not introducing any metaphors of our own - the only metaphors that Clean Language utilises are the universal metaphors of time, space and form.