International Negotiations

International Negotiations Trainer’s Notes © Cambridge University Press 2012

www.cambridge.org/elt/internationalnegotiations

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60

7C The bargaining zone

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Powers of persuasion

8A

Quote

Read the first sentence aloud. Trainees then read the quote to find out what Kevin Hogan 

means by change minds.

Answer

Get people to say yes when they otherwise would have said no.

1 

Trainees discuss the question in small groups. After a few minutes, open up the discussion 

to include the whole class. You could also elicit from the class onto the board some words 

with special persuasive power that are used in advertising. Then tell trainees to read the 

commentary on page 73 to compare it with their ideas.

Background note

See 

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003662.html

 for a history 

of the Yale 12 list, which suggests that the list has nothing to do with Yale University. 

However, even if the Yale connection is almost certainly fictitious, the persuasiveness of 

these and similar words has been widely discussed. See, for example, the book Words that 

Work by Dr Frank Luntz (

http://www.hyperionbooks.com/book/words-that-work/

).