I just used this idea earlier this week in responding to a contentious document. Days after receiving it, and having read it several times, I finally caught the author’s use of indirect/covert frame-setting to lead the reader to certain conclusions while maintaining plausible deniability for himself regarding these potentially libelous conclusions.

So I went right through it and picked out the occasionally-rather-clever covert frames and called it what it was, to other readers, “Don’t fall for this, he’s using careful linguistic tricks to lead you to assumptions and conclusions that are dangerously at odds with the facts of the situation,” adding “It’s pretty offensive that he thought anyone would buy this,” for good measure. Then I offered my own alternative frames.

One-on-one, I would have gone at him with knowledge of the frames, playing with them as I could, as you did above with your example of having your legal guy go TO the office to review the contract. But I was working with a wider audience with whom I would not necessarily be able to interact one on one. So instead I focused on surfacing the techniques, explaining what that each statement implied that was untrue (“see, I’ll bet you read that and assumed X, like he wanted you to, but can you tell me where in that statement he’s proven that X is true? He didn’t, and he can’t, because there’s proof to the contrary {here}”), and just providing an alternative way to look at things seemed useful.

The document was FULL of it (pun intended), and once I caught the repeated use of the covert frames, it was “game over” for his attempt at persuasion.

So, there you are. Word to the wise: If you’re going to use “clever” frame-setting to bolster your argument, in a situation where someone can easily come up with alternative frames that have equal or better truth values, just establish the one or two that will help you the most. Using every single one you come up with that helps support your position makes the technique too obvious and possibly less successful in the end. (Hmmm, that applies to much of NLP, FWIW. A tool can become less effective when over-used.)