January 31, 2014

January 31, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Today will be the last day that this writer will write in his journal. He has decided that at least for one month he wants to give it up because it is bothering his wife that he is always working on his laptop in the early morning. The issue this author wants to address today is that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is behavior that is mediated by others, but that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) does not fit that description. This is where all the confusion comes from. Because words are used, it is tempting to think of NVB as a form of communication. However, if we look at how the words are used it becomes clear that NVB is not communication, but the pretension of communication. Nothing is mediated by the other in NVB. In SVB a speaker might ask “can you pass me the salt?”  The listener passes her the salt, because he is sitting on that side of the table where he has access to the salt and the speaker can’t reach that far herself. There is nothing special about this case in that if the situation would be reversed then the listener would become a speaker and the speaker would become a listener. What this means is that the communication would work equally well if the listener, who became speaker would ask the speaker, who became a listener to pass him the butter.

However, the above is absolutely not the case in NVB. In NVB the speaker stays the speaker and the listener stays the listener; the speaker orders and the listener obeys. The listener is not allowed to become a speaker and will not be heard or responded to by the speaker. This role-division is not determined by the listener, but by the speaker. In NVB the speaker is supposedly more important than the listener and there is no turn-taking as in SVB. In NVB speech isn’t mediated by, but is enforced upon, others. There is a big difference between SVB and NVB and to make it seem as if NVB is mediated is to gloss over the immediate contact of the listener with the punitive contingencies that are created by the coercive speaker. Only in SVB is speech mediated by others, because only in SVB is there is reciprocal interaction in which speakers and listeners changes roles. In NVB there is uni-directional “interaction” which shouldn’t be considered “interaction”, because it is a one-way street. The mother who punishes her child while teaching it how to speak instills NVB in her child.