January 10, 2015

January 10, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

Last night, this writer dreamed about the things he had read before he went to sleep. It seemed as if during this dream the material was reiterated, and, because of the repetition, consolidated. When he got up, he felt eager to reread what he had read the night before and was ready to write about it. 

The paper he dreamed about was titled “B.F. Skinner: The Writer and His Definition of Verbal Behavior” (2012) by Maria de Lourdes R. da F. Passos. This writer had, on previous occasions, read two other papers by this author, which stimulated him so much that he contacted her. He was so lucky to have a long and heartfelt conversation with her. The paper which will shortly be discussed had been saved to be read later on, but somehow this writer never got to read it. When he began reading it yesterday night, he felt the same jolt he had felt when he had first read the abstract. 

How we define things is a matter this writer never paid close attention to. Due to his behavioral history, this writer was more inclined to evaluate what was said in terms of how it was felt by him. Although this limiting approach has given him many problems, it was also reinforcing, because it selected and enhanced the development of new verbal behavior, which he describes as Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). His definition of SVB came about, because at some point in his life, his spoken communication reached such a low point, that he, out of sheer frustration with the same negative outcomes, decided not to talk with others anymore and began to talk with himself instead.

More importantly, because he began to talk with himself, he began to listen to himself and he was able to identify the sound of his voice, which he wanted to use, while speaking with others. As he honed in on this sound, which he only seldom had been able to use in conversations and became familiar with it, he felt like a musician practicing on his instrument. The sound of SVB instantly changed his predominantly negative private speech. Once he had identified SVB, his positive self-talk led to new public conversations, which came about because he successfully instructed others to do as he did. They too began to listen to themselves while they speak and began to produce a different sound, which then set the stage for a new way of talking, SVB. 

SVB derives from how we sound when we speak with a sound which is pleasing, relaxing, energizing, calming and thus reinforcing. Stated differently, in SVB the verbalizer and the mediator are the same person. Moreover, SVB is the mediator’s perspective of the verbalizer. The saying “It is not what you say, it is how you say it!” captures how our verbal behavior is functionally related to our nonverbal behavior. Verbal behavior emerges from nonverbal behavior phylogenetically, over the course of evolution, and, ontogenetically, over the course of our life time. The Bible claims “In the beginning was the word”, but there were no words to begin with. There was first only a sound and verbal learning is based on nonverbal learning. Human beings have existed for a long time without language. And, even with language we are not yet fully verbal. We are born nonverbal and we learn our language from our verbal community. SVB aligns our verbal and our nonverbal expression. In SVB, we can become fully verbal because speaking and listening are joined.

The aforementioned explanation, evoked by Passos’ work, is evidence of how this writer is affected by what he has read. The title of the work:  “B.F. Skinner: The Writer And His Definition of Verbal Behavior” evoked another response in this writer. The expression “Don’t put words into my mouth!” refers to the interpretation by the mediator, who, as a speaker, is expected and forced to speak in a way which is determined by the previous speaker.  The mediator wants the words to mean what they mean to the mediator and not what the verbalizer wants them to mean. As a speaker, the mediator might say: “I didn’t say that. Stop putting words into my mouth,” because he or she doesn’t want to be mediated or interpreted in the way the speaker wants him or her to mediate or interpret him or her.

The mediator’s ability to mediate the verbalizer in the way that the verbalizer wants to be mediated depends on the mediator's behavioral history with his or her verbal community. If the mediator’s history is such that he or she was never allowed to have his or her own interpretation of the verbalizer, then this mediator is more likely to mediate the verbalizer how the verbalizer wants to or demands to be mediated. If, on the other hand, the mediator’s history is such that his or her own interpretation is allowed to effect and even change the verbalizer’s meaning, so that the verbalizer can connect with and stay connected with the mediator, this interpretation of the verbalizer is more likely to lead to a more attuned form of communication, which is SVB. 

The saying “Don’t put words into my mouth”, indicates the mediator gave his or her spoken feedback to the verbalizer, which, most likely, the verbalizer didn’t like. That is, there occurred an actual instance of turn-taking, because the mediator became the verbalizer and the verbalizer became the mediator. 

When a verbalizer says “Don’t put words into my mouth”, he or she basically says “Don’t talk back at me, only obediently mediate the meaning, which I can enforce on you, because I am more powerful than you.” By the way, the expression “Don’t talk back at me” is a version of the verbalizer instruction to the mediator not “to get any ideas” or become “mouthy” as a verbalizer. It is clear that these expressions are all meant to establish the verbalizer’s dominance over the mediator, which is a characteristic of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The servant is not supposed to talk back at the master and the child is not supposed to talk back the parent or teacher. The dominated are not supposed to give any feedback to those who dominate them. 

 

A related expression is “Don’t even think about it”, in which the verbalizer doesn’t want the mediator to think about something because, supposedly, the thought alone is bad. As this example illustrates, as long as the mediator is not talking about it, he or she is believed not to be thinking about it and thinking about it is supposedly prevented by not speaking about it. Of course, this is total nonsense, but given the absence of an accurate analysis of the way in which the mediator mediates the verbalizer, this power-differential is never properly discussed. Moreover, the expression “Don’t even think about it” also refers to the superstition that something might happen merely because one thinks about it. Presumably, by not thinking about it, one can prevent it from happening. The dominance of the verbalizer over the mediator is called NVB. It is called NVB because, if asked, the mediator will tell the verbalizer that he or she perceives the voice of the verbalizer as sounding terrible. The fact that the NVB speaker never asks the mediator how he or she perceives the verbalizer and is not open to feedback even if it is given, results in a way of talking in what is said is distracted from by how it is said. Thus, NVB fosters faulty mediation. In SVB, by contrast, the mediator effectively mediates the verbalizer, because the verbalizer sounds good to the mediator.