January 13, 2015

January 13, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

Due to his developing understanding of behaviorology, this writer became increasingly aware of the role of the verbal community in consequating Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Just as there was no verbal community before B.F. Skinner to consequate operant conditioning, there is also no verbal community before M.J. Peperkamp, to consequate SVB. However, although it is not tacted in that way, there surely is a verbal community which consequates NVB. The members of the NVB and SVB community reinforce different sets of response forms and speak another language. Their consequating behavior mediates between what the verbalizer says and what then happens. Simply stated, in NVB orders are verbalized and mediators obey these orders. 

In SVB, for which a verbal community has yet to be created, there is no real difference between the verbalizer and the mediator. For instance, the verbalizer’s request to pass the ketchup, will be consequated by the mediator, who passes the ketchup, but a mediator can also become a verbalizer and any verbalizer can also become a mediator. The previous mediator can ask the previous verbalizer to pass the butter, upon which this verbal action will be consequated by the previous verbalizer, who has then become a mediator. From this example it is clear that turn-taking then is vital to SVB. NVB is ubiquitous because hierarchical differences determine that NVB verbalizers and mediators remain stuck to their roles.

This writer has given hundreds of seminars in which he has explained the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the two mutually exclusive, universally occurring response classes, which can be described as the spoken communication in which we talk with each other and the one in which we talk at each other. When people talk at each other, they either want others to listen to them or they are trying to listen to others, but they are not listening to themselves.  

When people talk with each other, however, they are not waiting for agreement or approval, because they experience a direct, ‘heart-felt’ connection. It should be made clear that direct contact with others, or with anything in the world, although it may evoke or elicit many kinds of actions, does not and cannot give rise to language. We come to behave verbally by being part of a verbal community. When our membership of a verbal community is impaired, there occurs a disintegration of our verbal behavior. In other words, we go crazy. The meaning of our verbal behavior depends on the verbal community which consequates it. A tragic example of what can happen in the absence of a verbal community, are the severely speech impaired neglected children that were found in an orphanage in Romania. Sadly, without a verbal community, they were bound to remain nonverbal.

In SVB, the verbalizer, who (due to an environment of safety is stimulated into self-listening) is aware of his or her sound (because the verbalizer is also mediating his or her own speech), knowingly effects the mediator. Because the verbalizer’s sound is so directly reinforcing (that is, without words) for the verbalizer, it also nonverbally reinforces the mediator. Stated differently, in SVB, because of safety, mutuality and turn-taking, verbalizer and mediator become so attuned that they experience oneness with each other while talking about the same reality. Although many of us, without knowing about SVB, already do take turns, support mutuality, try to maintain safety and, consequently, have different relationships, which are based on a real or imagined sense of well-being, although many different names have been given to these so-called verbal communities, such as liberal or republican, scientific understanding of how spoken communication actually works is totally absent.

In the aforementioned example of passing the butter, nobody is the king or the servant and we are all seated as friends and family at the dinner table. What’s more, the verbalizer’s request for ketchup doesn’t contact the ketchup directly, since it is the mediator’s behavior, which consequates the relationship between what is said and done, which brings the ketchup to the verbalizer. Stated differently, the reinforcement of the verbal behavior of the verbalizer is always indirect. However, while speaking verbally, we also impact each other nonverbally, that is directly. Moreover, our phylogenetic endowment equipped our bodies with reflexive mechanisms, which are adaptive due to these direct-acting effects. Thus, while the verbal behavior of the verbalizer is always either indirectly reinforced by the mediator with agreement, validation and understanding or punished with disagreement, rejection and ridicule – leading to increases or decreases of the probability of that verbal behavior in the future under similar circumstances – a speaker’s nonverbal behavior also always simultaneously is having its immediate effect. It goes without saying (pun intended) that the direct nonverbal impact of what we generally describe as our first impression or gut-feeling, is often completely ignored and overruled by what happens verbally. In effect, most verbalizers distract most mediators from how they speak with what they say. Since we are, as mediators, more familiar with and conditioned by hierarchical - not bi-directional – conversation, we are mostly inclined to reinforce NVB. 

Nonverbal reflexes, although usually construed as respondent behavior, can also be viewed as operant behavior by realizing that all our behaviors have consequences. In the behavior of deer, for instance, certain sounds and movements signal danger or safety. Since herd-like behavior is adaptive, those who he act like it, are selected by the environment to pass on genes which code for running, looking, smelling, jumping and other genetically determined behaviors. Although humans behave verbally, their nonverbal behavior, which they have in common with nonverbal animals, often plays a much bigger role in how they affect each other than is acknowledged. Many problems are caused by the breakdown of communication, which more often is caused by our nonverbal than by our verbal behavior. Although we speak the same language and belong to the same verbal community, the material and social conditions of our culture, which shape our verbal and nonverbal behavior, have increased the hierarchical divisions, which set the stage for more NVB. We may not like to hear this, but most of us, whether we know it or not or are willing to admit it or not, belong to the aversive-sounding NVB community. As of yet there is no SVB community. Without such a SVB community, our reciprocally-reinforcing and relationship-enhancing verbal behavior will not be reinforced. This writer knows how to create this SVB community.