October 30, 2014

October 30, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

According to behaviorology, it is more important to define our Verbal Behavior response classes by their consequences then by their so-called topographies. No matter how much our verbal behavior may look and sound similar (e.g. Dutch or English), no matter that what we say as well as how we say it are related, these topographies or languages don’t inform us about the cause of our behavior and thus prevent us from changing and improving our way of communicating. 

The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction is useful because it tells us of what these two response classes are a function. Since SVB and NVB focuses our attention on what we get or what we avoid by these two opposing ways of speaking, this distinction helps us explore and describe what is causing our verbal behavior. By differentiating between SVB and NVB, it becomes clear that it makes no sense for instance to claim that English is better than Dutch or that French is better than German. The inclination to think of our mother tongue as sounding better than other languages has prevented us from becoming more rational, because it kept us confined to an emotional way of communicating.  SVB is a more rational way of communicating than NVB. 

Once people are given the choice, they agree that SVB sounds better than NVB and they acknowledge that the difference between SVB and NVB can only be talked about while we are having SVB. NVB doesn’t allow this distinction to be talked about. SVB only occurs when we are feeling safe and at ease, but when we are feeling threatened or on guard, we are only capable of producing NVB. 

We don’t individually decide, but we have SVB or NVB together depending on what environment we are in. We are not able to understand how or why we communicate the way we do, because we are too busy with what we consider to be our own way of talking. Focus on content has prevented us from paying attention to the context in which we communicate. Attempts to describe context have failed, because we didn’t have nor were we able to create, the stable, safe laboratory environment in which our descriptions could become the explanations that predicted reliable outcomes.