March 24, 2015

March 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

I reread some of my writings from last year and liked what I wrote with this “Latha” fond. It visualizes Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), my way of talking, which leaves space between the words. There is a transparent quality to this letter type. I am inclined to speak in plain words when I write with this fond and this goes together with writing from a first person perspective. It has been useful for me to write from a third person perspective and to refer to myself as “this writer”, but it is a relief to not do that anymore. In other words, it is more reinforcing for me to write that I like to write like this. My friend Arturo from Colombia suggested this change and it felt like an invitation. Although it has helped me to write from a third person perspective, it leaves out something that is essential to SVB: my subjective experience. Writing from a third person perspective is artificial, as it presumes it is more important than writing from a first person perspective. There is a big problem with speech in which we supposedly are not personal. I call such mechanical, inhuman conversation Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In NVB we can neither feel or be ourselves nor do we feel each other.

As a sensitive male, I am aware that male or female speakers produce different vocal verbal behavior with audiences of men or women. Different environments, due to the gender of the audience, reinforce different verbal behavior of the speaker. For instance, Wolfson (1984) found different rates of compliments by men and women. Interestingly, Carli (1990) found that females who spoke more tentatively were more influential with males than with females. Culture shapes the vocal verbal behavior of men and women and it is no coincidence that a special feminine style of speech (Tannen, 1990) results in relatively lower levels of power (Lakoff (1973). 

The SVB/NVB distinction sheds light on the long-established power differences, which are maintained by the way in which men and women continue to communicate. It is obvious that males can have more effects or consequences on females than vice versa (Guerin, 1995). Thus, it is not the communication itself, but the male or the female context that is important, because this determines the power to apply contingent consequences. Indeed, consequences and the histories of consequences are the “power” behind audiences, words, and communicating activities (Ladegaard, 1995).

The above quoted research provides evidence for the fact that not only do men and women talk differently, their different vocalizations create and maintain hierarchical differences, which forces mediators into nonverbal subservient behavior. In NVB, mediators have to be on guard. They constantly have to watch who they are dealing with and must be cautious about every word they are saying. And, they should know when it is better not to say anything at all. As long as we cannot talk plainly about the elephant in the room, NVB, the environment within the mediator’s skin will be dis-regulated. 

NVB involves the sympathetic activation of the autonomic nervous system of both the verbalizer and the mediator. SVB, on the other hand, involves the absence of fight, flight or freeze responses and parasympathetic activation, because SVB and does not produce the stimuli which trigger these reflexes. Although mediators, during NVB, may be able to control these negative effects and will refrain from expressing them or reacting to them verbally, the stress-inducing, energy-consuming consequences of NVB are always there and take the attention away from what is being said. In NVB the mediators are coerced to pay attention to the verbalizers, who are reinforced for their ability to demand and hold the attention. Thus, in NVB compliments only comes from mediators, but not from verbalizers.