Friday, January 19, 2018

January 9, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am reading a second time from the “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

The SVB/NVB distinction only makes sense if we construe antecedents as “discriminative stimuli or signs which alert the organism to the presence or availability of a particular contingency (behavior-consequence relation).” A SVB speaker’s voice sounds totally different from a NVB speaker’s voice. The sound of the speaker’s voice informs the listener if the contingency for SVB or NVB is going to be available.

Antecedent stimuli are also addressed as “establishing conditions”, “an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus”, as “a state of deprivation, which give to subsequent events their reinforcing (incentive) or disinforcing (disincentive) properties as the case may be.” At any given moment people are hungry to hear the voice of a leader, who sounds strong, simple, superior, rigid, dominant and in control or of someone, who sounds sensitive, flexible, complex, open and sophisticated.

Whenever “the organism’s behavioral propensities are shaped or honed by past experience of the immediate consequences of behaving in that way in one’s own case” behaviorists talk about “contingency-shaped behavior.” Thus, SVB is “contingency-shaped”, as in SVB speakers are immediately positively reinforced. NVB, by contrast, is “rule-governed behavior” as it is “controlled by a verbal specification of the relevant antecedent-behavior-consequence relation.” The nonverbal sound, facial expression or gestures of the NVB speaker, but also their verbal behavior, specifies the “antecedent-behavior-consequence relation”. In other words, NVB is elicited or respondent behavior, but SVB is emitted or operant behavior. Only SVB is mediated behavior as NVB is controlled nonverbally.

Dear Reader,

I am reading from “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

Whenever two or more individuals interact, they will either create and maintain an environment in which they reinforce their equal or their unequal status. In the case of the former, they engage in SVB, but in the case of the latter, they engage in NVB. Place describes the relation between the three “terms” as follows: “(A) A set of Antecedent conditions which call for (B) some Behavior to be emitted or omitted by an organism (the ‘owner’ of the contingency) and (C) the actual or anticipated Consequences of so behaving.”

What is to be emitted or omitted is, of course, NOT determined by the speaker, but by the “owner of the contingency,” which is BOTH the speaker as well as the listener. Place, however, who considers the speaker as the “owner of the contingency” refers to NVB, in which the speaker dominates the listener. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker and the listener take turns, which means: the speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker. In effect, they own the contingency together and share control over the conversation. Stated differently, in SVB speakers and listeners mutually reinforce each other, but in NVB only the speakers are reinforced by the listeners.
In SVB neither the speaker nor the listener is having any concern about what is emitted or omitted, but in NVB the speaker and the listener are continuously preoccupied with what is to be emitted or omitted. In other words, in SVB there is no restriction at all on what is to be emitted, but in NVB what is emitted or omitted is always determined NVB by the speaker.

Dear Reader,

As long as I have known about the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I have been trying to talk about it. A selection process has occurred which made it more and more clear why most professional people don’t want to talk with me or with those who have learned about these universal response classes.

My insistence on talking about SVB is related to the growing certainty that I and those who explore it with me have come to know something, which others are ashamed to admit they don’t know anything about. It is embarrassing to fully comprehend our continuous involvement in NVB. Our biggest chagrin is not what we have done to each other, but what we have done to ourselves. We dread becoming self-conscious.

The fact is, however, that only in NVB our private speech is at odds with our public speech. Rather than feeling mortified about and resistant to the possibility of expressing our private speech in our public speech, in SVB we experience an ongoing sense of relief and wonder and sheer joy as we have finally stopped our struggle. Once we engage in SVB, we know for sure that we were merely pretending to be NVB speakers.

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