January 22, 2015

January 22, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

There was a serious debate in the Dutch parliament about the Charlie Hebdo-killings in Paris and the politicians were discussing what could be done to prevent such events from happening in the Netherlands. The politicians tried to communicate, while attacking the leader from what has become Holland’s biggest party, the Party For Freedom (PVV), which claims that the Koran and Islam incites violence and intolerance in its believers.

This writing is not about any particular person or any particular political view. This writing is about the Dutch way of communicating, which, like everywhere else, goes back and forth between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although SVB and NVB alternate, the response rate for SVB is much lower than for NVB. During the debate there were a few moments of SVB, but most of the debate was NVB. 

    

The debate started out with some words of SVB sympathy for the politician, who, because he has spoke out against the Islam, has received multiple death threats and lives under constant police protection. Soon, however, there was a switch from SVB to NVB, when the politician stated “Having said that, I must now speak politically.” He then compared the anti-muslim rethoric of the politician to the terrorist themselves by accusing him of “spreading fear”. While qualifying his words, the verbalizer informed the mediators that he was about to say something totally different from what he had just said. And, he surely did. 

Another NVB verbal accusation against the Dutch anti-muslim politician was that he “was spreading hatred with his words” and “although he used different weapons”, in essence, he was “perpetrating violence just like the terrorists.” It is important to realize here, that the accuser was attempting to appeal to SVB as he was asking whether what the speaker had just said “could in any way or form contribute something positive to the problem at hand: the radicalization of young muslims in Holland?” From the view of this writer, this appeal utterly failed, because there was no congruence between what the speaker said and how he said it. What he said referred to SVB, but how he said it was NVB. Moreover, how he said it did what it was meant to do: it upset and offended the anti-muslim politician. Stated differently, what was said covered up the deliberate negative effect of how it was said. The accuser insulted the speaker with how he said it and he effectively accomplished this goal by switching from SVB to NVB. 

         

Given the constant death threats against him and given the fact that he doesn’t advocate violence in any way or form, the anti-muslim politician was obviously very upset about this false accusation, but he was in control of himself and sharply stated “the person who just spoke has a sick mind” and left it with that. Although he defended himself and certainly produced NVB, he then turned to madam speaker and said “it is better under circumstances as these not to speak to the person directly, but to madam speaker” and the moment he did that, his verbal behavior changed from NVB to SVB. He regained his composure by withdrawing from NVB stimuli to the more neutral madam speaker, whose function metaphorically guarantees SVB.

Then an example was given that one can “only fight darkness with light.” Again, the words seemed to refer to SVB, to light, but the nonverbal subtext was an accusation and thus NVB. This was quite obvious to the accused, who then responded calmly, in a SVB fashion, by comparing the Dutch tradition of tolerance and freedom of speech to the light and the recent violence, which according to him derives from the Koran, with darkness or NVB. Although the speaker made his point emphatically and victoriously, he didn’t revert to NVB. Surprisingly, however, madam speaker admonishinged everyone and suggested that “given the many balls that are into play, it is better not to call each other names” and “to stay focused on the content of the debate.” Since this was said immediately following the words that were spoken by the anti-muslim politician, this was not a general cautionary comment, but in fact the exact personal attack she had just said that nobody should make. Her directive remark was meant to put the speaker in his place. However, he hadn’t made any transgression in civility, he didn’t call anybody any names, to the contrary, he had addressed all the indecisive members of parliament together, madam speaker included, and he had held them responsible for the worsening of the situation. 

In a failed attempt to distract the attention from the gravity of the words by the anti-muslim speaker, madam speaker made the supposedly rational appeal to “stay rational”, by urging everyone “to fixate on the verbal.” NVB is based on the false assumption we can decide to stay only rational. NVB is not prevented by trying to keep our cool. This only increases the anxiety and the hostile NVB-tone of the debate continued.