April 23, 2016

April 23, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Human Behavior as Language: Some Thoughts on Wittgenstein” (2006) Emilio Ribes-Iñesta writes “Human behavior cannot be understood if we separate language and social practice. Language without social practice and social practice without language are senseless.” There is no question about it that “we separate language and social practice” all the time, and, that as a consequence, “our social practice” as well as our “language” are “senseless.” Why do we do this? Although he touches on this issue, Ribes-Iñesta cannot really ask and answer this question. He doesn’t know about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

The separation between language and social practice occurs and keeps occurring because of how we talk. It doesn’t occur in SVB, it only occurs in NVB. Ribes-Iñesta’s, and Wittgenstein’s and Skinner’s, insistence on  language is key to experiencing and understanding the SVB/NVB distinction. When  Ribes-Iñesta writes that “Human psychological phenomena, either identified as individual experience or as behavior, become meaningful only in the context of social life, always occurring as language and through language”, he refers to SVB, not NVB. 

And, when Wittgenstein asserts “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life” (1953, pp. 8, 19), he too, unknowingly, refers to SVB. Also, Skinner was inadvertently referring to SVB, when he began his book Verbal Behavior (1957, p. 1) with the following sentences:  “Men act upon the world, and change it, and are changed in turn by the consequences of their action. Certain processes, which the human organism shares with other species, alter behavior so that it achieves safer and more useful interchange with a particular environment” (italics added by me).  Skinner was not referring to NVB, in which the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener as an aversive stimulus, in which the speaker is forcing the listener to listen and coercing him or her to do as he or she is saying. Why do we need a “safer and more useful interchange with a particular environment” in the first place? We need it, because NVB deteriorates such a positive environment. Furthermore, we need SVB to experience safety and to make sense of the world. We will be changed by SVB speech actions. And, we will change our world by reducing our NVB.