The so-called verbal behavior includes the most human of actions popularly regarded as language or communication, i.e. speaking or writing. Here I would like to briefly highlight the most useful idea regarding this type of behavior.
Verbal behavior is behavior where reinforcement is mediated by other persons. Door opening is a prominent example – the effect might be achieved by physically turning the handle and pushing/pulling or by telling a friend “open the door”. The behaviors are functionally the same as they both result in an opened door but one is non-verbal and the other verbal. In other words, a certain set of sounds can have a considerable effect on the environment.
Taking the idea of verbal behavior further, a novel perspective can be developed. In the words of B.F. Skinner:
A considerable advantage is gained from dealing with terms, concepts, constructs, and so on, quite frankly in the form in which they are observed—namely, as verbal responses.
Meanings, contents, and references are to be found among the determiners, not among the properties, of response. The question ‘What is length?’ would appear to be satisfactorily answered by listing the circumstances under which the response ‘length’ is emitted (or, better, by giving some general description of such circumstances).
B.F. Skinner (1945, p. 271) – The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms
But meaning is not a property of behavior as such but of the conditions under which behavior occurs. <…> When someone says that he can see the meaning of a response, he means that he can infer some of the variables of which the response is usually a function.
B.F. Skinner (1957, p. 46) – Verbal Behavior
Simply put, when we examine any behavior, we identify conditions when it arises and the effect it has on the world – the same applies to verbal responses. Skinner’s ideas will prove useful whenever we discuss language and science or when we meet any psychological concepts such as consciousness, motivation, memory, personality etc. Only from this new perspective can we avoid running around in verbal circles or resorting to mentalistic terms.
Ironically, however, Skinner’s unique contribution to the study of language as verbal behavior was that it is not fundamentally different from other operant behavior.
Henry D. Schlinger Jr. (2008, p. 147) – Listening Is Behaving Verbally
The application of the above meets no bounds. For example, an enlightening analysis is provided by the same Henry D. Schlinger in Consciousness is nothing but a word. At this point, we are finally ready to improve upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea that “God is dead”: we as radical behaviorists can say that God is nothing but a word.
Radical behaviorist leftist 