Audiences
In Skinner's account of verbal behavior, the audience (or, the listener) is a discriminative stimulus that signals that verbal behavior may be rewarded. This means that when an audience is present (this can also include oneself, as we can act as listener to our own verbal behavior), verbal behavior will occur; when the audience disappears, it is likely that verbal behavior will stop (because reinforcement is no longer available). This is the first function of the audience: to control whether behavior does or does not occur.
The second function (p. 173) is to determine which of two or more comparable responses will be emitted; for example, when manding for silence, you might say "shh" to a toddler, while to a coworker you might say "please be quiet". Also determined is the language in which you will speak: in Paris you would greet someone with "Bonjour, monsieur!", while in the U.S. you would be far more likely to greet someone by saying "Good morning, sir!" The third function (p. 175) of the audience involves the selection of the subject matter: while a 5-year-old may respond well to verbal behavior regarding Teletubbies, your 50-year-old boss is not likely to.
Audience control is developed through long histories of reinforcement and punishment. Skinner's three-term contingency can be used to analyze how this works: the first term, the antecedent, refers to the audience, in whose presence the verbal response (the second term) occurs. The consequences of the response are the third term, and whether or not those consequences strengthen or weaken the response will affect whether that response will occur again in the presence of that audience. Through this process, audience control, or the probability that certain responses will occur in the presence of certain audiences, develops. Skinner notes that while audience control is developed due to histories with certain audiences, we do not have to have a long history with every listener in order to effectively engage in verbal behavior in their presence (p. 176). We can respond to new audiences (new stimuli) as we would to similar audiences with whom we have a history.
Read more about this topic: Verbal Behavior
Famous quotes containing the word audiences:
“I have often felt that I cheated my children a little. I was never so totally theirs as most mothers are. I gave to audiences what belonged to my children, got back from audiences the love my children longed to give me.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Hollywood keeps before its child audiences a string of glorified young heroes, everyone of whom is an unhesitating and violent Anarchist. His one answer to everything that annoys him or disparages his country or his parents or his young lady or his personal code of manly conduct is to give the offender a “sock” in the jaw.... My observation leads me to believe that it is not the virtuous people who are good at socking jaws.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)