Resumen de Uma abordagem selecionista da língua: Práticas de reforçamento e macrocontingência

José Umbelino Gonçalves Neto, Christian David Pineda Garcia, Yan Valderlon dos Santos Lima

• português

  Na teoria saussuriana, a língua é entendida como um sistema de signos, cujas unidades e regras seriam convencionadas e depositadas na mente de cada falante. Em contraponto a esta visão teórica, revisamos as considerações de Skinner sobre a noção de língua, definida como práticas de reforçamento da comunidade verbal, e complementamos propondo que a língua pode ser entendida como uma macrocontingência, a partir da qual sua gramática é produzida como efeito cumulativo. O que linguistas e gramáticos descrevem é a estrutura desse efeito cumulativo, i. e., observam múltiplos exemplares de linhagens operantes verbais na cultura e abstraem suas características topográficas comuns e as regras seguidas pela comunidade verbal. O produto dessas descrições é o compêndio de gramática, usado em práticas culturais escolares. A gramática escolar descreve quais topografias de respostas verbais atingem o critério de reforçamento definido como correto pela comunidade verbal (de literatos e acadêmicos). Conclui-se que tal descrição comportamental é útil ao destacar que língua e gramática são produtos de interações sociais em processos de variação e seleção cultural, com implicações ao planejamento de procedimentos de ensino que assegurem linhagens operantes verbais com topografias específicas, mas que ampliem a variabilidade comportamental e facilitem a aprendizagem.

• English

  In Saussure’s theory, language is understood as a system of signs. Its units and rules would be agreed upon within a community and deposited in the mind of each speaker. Beside the language it also has the speech, which is the individual behavior of speaking related to psychophysiological processes, giving language its mental nature. In contrast to this theoretical view, we review B. F. Skinner’s conceptualization of language, defined as the reinforcement practices of a verbal community. In this sense Skinner moves away from structural analysis to look for functional definitions seeking causal explanations for the verbal behavior phenomenon. Moreover, we complement proposing that the language can be understood as a macrocontingency, i. e., propagation and replication of learned verbal behavior, socially observed in the repertoire of several members of the same cultural system, from which its grammar is produced as a cumulative effect. Linguists and grammarians describe the structure of this cumulative effect by observing multiple exemplars of verbal lineages in culture and abstracting their common topographical features and the rules followed by the verbal community. The product of these descriptions is the grammar textbook, used in school cultural practices. Throughout history, the transmission of verbal behavior occurred without cultural planning, “spontaneously”, by the contingencies of the verbal community in social interactions with the use of language. Such transmission, as well as other community’s practices, have stabilized in such a way that it has become a process that could be described, becoming object of study and teaching. This object has as a special mean of registration normative grammars. The school or normative grammar describes the topographies of verbal responses and reinforcement criteria defined as correct by the verbal community (of literati and scholars). But in daily interactions people speak and write according to the grammar of their language without necessarily being under control of those formally taught rules. In conclusion it follows that the transmission of verbal operants governed by normative grammar rules contributes to the stability of speakers’ response topographies, sustaining its linguistic identity. This may appear as an advantage, but the exclusive teaching of this form of grammar can minimize behavioral variability and diverge from actual reinforcement practices of the verbal community for most of the learners.

  A behavioral description is useful to point out that language and grammar are products of social interactions across processes of cultural variation and selection. It has implications for the planning of teaching procedures to ensure verbal lineages with specific topographies, also attending to behavioral and cultural variability.