Vernacular Selection: What to Say and When to Say It.
Drop the jargon, keep the precision—plain language wins allies.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Neuman (2018) wrote a position paper, not an experiment.
He asked: why do neighbors, teachers, and funders tune us out?
His answer: we speak in jargon instead of everyday words.
What they found
The paper found no new data.
It argued that technical terms like "mand" or "autoclitic" push people away.
Plain talk, he says, keeps the science exact while building trust.
How this fits with other research
Critchfield et al. (2018) gave the idea legs. They showed behavior-analysis words feel just as unpleasant in Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Robison (2019) stretched the same logic to autism talk, urging respectful, person-first language when we write or speak about autistic people.
Shogren (2024) moves the baton further, asking us to share power with people who have IDD and let them co-write the plain words we use.
Why it matters
Next time you explain a plan, swap "differential reinforcement" for "we’ll pay attention to the good stuff and ignore the problem stuff." Parents nod, staff remember, and funding panels don’t glaze over. Keep the technical notes in your report, but speak human in the meeting.
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Read your last parent handout aloud; replace any word you wouldn’t use with a neighbor.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The language of behavior analysis is precise in the sense that it focuses attention on functional relations between behavior and the environment that are extended in time. However, to non-behavior analysts, behavior-analytic terms and explanations are difficult to understand and awkward sounding. Evidence suggests that this has had deleterious effects on the acceptance of the field of behavior analysis and its explanations of behavior. The goal of this article is to assert that verbal behavior that describes behavior is functionally related to subsequent explanatory verbal behavior. In addition, it is argued that technical language is not a requirement of precision and logical formulation. Suggestions are made regarding how behavior analysts can generate evidence to better understand explanatory preferences of individuals with various amounts of exposure to behavior analysis. In addition, methods are suggested for introducing behavior analysis to others with vernacular descriptions of behavior and its causes that do not obscure critical distinctions by introducing mental/mediational explanations.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1016/S0005-7894(79)80060-X