Verbal Behavior
Many of Skinner's writings are devoted to the application of operant conditioning to human behavior. In 1948 he published "Walden Two", a fictional account of a peaceful, happy, productive community organized around his conditioning principles. In 1957, Skinner published "Verbal Behavior", which extended the principles of operant conditioning to language, a form of human behavior that had previously been analyzed quite differently by linguists and others. Skinner defined new functional relationships such as "mands" and "tacts" to capture some essentials of language, but he introduced no new principles, treating verbal behavior like any other behavior controlled by its consequences, which included the reactions of the speaker's audience.