This study describes a Behavioral Analysis of Discourse (BAD). It presents the basis of BAD, describing a method to effect it, inferred from Skinner's Verbal Behavior. It proposes that BAD could be a modality of Discourse Analysis (DA) due to its epistemological basis: anti-mentalism, anti-realism and contextualism. Discourse is a set of verbal behaviors under the historical control and current contingencies of reinforcement, whose sense come upon that control. In the point of constructing his/her discourse, the speaker combines essential operants (commands and tacts) in intraverbal thematic groups (sometimes emitted as if they are tacts) that are modified with appropriated autoclitics.
discourse analysis; verbal behavior; behavioral social psychology