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Inner Speech as a Language: A Saussurean Inquiry
Author(s) -
WILEY NORBERT
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5914.2006.00309.x
Subject(s) - variety (cybernetics) , consciousness , linguistics , pragmatism , internal monologue , usable , human language , psychology , sociology , epistemology , cognitive science , philosophy , computer science , artificial intelligence , narrative , world wide web
The idea that thinking is a form of talking to oneself was discussed in classical Greece, analyzed by the Medievals and treated as a central issue by the American pragmatists. But whether inner speech is a language unto itself, distinct from outer language, has not been determined. To this end I ask how Saussure's defining ideas about language apply to inner speech. I show that Saussure's ideas, while partly usable, are mainly a poor fit. Inner speech is a variety of language, or perhaps of dialect, with its own unique structure. Given that it is a unique window into human consciousness, I briefly discuss some of the research areas on which it sheds light.