inner represented speech

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Inner Speech

Inner speech is known as the “little voice in the head” or “thinking in words.” It attracts philosophical attention in part because it is a phenomenon where several topics of perennial interest intersect: language, consciousness, thought, imagery, communication, imagination, and self-knowledge all appear to connect in some way or other to the little voice in the head. Specific questions about inner speech that have exercised philosophers include its similarities to, and differences from, outer speech; its relationship to reasoning and conceptual thought; its broader cognitive roles—especially within metacognition and self-knowledge; and the role it can play in explanations of auditory verbal hallucinations and “thought insertion”.

A more formal characterization of inner speech (yet one that still aims at theoretical neutrality) is to say that inner speech is a mental phenomenon that is both keyed to a natural language and often available to introspection . To say that inner speech is “available to introspection” is to say that each person has an introspective way of knowing about their own inner speech episodes that others lack (Schwitzgebel 2010 [2019]); our access to our own inner speech is—at least often—comparable to our access to others of our conscious mental episodes. To say that inner speech is “keyed to” a natural language is to say that it either occurs in a natural language (like words spoken aloud) or represents words of a natural language (like an audio recording of a speech), or that it does both. In specifying that the language in question is a “natural” language, we mean to include any language one may acquire through learning—such as English, Japanese, or American Sign Language—and to exclude any innate mental languages that may exist (such as a Fodorian [1975] Mentalese, or other innate “language of thought”). This characterization leaves open several questions of controversy including: (1) whether all inner speech is available to introspection; (2) whether inner speech is literally a form of speech, a form of thought, or both, or neither; and (3) whether inner speech occurs in a natural language, or represents items of a natural language, or both.

Inner speech is a subject of study in many distinct disciplines, including neuroscience, speech pathology, developmental psychology, psychiatry, computer science, and linguistics, as well as philosophy. For this reason, there are a variety of distinct theoretical tools and concepts one might use to describe its nature and cognitive roles, with correspondingly distinct aims, methods, and literatures. We focus here on the accounts contemporary philosophers have given of its nature and on the explanatory purposes to which inner speech is most commonly put in philosophical work. Nevertheless, much of the contemporary philosophical work on inner speech is itself interdisciplinary in nature and aims to be consistent with, and informed by, results in allied disciplines, including, especially, experimental psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. We discuss those sources where relevant to the issues that have exercised philosophers, while directing readers most interested in the empirical work to other reviews, such as Alderson-Day & Fernyhough (2015), Langland-Hassan (2021), and Perrone-Bertolotti et al. (2014). For another philosophically-oriented review, see Vicente & Martínez-Manrique (2011). Also, we focus on inner speech linked to the auditory modality, as opposed to inner speech that may occur in a gestural or visual modality (as may be the case with gestural sign languages), because nearly all of the existing research on inner speech concerns a phenomenon that is in some way linked to audition.

Finally, the phenomenon of speaking to oneself audibly is usually referred to as “private speech”. Some parts of the discussion in this entry are easily transferable to private speech, e.g., the matter of whether we can perform speech acts in inner speech. Others are not. For example, the question of whether inner speech, as a mental phenomenon, is actually a kind of speech has no counterpart in the context of private speech, as private speech is uncontroversially a kind of speech. It is typically easy to determine whether a question about inner speech also applies to private speech, so we will not comment on this further.

1. Inner Speech as Actual Speech

2.1 inner speech and thought expression, 2.2 inner speech and thought facilitation, 2.3 inner speech as thought, 3.1 the phonological content view, 3.2 the semantic content view, 3.3.1 single-state mixed contents views, 3.3.2 multiple-state mixed contents views, 4.1 inner speech and speech acts, 4.2 inner speech and conversation, 5.1 metacognitive approaches, 5.2 inferentialist approaches, 5.3 inferentialism’s critics, 6. auditory verbal hallucinations and inserted thoughts, other internet resources, related entries.

The auditory-sensory character of inner speech is usually thought to be due to its involvement of auditory-verbal imagery (for an exception, see O’Brien 2013). Mental images (in any modality) are generally viewed as representations of particular things (or kinds of thing), not instances of those things. A visual image of a duck, for example, is a representation of a duck, not an actual duck. Likewise, it may seem that inner speech, insofar as it involves auditory imagery, is a representation of speech (and of its sounds, in particular), not actual speech. “Grass is green”, produced in inner speech, would then represent an utterance of the sentence, “Grass is green”, but it would not actually be an utterance of that sentence.

Notwithstanding this, many philosophers working on inner speech hold that inner speech really is a kind of speech. When we produce inner speech, we are literally speaking, albeit silently. We will call this view the “actual speech view”. Proponents include Carruthers (1996), Martínez-Manrique & Vicente (2010, 2015), Gauker (2011, 2018), O’Brien (2013), Jorba & Vicente (2014), Gerrans (2015), Gregory (2016, 2018) (though Gregory has indicated in more recent work (e.g., Gregory forthcoming) that he no longer holds the view), Machery (2018), Wilkinson & Fernyhough (2018), Wilkinson (2020), and Frankfort (2022). Martínez-Manrique & Vicente argued for the view in their 2010 paper; their 2015 paper, discussed in Section 3.3.2 , sets out an updated version of their theory which incorporates some further commitments. Historically, the view can be traced at least to the Soviet psychologist, Lev Vygotsky (1934 [1986]), and it was also held by Ryle (1949 [2009]). However, Gauker develops a somewhat different version of the view—one that sharply distinguishes inner speech from the auditory-verbal imagery typically associated with it (see Section 3.2 for discussion)—which has its origins in Sellars (1956).

If inner speech is a kind of speech, instances of inner speech could aptly be called “inner speech utterances”, as producing inner speech would really amount to saying something. However, in order to be neutral on the issue, we will use the term, “inner speech episodes”, in this section and throughout the entry. An important issue for a proponent of the actual speech view is to explain how inner speech can consist of genuine linguistic tokens, given that it seems to be an imagistic phenomenon—where, as noted, the images may appear to be representations of speech sounds. For, even if inner speech consists of images of speech sounds, this only suggests that it consists of representations of linguistic items, not linguistic items themselves.

One style of answer has been offered by Sam Wilkinson (2020), who draws a distinction between imagery and imagination. He holds that sensory imagining is a “personal-level phenomenon”, which has components (2020: 16). One of the components of sensory imagining (as opposed to propositional or “attitudinal” imagining, which is typically assumed to be non-imagistic in nature) is mental imagery. For example, if one sensorily imagines a duck, then one component of this personal-level mental state may be a mental image resembling the appearance of a duck. There might also be other components, such as a stipulation that the image is an image of a duck and not another bird of similar appearance. But, Wilkinson emphasizes, mental imagery can be involved in many personal-level mental attitudes apart from the attitude of imagining, such as remembering, judging, reasoning, and others. “In a similar way”, he claims,

imagery … may be involved in an inner assertion. That does not, however, make the inner assertion simply nothing more than the imagery involved in its production, still less an act of imagination. (2020: 16).

Imagery can play many roles, Wilkinson is saying, and there is no reason that one of those roles should not be as a medium for linguistic tokens. The inner assertion is “a genuine assertion”—an instance of language consisting of imagery.

It might be replied that, although imagery can play a role in many personal-level mental states apart from imagining, it plays a very similar role in all of them, viz., representing how a concrete object (whether actual or possible) appears or sounds. Mental imagery does not tend to play a role similar to that of a linguistic token. So, even if mental imagery is involved in a range of personal-level mental states, it is not obviously well-suited, in the case of inner speech, to play the specific role of actual linguistic tokens.

This challenge might be met by connecting the actual speech view with work on the metaphysics of word tokens, as proposed by Wade Munroe (2022a, 2023). Munroe holds that

what makes something, φ , a token of a word type, w , is that the process of generating φ is explained and guided by one’s (tacit) knowledge of w (or the morphological structure of w ), e.g., one’s semantic, syntactic, morphophonological/orthographic, knowledge of w stored in one’s mental lexicon. (2022a: 4)

This allows him to hold that inner speech episodes can involve word tokens, insofar as their generation is guided by the relevant kind of tacit knowledge. (Though Munroe himself does not hold the actual speech view; see Section 3.3.1 for discussion of his view.) Relatedly, J. T. M. Miller (2021) explicitly denies that word tokens are necessarily substances and holds, instead,

that particular or token words are objects, which are bundles of various sorts (most notably semantic, phonetic, orthographic, and grammatical) properties. [sic] (2021: 5737)

One might hold that inner speech episodes in fact consist in such bundles.

Although the matter of how inner speech episodes can involve genuine linguistic tokens is of great importance for the actual speech view, it is only beginning to receive attention. However, several arguments have been given in support of the theory generally. These include the following:

• Inner speech may be a developmental descendant of a kind of external speech. Piaget (1923 [1926/1959]) observed that young children have a practice of speaking to themselves aloud. He described this kind of speech as “egocentric speech” (ibid, passim) (egocentric speech can be seen as one kind of private speech; see Introduction). Vygotsky (1934 [1986]) presented empirical evidence that inner speech develops in children as they internalize the practice of producing egocentric speech (though see Gregory (forthcoming) questioning this evidence). Vygotsky held that egocentric speech becomes silent, inner speech, but that it does not change in its fundamental nature, so it remains a kind of actual speech (see also Wilkinson & Fernyhough (2018), Wilkinson (2020)).
• Introspectively, it seems like we can perform speech acts—e.g., make assertions and ask questions—in inner speech. But it would only be possible to perform speech acts in inner speech if inner speech is a kind of speech (Wilkinson 2020; Wilkinson & Fernyhough 2018). (This issue is addressed further in Section 4.1 .)
• On the face of it, we produce inner speech for purposes such as focusing our attention, motivating ourselves, and evaluating our actions. These correspond to purposes which instances of external speech also often serve: focusing the attention of others, motivating them, and commenting on their actions. There are also parallels in terms of how inner speech episodes and instances of external speech are constructed. Both often take the form of short, sub-sentential items when this is sufficient (e.g., “Here!”, upon finding something which was lost) and more fully elaborated sentences when this is necessary (e.g., when carefully listing the considerations relevant to a difficult decision which needs to be made, whether by oneself or by a group). Marta Jorba, Agustín Vicente, and Fernando Martínez-Manrique have taken these systematic parallels as evidence that inner speech and external speech are simply different types of one phenomenon, namely, speech (Jorba & Vicente 2014; Martínez-Manrique & Vicente 2015).
• There seems to be a contrast between imagining speaking and engaging in inner speech, as it is ordinarily understood. This contrast, Gregory (2016) suggests, parallels the contrast between two kinds of external actions which we can perform. When an actor says the lines in their script, what they are producing is a representation of speech that someone else might produce. The actor is, of course, speaking, but they are doing so in the context of a pretense. What the actor is doing contrasts with the speech which they produce in, e.g., an ordinary conversation with someone. The contrast between imagining speaking and producing inner speech seems to map neatly onto the contrast between what the actor does on the stage and what they do in an ordinary conversation. If this is so, then a natural analysis is that the contrast between imagined speech and inner speech is a contrast between a representation of speech and actual speech—which implies that inner speech is a kind of actual speech.

A couple of philosophers who hold the actual speech view but express it in different terms, or who hold very similar positions, should be mentioned. First, Philip Gerrans (2015) describes inner speech as involving “imaginary action” (2015: 296), but he is explicit that, by this, he means only to say that producing inner speech is an action performed covertly. He takes inner speech to involve speaking, but doing so silently.

Second, Johannes Roessler (2016) holds that there are different kinds of inner speech, one of which involves imagining speaking (rather than actually speaking), but in a particular way. He points out that we can imagine things, or imagine doing things, for different purposes. An act of imagining will then be successful to the extent that it achieves the purpose for which it is performed. So, one might, for example, imagine making an assertion, but do so with the intention of imagining making an assertion which is true and relevant to context. Then the act of imagining making the assertion “incurs the same liabilities” (2016: 548) that the act of actually making the assertion would incur. If you are puzzling over some question, and you imagine asserting a possible answer, then the act of imagining will be successful only if you have imagined asserting the correct answer. Although you have only imagined performing the speech act of making an assertion, your imagined assertion will be “in some ways tantamount to an assertion” (2016: 548).

It would be an open position, though not one Roessler takes, that all inner speech episodes could be analyzed in this way. On such a view, inner speech episodes would be something very similar to actual speech, yet without quite being speech acts, and thus without the commitment that producing inner speech involves producing actual linguistic items.

2. Inner Speech and Thought

A second question about inner speech is how it relates to thought. It seems that there must be some relationship, but it is an open question what that relationship is. In general, there are three views about the nature of the relationship: (1) inner speech episodes express thoughts; (2) inner speech episodes facilitate thoughts; and (3) inner speech episodes (at least sometimes) are thoughts of a certain kind.

The views are not mutually exclusive: one can certainly hold that inner speech is related to thought in multiple ways.

Langland-Hassan & Vicente (2018b: 10) observe that the view that inner speech (at least often) expresses thoughts that are distinct from the inner speech episodes themselves coheres with some larger theories about thought and language. If one is attracted to these theories, then they may well also be attracted to the view that inner speech merely expresses thought.

First, there is a natural connection between the language of thought hypothesis, most closely associated with Jerry Fodor (1975), and the view that inner speech expresses thought. On the language of thought hypothesis, our thoughts do take place in a language, but not in a natural language. Rather, our thoughts take place in a kind of mental language, often referred to as “Mentalese”. If the language of thought hypothesis is true, then, insofar as inner speech is keyed to a natural language, it seems that inner speech can at most serve to express the thoughts which occur in the mental language.

Second, on Willem Levelt’s influential theory about language production, speaking involves conveying a pre-existing “message” (1989: passim). The structure of this message is conceptual but not linguistic. Via several stages of processing, natural language sentences (or sub-sentential items) are formulated which, once articulated, express the conceptually structured message with which the process started. If one thinks that inner speech is actually a kind of speech, then one might incline to think that inner speech also expresses a pre-existing message.

Thus, Peter Carruthers (2009, 2018) approaches matters from a Fodorian and Leveltian angle when he proposes that

the first metacognitive access subjects have to the fact that they have a particular belief is via its verbal expression (whether overtly or in inner speech). (2009: 125)

For Carruthers, the inner speech episode is not a belief or judgment itself, but rather the expression thereof (see Section 5.2 ). In a similar way, Ray Jackendoff (1996, 2007, 2011, 2012) emphasizes the distinction between thought itself and the auditory imagery by which it may be expressed, identifying only the latter with inner speech (see Section 3.1 ). Likewise, José Luis Bermúdez (2003) and Jesse Prinz (2011) distinguish between conceptual thought itself and inner speech, while holding that we often come to know what we are thinking by attending to inner speech sentences that we might use to express such thoughts. They stop short of explicitly claiming that such sentences actually express thoughts, however, specifying instead that the inner episodes are sentences through which such thoughts “might be expressed” (Bermúdez 2003: 164), or that we “would use” to express them (Prinz 2011: 186) (see Section 5.1 ).

One can, however, hold that inner speech episodes express thoughts without committing to the view that a thought must be fully-formed prior to the production of the relevant inner speech episode. José Luis Bermúdez (2018), for example, holds that producing an inner speech episode can actually play a role in forming the thought which it expresses. For Bermúdez, a thought can be refined and precisified as an external utterance is being produced and, equally, a thought can be refined and precisified while an inner speech episode is being produced. Nonetheless, by the time an inner speech episode has been produced, it will express an existing thought.

Finally, it is worth noting the following point of contact between the actual speech view, discussed in Section 1 , and the question of whether inner speech expresses thought. If it is an essential feature of speech that it serves to express thought, then defenders of the actual speech view are likewise committed to the view that inner speech expresses thought. If, on the other hand, one holds that there can be (inner) speech that does not express thought, then the question arises as to what the difference between (inner) speaking and thinking in a natural language might be—and whether there is indeed a difference.

There have been several suggestions as to how inner speech might play a substantive role in facilitating thought or thought processes—a role that goes beyond merely expressing thought processes.

First, inner speech is often thought to play an important role in working memory. According to Alan Baddeley’s influential theory of working memory (e.g., Baddeley 1992), we can retain a series of words or numbers in working memory by reciting them in inner speech. A short series of items will be retained long enough to recite them again. One can iterate this process via a “phonological loop” for as long as desired.

Following Vygotsky (1934 [1986]), Clowes (2007) and Jorba & Vicente (2014) hold that inner speech can serve as a tool for directing our own attention, just as external speech can serve as a tool to direct the attention of others. In making this case, both draw on the Vygotskyan developmental account of inner speech, on which inner speech is derived from the external phenomenon. See also Martínez-Manrique & Vicente (2015), who make the same point but are less directly influenced by Vygotsky’s original (1934 [1986]) developmental account.

There is evidence that inner speech facilitates various executive function tasks, such as planning, task-switching, and inhibiting impulsive and inappropriate responses, without being essential to them. The evidence that inner speech can play a role in these tasks is primarily empirical. For reviews of the relevant literature, see Alderson-Day & Fernyhough (2015) and Petrolini, Jorba, & Vicente (2020).

Munroe (2022b; forthcoming) argues that inner speech plays a role in reasoning which goes beyond merely aiding or improving it. He notes that reasoning processes often involve preserving representations in working memory. In doing complex mental arithmetic, for example, one might recite in inner speech the word for a number which they have determined will be needed later in the process, e.g., when regrouping values (i.e., “carrying” and “borrowing”). The number word will be stored in working memory via the process described above. But, on Baddeley’s model of working memory, which Munroe is working with, only sensory representations can be stored in working memory. In the present context, this means that only auditory representations of the relevant word sounds can be stored, not the conceptual content which the word would have if spoken aloud (or, possibly, if it were produced in inner speech in a different context, depending on one’s view on the contents of inner speech—see Section 3 ). When one needs to use the number at a later stage in the process, they will need to interpret the sensory representation which they are producing. For example, if they are reciting a sound corresponding to the word, “six”, in inner speech, they will need to interpret that as the word referring to the number, six, so that six becomes the number that they now use to continue their calculations. If this is so, then interpreting the inner speech that one was producing, and thus the inner speech itself, was essential to the reasoning process, not merely a dispensable aid. Munroe holds that the same will apply in many reasoning processes performed that require making use of an intermediate conclusion.

A number of theorists—especially those working in neo-empiricist (Barsalou 1999; Prinz 2011, 2012) and embodied cognition traditions (Borghi et al. 2017; Dove 2014)—have also proposed that inner speech plays an important role in facilitating abstract thought, i.e., thought about objects or properties that are not easily perceived. Here the idea is that language perception and production abilities—and their internalization, via inner speech—provide means for explaining the acquisition and use of abstract concepts in broadly sensorimotor terms. In particular, Guy Dove (2014, 2018, 2020, 2022) develops a view where language—often in the form of inner speech—is used as a “scaffold” or “tool” for enabling thought about abstract entities, and where the capacity for abstract concept use is closely tied to the capacity for language.

Finally, if subsystems and modules in the mind function in isolation from one another to any significant extent, then inner speech may play an important role in integrating their output. Carruthers (2002, 2006) suggests that the process of language production generally, including the production of inner speech, is especially well suited to integrate the output of multiple modules, because of the combinatorial nature of language. In producing an episode of inner speech, one can thus express complex content, which is then distributed to mental modules and subsystems for further processing. Other sources relevant to inner speech and the integration of information produced by different parts of the mind include Baars (1988) and Dennett (1991).

A number of philosophers have argued that at least some inner speech episodes actually are thoughts or, at least, parts of thought processes. Gauker (2011, 2018) holds that all conceptual thought occurs in inner speech, where, as elaborated in Section 3.2 , he takes inner speech to involve the tokening of items of a natural language in neural states that are distinct from the auditory-verbal representations that many identify with inner speech. In his 2011 book, he responds to arguments that conceptual thought cannot occur in natural language.

With respect to inner speech understood as a partly sensory phenomenon, Keith Frankish (2018) describes how inner speech can be used to break a complicated problem into smaller problems, which can then be addressed by lower level, automatic thought processes. Deciding whether to accept an invitation from colleagues to attend a party, for example, one might produce the inner speech episode, “What will it be like?”. This more circumscribed question can be addressed by autonomous processes, such as recalling previous parties with colleagues. Along with other autonomous processes, this might generate the prediction that an annoying colleague, Henry, will likely be at the party. If this is significant, it could result in the inner speech episode, “Henry will probably be there”, in turn prompting a largely autonomous evaluation of the effort involved in enduring Henry’s company. The process could result, depending on the outcome of this evaluation, in producing the inner speech episode, “I can’t face that; I won’t go”. (Quotes from Frankish [2018: 234], though the example is slightly modified.) The inner speech episodes, Frankish believes, are critical to making the decision, and are thus rightly considered parts of the process of thinking itself. See Kompa (forthcoming) for a similar argument; cf. Munroe (2022b), discussed above, who also holds that an inner speech episode can be essential to a thought process but does not infer from this that an inner speech episode can actually be a part of the process, but see also discussion of Munroe (2023) below.

Frankish (2018) also holds that inner speech episodes can be thoughts in the form of conscious commitments, where these are “a distinct kind of mental attitude” (2018: 237), which cannot be analyzed in terms of other conscious mental states, such as conscious decisions, beliefs, or desires, or expressions of other mental states. They are simply commitments made to oneself to “regulat[e] our future activities, including our intentional reasoning, in line with the choice or view expressed” (2018: 237). For example, the inner speech episode, “I will go to the gym today”, is a commitment to go to the gym today, not just the expression of a decision to do so, because it also generates a kind of obligation to oneself, as it were, to do so. For Frankish, this follows from treating inner speech as an internalized version of interpersonal speech, in which commitments also generate obligations.

On Frankish’s account, an inner speech episode can be like a judgment, insofar as it may involve committing oneself to act and reason in a way which is consistent with the truth of the proposition expressed by the inner speech episode. Munroe (2023), by contrast, holds that an inner speech episode can actually function as a judgment. If an inner speech episode is accompanied by what has been called a “Feeling of Rightness” (Munroe cites Thomson et al. 2013 and Unkelbach & Greifender 2013), then it will play roles typically attributed to judgments such as “terminating inquiry and causing overt actions” (Munroe 2023: 309). Munroe connects his claim to a model proposed by Ackerman & Thompson (2015, 2017a, 2017b) on which the roles that mental states play is determined partly by metacognitive monitoring. The “Feeling of Rightness” is a cue to a metacognitive monitoring system that a particular mental state can appropriately play the roles of a judgment. Munroe’s claim is that inner speech episodes can function as judgments if this is deemed appropriate by the metacognitive monitoring system, on account of being accompanied by the appropriate “Feeling of Rightness” (or at least by a feeling of sufficient certainty).

Nikola Kompa (forthcoming) adds a quite different argument for the identity of (some) thoughts and (some) inner speech episodes. She operates with a broad notion of inner speech, on which any “inner episode that substantially engages the speech production system” is an instance of inner speech (forthcoming: 4, emphasis removed). On this understanding of inner speech, any thought with semantic content and syntactic structure will be an instance of inner speech, even if it does not become conscious. Kompa rejects the language of thought hypothesis, on which thoughts can have linguistic properties because they occur in a non-natural language. Accordingly, for Kompa, the only way that a thought can have semantic content and syntactic structure is if its formation substantially involves the speech production system (which she understands in Leveltian terms, citing Levelt 1989; Levelt et al. 1999; and Indefrey & Levelt 2004). Insofar as we have any thoughts that have semantic content and syntactic structure, then, these are, on her definition, instances of inner speech. If the production of such thoughts does not proceed further through the speech production process, such that they are morpho-phonologically encoded in addition to having semantic content and syntactic structure, they will occur as unconscious inner speech episodes.

Finally, it has been suggested that there is a close connection between inner speech and a phenomenon known as “unsymbolized thought”. Using the Descriptive Experience Sampling paradigm, Russell Hurlburt and Christopher Heavey (e.g., Hurlburt & Heavey 2002; Heavey & Hurlburt 2008) have gathered introspective data that they interpret as providing evidence that people sometimes have the experience of

thinking a particular, definite thought without the awareness of that thought’s being conveyed in words, images, or any other symbols. (Heavey & Hurlburt 2008: 802)

Martínez-Manrique & Vicente (2015), Vicente & Martínez-Manrique (2016), and Vicente & Jorba (2019) suggest that these “unsymbolized thoughts” occur when the production of an inner speech episode is aborted at the earliest stage of production, when only the content or message to be expressed has been formulated. Appealing to accounts on which we experience conscious representations of actions which we begin to perform but abort, they suggest that an unsymbolized thought is a representation of the message which one commenced expressing in inner speech, which becomes conscious because the process was aborted. Insofar as the process was aborted prior to the message being organized in phonetic form, the representation is entirely amodal. See also Kompa (forthcoming).

3. Content-Based Theories of Inner Speech

We have seen that there are a variety of views taken on whether inner speech is indeed a kind of speech, or a kind of thought, or both. A popular way to gain added leverage on those questions is to advance an account of the contents of inner speech. Focusing on questions concerning the contents of inner speech also helps to clarify the depth of some of the puzzles and controversies already introduced.

Most generally, the content of a representation is what the representation is of or about —it is what the representation represents. The content of the word “cat” is a certain type of animal (namely, a cat). And, the content of the sentence “cats are animals” is the proposition that cats are animals. Two distinct representations can have the same content. For instance, the French word “chat” has the same content as the English word “cat”; and the French sentence “les chats sont des animaux” has the same content as the English sentence “cats are animals”. Thus—to borrow analogies from Siegel (2005 [2021])—the contents of a mental state, in the present sense, are akin to the contents of a newspaper article and not akin to the contents of a bucket. Mental contents are not things that are contained within mental states themselves (just as cats are not contained within the word “cat”) but are, instead, what the mental states are of or about.

We will distinguish three broad classes of views about the contents of inner speech and several sub-views within them, noting their main motivations and relationships to questions concerning inner speech’s proposed cognitive roles. According to what we will call the “phonological content view”, inner speech episodes always and only have phonological contents. The competing content-based theories to be discussed hold either that inner speech only has semantic contents (the “semantic content view”, as we will call it) or that inner speech has phonological contents and semantic and/or other kinds of contents (the “mixed contents view”).

As we will see, the phonological content view is a natural fit with the view, discussed at the beginning of Section 1 , that inner speech is merely a representation of speech and not actually a kind of speech. This is because the phonological content view sees inner speech as consisting in imagistic representations of speech and as lacking the kinds of contents (or meanings) associated with word tokens themselves. Likewise, those who hold that inner speech is actually speech will typically hold either a mixed contents view or a semantic content view, as these views allow inner speech episodes to have the kinds of semantic contents that are typically viewed as essential to being a linguistic token.

To say that inner speech has phonological contents is to say that inner speech episodes represent phonemes (or phones ), where phonemes are the most basic meaningless building-blocks from which any word of a language can be built. There are 44 phonemes in English, different combinations of which account for the distinct sound each word has in relation to all other words from which it can be aurally distinguished. The notion of a phoneme is somewhat of an abstraction, however, as slightly different sounds (in terms of pitch, timbre, and frequency) can fall within the sonic range that constitutes a single phoneme type. These more specific, concrete sounds that can qualify as instantiations of a phoneme are known as phones. Whether inner speech episodes represent phonemes or, instead, the finer-grained property of being a phone is a matter of dispute among those who hold that inner speech episodes have phonological contents (Patel 2021; Langland-Hassan 2018; Hill 2022).

Note also that, while the phonemes of most natural languages are auditory in nature—and are thus perceived through the sense of hearing—the notion of a phoneme has also been applied to gestural languages, such as American Sign Language (Sandler 2012; Stokoe 2005). So, the concept of a phoneme is not specific to any modality. It refers to the smallest meaningless units of a language that can be arranged and recombined to form the smallest meaningful units of that language, no matter which modality the language occurs in. In spoken languages, however, the auditory modality takes precedence over the visual/written modality, insofar as the phonemes are typically held to be sounds, while the graphemes are held to be letters or groups of letters that represent phonemes. While most will not consider the visualization of graphemes and written words to be cases of inner speech, it bears noting that such visualizations satisfy the neutral characterization of inner speech provided at the outset.

There are several reasons one might hold that inner speech episodes have phonological contents. The first is phenomenological in nature. What it is like to have an inner speech episode is similar to what it is like to hear oneself saying the corresponding words aloud. One might explain this phenomenological similarity by appeal to the fact that inner speech episodes and the corresponding cases of hearing represent similar properties—either phonemes or phones of a certain sort—and, accordingly, have similar contents. A second reason appeals to the fact that we can use inner speech episodes to judge whether two visually dissimilar written words—such as “blood” and “mud”—rhyme. As rhyming is a relationship between the sounds of words, the usefulness of inner speech episodes in judging rhymes would be explained if inner speech episodes represented word sounds and thereby allowed us to compare those sounds (Langland-Hassan 2014). A third reason that has been proposed for thinking that inner speech has phonological contents is that it is the representation of those features that allows one to discern which language we are exploiting when engaged in inner speech (Langland-Hassan 2018). (See Patel 2021 for a rebuttal.)

Jackendoff (1996, 2007, 2011) proposes that auditory contents exhaust the contents of inner speech. Jackendoff’s view is motivated in part by a prior commitment to the thesis that we do not think in a natural language. Like many in cognitive science, he sees natural language primarily as a means for communicating thoughts that themselves occur unconsciously in some other medium (such as a Fodorian “Mentalese”). According to Jackendoff, thought itself is never conscious, nor is the use of concepts. By contrast, inner speech—what he calls the “talking voice in the head” (1996: 10)—occurs consciously and does not involve the use of concepts. In having inner speech, he explains, “[w]e experience organized sounds”, whereas,

the content of our experience, our understanding of the sounds, is a different organization … called conceptual structure. (emphasis original, 1996: 12–13)

“The organization of this content”, he holds, “is completely unconscious” (1996: 13). Jackendoff identifies the inner voice with a representation of “phonological structure”, a representation having phonological content, yet no conceptual or semantic content. Whereas, the mental states constituting our understanding of what the voice is saying, he notes, are distinct conceptual states that occur unconsciously:

What we experience as our inner monologue is actually the phonological structure linked to the thought,

he explains.

We are aware of our thinking because we hear the associated sounds in our head. (Jackendoff 2011: 613)

(See also Jackendoff [2007: 80–85] where he remarks on the counterintuitive nature of his view: “How can the contents of consciousness consist of just a string of sounds?” [2007: 85].)

It should be noted that Jackendoff also suggests that inner speech episodes “express” thoughts, which would seem to support the view that such episodes have the semantic contents of our thoughts (e.g., “the linguistic modality can make reasons as such available in consciousness” [1996: 19] and “only through language can such concepts form part of experience rather than just being the source of intuitive urges” [1996: 23]). On the other hand, he equally emphasizes the overlooked fact that “linguistic structure has three major departments: phonological, syntactic, and semantic/conceptual structure”, and that “the forms in awareness—the qualia—most closely mirror phonological structure” (2007: 81). Most recently, he has proposed a view where what we intuitively mark as “conscious thought” has three components: a “pronunciation” of the thought, a feeling of meaningfulness, and the meaning attached to the pronunciation. There he holds that only the first two are conscious and appears to identify inner speech with the “pronunciation” component. This is in keeping with the phonological content view, as the (semantic) meaning of the pronunciation is something separate from the pronunciation and is only represented “backstage” (i.e., unconsciously) (Jackendoff 2012: 84–5).

Langland-Hassan (2014) provides a qualified defense of a phonological content view, motivated by worries about how a single mental state—in particular an episode of inner speech—can be said to represent both word sounds and word meanings simultaneously. He notes that a word’s meaning and its sound are entirely distinct properties, related only by convention. If mental states are individuated by their contents, then it seems that distinct neural or functional states will be needed to represent these distinct properties. This has become known as the “binding problem” for inner speech (see Munroe 2023; Patel 2021; Bermúdez 2018 for different approaches to resolving it; see also Prinz 2011 for related remarks). In light of this problem, Langland-Hassan proposes that ordinary episodes of inner speech likely consist in two or more mental states triggered at roughly the same time (this would be a multiple-state version of the “mixed contents” view, discussed below). Yet he adds that, when inner speech has been divided into distinctly occurring states in this way, there are good reasons to identify inner speech solely with the component that represents word sounds. Doing so results in a phonological content view.

In contrast to the phonological content view, the semantic content view holds that inner speech episodes always and only have semantic contents. By “semantic contents”, we mean the kinds of contents had by ordinary words, phrases, and sentences of a natural language. Such contents are typically equated with the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence.

One version of a semantic content view, defended by Christopher Gauker (2011, 2018), holds that inner speech episodes exclusively have semantic contents and entirely lack both auditory contents and auditory phenomenology. Gauker allows that episodes of auditory verbal imagery often accompany inner speech. However, on his view, this auditory imagery is not to be identified with inner speech itself. Rather, according to Gauker, inner speech is a non-sensory linguistic phenomenon occurring in the brain that is (often) represented by episodes of auditory verbal imagery. Just as we may use auditory representations to represent someone else’s speech that we are actually hearing, so too, for Gauker, our inner speech is often represented by verbal imagery—imagery that is in fact distinct from the (inner) speech itself. (Here Gauker develops related remarks of Wilfrid Sellars (1956).) Notably, Gauker (2018) grants that, in the case of inner speech, this auditory-verbal imagery misrepresents our inner speech as having sonic features (i.e., as instantiating phones or phonemes), given that the neural events that constitute inner speech episodes are themselves silent.

Gauker’s style of pure semantic content view is not widely endorsed. This may be because it clashes with the widespread view that inner speech has a sensory character similar to that of hearing speech. On the other hand, Gauker’s view can be said to have an advantage in providing a literal sense in which, when we engage in inner speech, we are thinking in words of a natural language and not merely about them. On Gauker’s (2011) view, the neural events that carry semantic content are themselves tokens of words and phrases of a natural language, and the question of how auditory-verbal images can also be linguistic tokens does not arise. His view is also motivated by an opposition to what he calls the “Lockean” view that sees conceptual thought as something prior to and separate from the speech that expresses it. One can see Gauker (2011) as trying to preserve the idea that abstract (conceptual) thought occurs in a language (and is often non-conscious), while divorcing it from the thesis that there exists an innate, Fodorian “language of thought” (and one that must be exploited in order to learn a natural language).

Bermúdez (2018) offers a different style of semantic content view that allows for inner speech to retain a characteristic auditory phenomenology. According to Bermúdez, the auditory sensory character of inner speech is a result of inner speech episodes having non-representational auditory properties. For Bermúdez, the only representational contents had by inner speech episodes are those pertaining to the meanings of words. In response to the those who argue that inner speech episodes must also have phonological contents (e.g., to explain why we can use inner speech to judge whether two words rhyme), he argues that there is no entailment from the fact that inner speech episodes can be useful in judging rhyme relations to the conclusion that they represent phonemes (2018: 216–7).

A third type of theory on which inner speech exclusively has semantic content proceeds by arguing that inner speech is a genuine form of speech. This argument is typically made on either phenomenological or functional grounds. From there it is inferred that inner speech must have the same kind of contents as external speech. If episodes of external speech—i.e., the words we hear when someone speaks—have semantic content but no phonological content (because they do not represent phonemes), so too must episodes of inner speech. This approach to theorizing about inner speech is discussed in more detail in Section 1 . Assuming that (unlike Gauker) proponents of such a view wish to maintain that inner speech episodes constitutively have auditory sensory character, they may concur with Bermúdez in his claim that the auditory phenomenology of inner speech does not entail the representation of auditory properties; or, alternatively, they may provide some other account of why, in many instances, inner speech seems to represent phonemes even if it does not really do so.

3.3 Mixed Contents Views

Mixed contents views hold that inner speech episodes typically have at least two kinds of content—phonological and semantic—simultaneously. On a mixed contents view, the inner speech episode “Dogs are mammals” represents both the sound of the sentence “Dogs are mammals”, as uttered aloud, and the proposition that dogs are mammals. We can distinguish two species of mixed contents view: single-state and multiple-state. Single-state views hold that what we intuitively mark as a single inner speech episode consists in a single mental state that has both auditory and semantic contents. Multiple-state views hold that the apparent unity of a single inner speech episode is in some sense illusory, as such episodes typically consist in the contemporaneous occurrence of two or more mental states, where one of the states represents phones or phonemes and another has semantic contents. (Some multiple-state views hold that inner speech episodes involve additional distinct states with articulatory and syntactic contents as well.) As earlier noted, some phonological content views hold that mental states with corresponding semantic contents occur contemporaneously with the representations of phonemes that are identified with inner speech. These phonological content views differ from multiple-state mixed contents views in that the former identify inner speech solely with the state that has phonological content, perhaps on the grounds that it is the only sort of state of which one is consciously aware (this appears to be Jackendoff’s motivation).

Carruthers (2011, 2018) defends a single-state mixed contents view, proposing that inner speech involves the generation of a representation of word sounds (i.e., phonemes) which—in a process akin to what occurs in outer speech perception—is then interpreted by one’s speech comprehension mechanisms so that a semantic content can then be assigned to the represented utterance. (He notes that a representation of the semantic content of the represented phrase—referred to as the “message” on Levelt’s [1989] speech-production framework—sometimes precedes the representation of the word sounds, albeit non-consciously.) Once the represented word sounds are interpreted, Carruthers suggests, the information that the represented utterance has a certain semantic content is “bound into” a single “event-file” that contains information both about the sound and the meaning of the represented utterance (2018: 41–42). (See Frankish [2004: 57; 2018] for a similar view.) Carruthers analogizes such binding to the way in which the color, shape, and category properties of a visually perceived object are said to be “bound into” a single object-file that accumulates multiple forms of information about a single object, despite those properties being represented in temporally distinct stages and in distinct neural regions. These event-files, when activated and globally-broadcast, are said to constitute a single conscious inner speech episode that has both auditory and semantic contents.

Munroe (2023) develops a similar style of single-state mixed contents view, arguing that, in addition to representing phonemic and semantic features, inner speech episodes also represent the likelihood that the content of the represented utterance is true. The latter is necessary, he holds, for inner speech episodes to qualify as judgments (see Section 2.3 ). These three distinct features are, for Munroe, bound into a single mental state in the sense that a single mental state predicates these three distinct properties of a single represented utterance (Munroe 2023: 304).

Other mixed contents views of inner speech—inspired by Levelt’s (1989) multi-stage model of speech production—attribute the different representational contents entertained during an inner speech episode to multiple distinct states that tend to co-occur. Martínez-Manrique & Vicente (2015) defend a multiple-state view under the moniker of the “activity view” of inner speech, highlighting the multi-component processes of both inner and outer speech. “It is quite natural”, they explain,

to try to understand inner speech in terms of all the representations that are mobilized in speech, i.e., semantic, syntactic, maybe articulatory …. The representations involved—from conceptual to phonological—form an integrated system. (2015: 8)

The view which Martínez-Manrique & Vicente set out in their 2015 paper bears clear similarities to the actual speech view, insofar as they hold that inner speech is functionally similar to external speech. What separates it from the actual speech view, however, is that they do not hold that inner speech consists of actual words and sentences which express semantic content, but of distinct representations of phonological and semantic (and other) content. (For complementary multiple-state mixed contents views in cognitive neuroscience, see Grandchamp et al. 2019 and Lœvenbruck et al. 2018.) While these representations are unified in the sense of occurring within a single system for language production, they remain distinct mental states—distinguished, in part, by their distinct contents, and their ability to occur in isolation of each other. (Note, however, that this way of categorizing the view assumes that each mental state is composed of exactly one mental representation. It may be possible to articulate a view where one mental state is composed of multiple mental representations. The question then becomes: in virtue of what do the multiple representations qualify as a single mental state, as opposed to components or stages of a single cognitive system?)

Christopher Hill (2022: 136–139) develops a similar multiple-state mixed content view, emphasizing that the representations of semantic content lack any associated phenomenology. The phenomenology of inner speech is, for Hill, entirely a function of its auditory-phonological contents. He further specifies that these phonological contents are (the more abstract) phonemes, and not phones, to account for the relatively impoverished sensory character of inner speech in comparison with speech perception. Patel (2021) also defends a multiple-state mixed contents view, on which, in addition to having some combination of semantic, syntactic, auditory, and articulatory contents, inner speech episodes have vocal contents. To have vocal contents is to represent some particular person’s voice as communicating some combination of semantic, syntactic, auditory, or articulatory information. According to Patel, whether we are representing the semantic, auditory, or articulatory contents, these mental events involve one’s representing a certain person’s voice as attempting to convey such information. This common representation of a voice, he argues, provides a kind of unity to the class of mental events that can be considered inner speech.

Because multiple-state views allow that the distinct components of inner speech can potentially occur in isolation, they face a question of which components need to occur for the episode to be properly counted as an instance of inner speech. Vicente & Jorba (2019), Martínez-Manrique & Vicente (2015), and Vicente & Martínez-Manrique (2016) see this as an advantage, insofar as it allows them to place different phenomena related to inner speech on a single continuum (see also Kompa & Mueller forthcoming and McCarthy-Jones & Fernyhough 2011). For instance, when the semantic and syntactic contents of ordinary inner speech are represented in the absence of any auditory-phonological contents, they propose, this can be understood as a case of so-called “unsymbolized thought” (Heavey & Hurlburt 2008; Heavey, Moynihan, et al. 2019). See Section 2.3 for further detail.

A notable feature of the surveyed mixed contents views (as well as the phonological content view) is that they need not (and often do not) hold that inner speech episodes occur in a natural language. Rather, on these views, inner speech episodes represent natural language utterances (in virtue of their phonological contents), without necessarily being instances of such utterances themselves. This is because, on mixed contents views, the semantic content of an inner speech episode may not be represented by tokens of a natural language. For instance, for Carruthers, the semantic contents of an inner speech episode are represented via symbols of an amodal language of thought (e.g., a Fodorian [1975] Mentalese ), which are coupled with sensory representations of the sound of the corresponding sentence as spoken aloud. One language (Mentalese) is used to represent the meaning of an expression in another (e.g., English). In this way, Carruthers (2010, 2018) deviates from Carruthers (1996), with the latter defending the idea that inner speech episodes literally occur in—and are expressions of—a natural language. Carruthers now emphasizes the point, raised also by Machery (2005), that introspection does not provide grounds for claims about the representational format of our inner speech episodes.

4. Inner Speech and Pragmatics

In general, the philosophy of language has focused primarily on language used interpersonally. It is natural to wonder to what extent this material is applicable to inner speech. This question can be asked whether or not one thinks that inner speech is actually a kind of speech, as no one denies that there is some interesting relationship between inner speech and interpersonal speech.

As mentioned in Section 1 , the intuition that we can perform speech acts in inner speech is the basis of an argument that inner speech is a kind of speech. There are different ways, however, that we might understand the claim, depending on how one thinks of speech acts.

On the traditional analysis of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), performing a speech act is inherently something one does in accordance with conventions tacitly understood by both speaker and listener. For example, for Searle, asserting p involves (approximately) undertaking to someone that p is true, where the speaker does not know that the listener already knows that p is true. The reason that an assertion can be effective is precisely that both speaker and hearer understand that this is the nature of the transaction. It is hard to see how this kind of analysis could apply to inner speech. One would need to explain how one individual can have two distinct roles, as speaker and listener, such that the conventions that make interpersonal language-use possible can have any relevance (see Gregory 2017, 2020a for related discussion).

Not every version of speech act theory, however, emphasizes conventions. Drawing on some ideas from Strawson (1964) and Bach & Harnish (1970), though not adopting their theories in whole, Wilkinson (2020) holds that what is essential to speech acts is that they express particular mental states. An assertion, for example, is simply an utterance which expresses a belief; a question is an utterance which expresses a desire to acquire certain information; etc. On this view, understanding someone else’s utterance is simply a matter of grasping its content and knowing what kind of mental state the relevant type of utterance expresses. Setting aside the question of whether one needs to interpret their own inner speech, it may be that inner speech episodes can be speech acts if one thinks of speech acts merely as expressions of particular mental states, rather than as actions which depend on conventions in the way that Austin and Searle suggest. For another analysis of inner speech in terms of speech act theory, see Geurts (2018), who emphasizes that inner speech episodes can operate to generate commitments in a way characteristic of speech acts; see also Frankish (2018) and Fernández Castro (2019).

An issue which sits just behind the question of whether inner speech episodes are speech acts is whether they are actions at all. Gregory (2020b) argues that, in the vast majority of cases, inner speech episodes are not actions, because we cannot give reasons for them (which is the criterion for actionhood on Davidson’s (1963) causal theory); they are not subject to our control (the criterion on Harry Frankfurt’s [1978] guidance theory); and we do not try to produce them (the criterion on O’Shaughnessy’s [1973] theory and Hornsby’s [1980] theory). If inner speech episodes are not actions, then they cannot be speech acts.

Tom Frankfort (2022) takes the opposite view. He observes that a great deal of inner speech is involved in deliberation, where this is an expansive category including “reflecting, reasoning, considering, evaluating” (2022: 52). He then applies Mele’s (2009) distinction between actions which involve “trying to bring it about that one x -s” (Mele 2009: 18) and actions which are done in order to bring it about that one x ’s. Frankfort suggests that deliberating is an action in the first sense, insofar as it involves (for example) trying to make a decision, and inner speech episodes are actions in the second sense, insofar as they are produced in order to bring it about that one deliberates successfully and (for example) comes to a decision.

Jorba (forthcoming) also holds that inner speech episodes are typically actions, applying affordance theory. Affordances are opportunities for actions suggested by things in one’s environment. For example, an apple has the affordance of being edible; a cup has the affordance of being graspable. Some hold that affordances can also be things which suggest mental actions (Jorba cites McClelland 2020 and Jorba 2020). Jorba’s suggestion is that some mental states afford the production of inner speech episodes. For example, an inchoate thought affords being articulated clearly in inner speech, and an emotion can afford being labeled. Insofar as inner speech episodes are produced in response to affordances, they are actions and, specifically, speech acts. See Bar-On & Ochs (2018) for another account on which inner speech episodes can be “acts of innerly speaking our mind” (2018: 19, emphasis removed).

Closely related to the question of whether there can be speech acts in inner speech is the question of whether inner speech can involve a kind of dialogue or conversation. A theory which characterizes inner speech this way has been developed at length in psychology, primarily by Charles Fernyhough (e.g., 1996, 2008, 2009). However, the suggestion has been made in a variety of ways by philosophers as well, including by Machery (2018), Frankish (2018), Gauker (2018), and Wilkinson, in collaboration with Fernyhough (Wilkinson & Fernyhough 2018).

The idea that inner speech involves an internal dialogue or conversation clearly has intuitive appeal for some. One often finds inner speech described outside the philosophical context as the “inner dialogue”. But, if inner speech involves a kind of internal dialogue or conversation on more than a metaphorical level, then it is natural to wonder who the interlocutors are (Gregory 2020a). Machery (2018) and Frankish (2018) suggest that different parts of the brain communicate with one another via inner speech. Gauker (2018) suggests that inner speech involves conversing with oneself (see also the discussion of inner speech as a means for interaction between subsystems or modules in the mind in Section 2.2 ). One difficulty with both of these suggestions, however, is that philosophers of language generally (though not universally) think of conversation as fundamentally involving distinct human agents.

Gregory (2017) appeals to Grice’s (1975 [2013]) account of conversation to make this point. Grice argued that conversations are “characteristically … cooperative efforts” (p. 314). But cooperation requires multiple agents and there is only one agent in inner speech. That said, Gauker (2011, 2018) is working with an explicitly non-Gricean picture of conversation, motivated by an opposition to the doctrine that speech acts serve to express thoughts that are distinct from and precede the expressive utterance. He holds that speaking is,

in the first instance, something we do whenever there is no reason not to, because of the good it tends to do. (2018: 71)

In certain circumstances, where multiple individuals are present,

[a] conversation can be the occasion for each interlocutor to reflect on what he or she has experienced, … and on that basis to elicit a statement that is useful from the other. (2018: 72)

Insofar as we can generate inner speech episodes which cause us to reflect on some matter and then produce further inner speech episodes which are useful for us in the context, inner speech will be conversational. Gauker’s analysis here obviously reflects the expression-oriented approach to the question of whether there can be speech acts in inner speech.

In contrast to Gauker, Deamer (2021) argues that inner speech can be seen as being communicative in a Gricean sense. She holds that, to at least some extent, humans are “self-blind”: mental states such as our intentions are not always transparent to us. When we produce inner speech, we reveal our communicative intentions to ourselves, just as we reveal our communicative intentions to others when we converse with them.

While there is disagreement as to whether a series of inner speech episodes can be a dialogue in a literal sense, most agree that inner speech often closely resembles dialogue. As Gauker notes, one episode of inner speech will often prompt another, as happens in interpersonal dialogue. We can produce episodes of inner speech corresponding to different points of view, e.g., when thinking about the considerations for and against some course of action, in a way similar to two people with different opinions. Some participants in studies report that some of their inner speech episodes take place in the voices of others (McCarthy-Jones & Fernyhough 2011; Alderson-Day, Mitrenga, et al. 2018). This last consideration raises an important issue. We can certainly imagine conversing with others and we can certainly imagine others conversing. Such cases are usually taken to be distinct from inner speech (see Section 1 ). However, if inner speech can involve the voices of others, possibly expressing viewpoints other than our own, it becomes difficult to say how instances of inner speech with these characteristics differ from cases of imagining others speaking. How to delineate the extension of “inner speech” in a way that distinguishes inner speech acts from cases of (merely) imagining speech remains an underexplored issue.

5. Self-Knowledge and Metacognition

Inner speech plays an important role in a number of philosophical accounts of self-knowledge and metacognition. By “self-knowledge” we will mean knowledge of one’s own mental states, including both dispositional states—like beliefs, desires, and intentions—and occurrent states, such as thoughts, imaginings, decisions, and judgments. The notion of metacognition is somewhat broader, also encompassing judgments and non-cognitive assessments (e.g., “feelings of knowing”) concerning the validity of one’s own reasoning, the quality of one’s evidence, one’s degree of certainty, and so on (Proust 2013). While some theorists implicate inner speech in their accounts of both self-knowledge and metacognition (Jackendoff 1996; Clark 1998; Bermúdez 2003, 2018), others focus more narrowly on the question of how inner speech might facilitate self-knowledge (Byrne 2018; Carruthers 2011; Roessler 2016). A common thread among theorists who invoke inner speech in their accounts of metacognition or self-knowledge is the idea that certain others of our mental states—namely, those that our inner speech helps us to know about—are either less readily available to introspection or less well suited to serve a metacognitive role. Thus, these views all appear against a backdrop of broader commitments about the nature of mental states and our introspective access to them.

One approach sees inner speech as especially well suited to aid in metacognition due to its linguistic structure, or its link to public language more generally. According to Andy Clark (1998), the fact that inner speech occurs in a language—where such language is seen as abstracting away from the particularities of perception—allows it to play a special role in “second-order cognitive dynamics” (see also Prinz 2011, 2012). This, he holds, is because the natural language sentences featured in inner speech are “context resistant” and “modality transcending” in ways that facilitate a more objective and reliable assessment of the soundness of one’s own thought processes (Clark 1998: 178). Bermúdez (2003, 2018) builds on Clark’s proposal, specifying that awareness of inner speech is essential for enabling humans to become conscious of their own propositional thought processes, which are otherwise amodal and inaccessible to introspection. According to Bermúdez,

all the propositional thoughts that we consciously introspect … take the form of sentences in a public language. (emphasis original, 2003: 159–160)

While he does not identify these public language sentences with our core thought processes themselves—these, he holds, occur in a subconscious language of thought—Bermúdez argues that the linguistic structure of inner speech is needed to adequately represent the relationships of entailment and rational support that may (or may not) exist among the subconscious thoughts the inner speech episodes serve to express. As he puts it,

we think about thoughts through thinking about the sentences through which those thoughts might be expressed. (2003: 164)

Jackendoff (1996, 2007, 2011, 2012) and Prinz (2011, 2012) likewise hold that there is a level of conceptual thought that is not directly available to introspection and that inner speech is well suited for making us aware of such thoughts. Yet, for Jackendoff and Prinz, inner speech is able to play this role primarily because, like other imagistic mental states, inner speech occurs at an “intermediate” level of representation, which, on their theories, is the only level of representation at which mental states are consciously available to the subject. Thus Jackendoff’s comment that “we are aware of our thinking because we hear the associated sounds in our heads” (2011: 613). Echoing Bermúdez and Clark, Prinz finds it

likely that we often come to know what we are thinking by hearing inner statements of the sentences that we would use to express our thoughts (2011:. 186)

and judges inner speech to be “a way of registering complex thoughts in consciousness” (2011: 186). (See also Machery 2005, 2018.)

Several theorists, who we will term “inferentialists”, follow Ryle (1949 [2009]) in his claim that we often come to know what we are thinking by “overhear[ing]”, or “eavesdrop[ping] on … our own silent monologues” (1949 [2009: 165]). On these views, we come to know what we are thinking, or what we believe or desire, by drawing a kind of inference (the nature of which differs, depending on the theorist) from the fact that we “hear” ourselves say something in inner speech. The views of Clark, Bermúdez, Jackendoff, and Prinz, already reviewed, are inferentialist in nature. Yet there are other approaches that incorporate inner speech into a process that is even more explicitly inferential.

Carruthers (2009, 2010, 2011, 2018) is an inferentialist of this latter sort. While, in earlier work, he argued that thought itself occurs in inner speech (Carruthers 2002), Carruthers later abandoned that idea to hold that thoughts (including one’s beliefs) are always unconscious. On this view, inner speech episodes remain more or less directly available to introspection, yet only provide a kind of indirect evidence for what we are in fact judging or deciding (or believing, desiring, or intending) unconsciously. He emphasizes the fallible nature of such inferences, arguing on the basis of various empirical studies that many of the inferences people arrive at about their own beliefs and desires are in fact incorrect. Similarly to Jackendoff and Prinz, Carruthers holds that only sensory states are able to serve as inputs to the mental mechanism responsible for self- (and other-) directed mindreading. These inputs include visual and other forms of sensory imagery in addition to inner speech. However, in cases where we are having thoughts about abstract matters that are difficult to unambiguously represent with other forms of imagery—such as the thought that philosophy is a challenging subject—episodes of inner speech are held to provide an especially important source of information that one is having such thoughts. Carruthers emphasizes that the process becomes especially inferential in nature where other contextual information—such as that one sees oneself lingering over a choice of cereal box—combines with one’s inner speech to generate an all-things-considered appraisal of what one is currently judging or deciding. Cassam (2011, 2014) likewise implicates inner speech in a multi-faceted inferentialist account of self-knowledge, though not pitched in terms of “mindreading” mechanisms or other constructs from cognitive science.

Alex Byrne (2011, 2018) puts inner speech to somewhat different ends in his inferentialist account of how we know what we are thinking. For Byrne, there is no such thing as inner speech, strictly speaking, because there are no sounds (or voices) in the head. However, there are such things as auditory-phonological representations of voices. These give rise to an apparent perception of what we come to think of as the “inner voice”. By trying to attend to what the inner voice says, Byrne proposes, we can reliably form judgments about what we are thinking. The epistemic rule he proposes for doing so is:

THINK: If the inner voice speaks about x , believe that you are thinking about x .

As with Carruthers, a key motivation for Byrne’s account of how we know what we are thinking is a background view—motivated by the work of Shoemaker (1994), Dretske (2003), and others—that we have no other, more direct introspective method for knowing our own thoughts (i.e., we lack something like an “inner sense”). Note that Byrne’s approach is inferentialist in that he takes inner speech to be implicated in inferences that lead to knowledge of one’s own occurrent thoughts. Yet the sort of inference involved is quite different from that envisioned by Carruthers and Cassam, who both hold that inner speech episodes are just one kind of information among many that may be brought to bear in inferences about one’s standing and occurrent mental states. Importantly, the form of inference envisioned by Carruthers and Cassam is essentially the same in its first and third person applications, whereas Byrne’s THINK rule is of an inferential procedure that can only be used to reliably generate true beliefs about one’s own mental states. In Byrne’s view, this helps to explain the “peculiar” nature of introspection, where this peculiarity lies in the fact that our methods for knowing our own mental states are (intuitively) different from those we use to know others’ (Byrne 2011, 2018). Further, on Byrne’s version of inferentialism, the inferences we form by trying to follow THINK are extremely likely to amount to knowledge—thereby cohering with the intuition that knowledge of one’s own current thoughts is epistemically privileged. Whereas, the kinds of metacognitive inferences that Carruthers and Cassam envision to rely on inner speech are (by their own telling) epistemically on a par with our inferences about the mental states of others and far more susceptible to error.

Several philosophers object that inferentialist proposals leave us at too great an epistemic distance from our own thoughts (Bar-On & Ochs 2018; Roessler 2016) or have other unworkable features (Langland-Hassan 2014; Martínez-Manrique & Vicente 2010; Roessler 2016). Roessler (2016) pursues a non-observational account of the role of inner speech in generating self-knowledge. Rejecting the idea that we need to “eavesdrop on ourselves” by attending to our inner speech, Roessler suggests we follow remarks of Ryle (1949 [2009]) and Anscombe (1957) in understanding the knowledge gained through inner speech as a kind of “practical knowledge”, (or, for Ryle, “serial knowledge”), where knowing what one is thinking is understood as a special case of knowing what one is doing.

Bar-On & Ochs (2018) likewise take aim at what they term “Neo-Rylean” invocations of inner speech, arguing that Byrne’s THINK rule fails to identify a special role for inner speech in facilitating self-knowledge. Drawing on Bar-On’s (2004) broader expressivist approach to self-knowledge, Bar-On and Ochs hold that a proper account of inner speech’s role in self-knowledge should show how such knowledge is “distinctive and uniquely first-personal” in that it is

knowledge that one can be said to have in virtue of being in a privileged position to give direct voice to one’s thoughts. (2018: 20)

They do not, however, develop a positive account in detail.

Vicente & Martínez-Manrique (2005, 2008; Martínez-Manrique & Vicente 2010) have criticized Bermúdez’s and related inferentialist views on the grounds that the semantics of natural language sentences—and inner speech episodes, in particular—are underdetermined in ways incompatible with providing knowledge of one’s thoughts. For instance, the sentence “Jane’s cup is full”, is ambiguous in several ways, including the sense in which it is Jane’s cup (does she own it? is she just using it? is it the one she merely wants?) and the sense in which it is full (is it full of air? of liquid? of coins?). If the explicit meaning of a sentence is only extracted (and disambiguated) at the level of thought itself, they argue, it is unclear how awareness of semantically indeterminate inner speech utterances could suffice for awareness of one’s own—presumably explicit and unambiguous—propositional thoughts. Bermúdez replies in his 2018 paper.

Jorba & Vicente (2014) and Martínez-Manrique & Vicente (2015) criticize what they call the “format view” of inner speech (which they attribute to Jackendoff and others) which holds that we are conscious of our inner speech episodes only because of their sensory format (see also Fernández Castro 2016). If these criticisms succeed, they cast doubt on views, such as those of Carruthers (2010), Jackendoff (1996), and Prinz (2012), which link the metacognitive or introspective value of inner speech to its occurrence in a sensory format.

Langland-Hassan (2014) raises a different sort of challenge for inferentialist views. Recall that it is a common assumption of those views that propositional thought itself is amodal (i.e., non-sensory) and non-conscious. For theorists such as Carruthers, Prinz, Jackendoff, and Bermúdez, inner speech is a conscious mental process just because it has sensory features that render it the sort of state that is apt to be conscious. Langland-Hassan argues that there is a conflict in holding that an episode of inner speech is a single mental state with both sensory features (relating to the representation of phonemes) and semantic features (relating to the meanings of the corresponding words). If this criticism is correct, it creates problems for the proposal that inner speech is especially well suited (due to its sensory character) to serve as input to inferences about one’s non-conscious mental states. Bermúdez (2018), Carruthers (2018), and Munroe (2023) have articulated different ways of responding to this challenge (see also Prinz 2011 for relevant remarks).

Inner speech features prominently in philosophical and cognitive scientific discussions of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) and thought insertion. Both are common symptoms of schizophrenia but can occur in other contexts (e.g., brain injury, drug use) as well. AVHs are hallucinatory experiences of another’s speech, while thought insertion is understood either as a non-veridical experience of having someone else’s thoughts in one’s mind (Wing et al. 1990), or simply as the delusional belief that someone else’s thoughts are in one’s mind (Andreasen 1984). Two central questions explored by theorists are, first, whether (abnormal) inner speech is indeed the basis of AVHs or thought insertion, and, second, what might lead an episode of inner speech to be experienced as an AVH or inserted thought.

On the first question, an initially plausible approach to AVHs is to hold that they are more a matter of hallucinatory speech perception than of (unwitting) speech production, and thus not well conceived as episodes of inner speech. Wu (2012) and Cho & Wu (2013, 2014) advance a theory of this kind, holding that AVHs result from the spontaneous activation of speech perception areas in the brain. On their account, inner speech—and, in particular, the neural regions implicated in speech production—are not implicated in AVHs. Despite the attractive simplicity of this account, most researchers have pursued options that explicitly involve inner speech, for several reasons. First, in formal surveys, patients often report that the phenomenological characteristics of their AVHs are different from those of hearing speech, insofar as their AVHs are not as subjectively “loud” as cases of hearing speech, are not equally rich in sensory features, and do not always seem to emanate from outside the head (Stephens & Graham 2000; Hoffman et al. 2008; Laroi et al. 2012; Nayani & David 1996; Stephane 2019). It appears that an explanation of the seemingly “alien” nature of these episodes, as well as of thought insertion, will require some other apparatus than an appeal to perception-like phenomenology. Given the need for such an alternative, one may hope to extend it also to cases of AVHs that are reported as having rich, perception-like phenomenological features (Langland-Hassan 2008; Moseley & Wilkinson 2014).

Second, neuroimaging has shown activation in both language perception and language production areas when patients are experiencing AVHs (Allen, Aleman, & Mcguire 2007; Allen, Modinos, et al. 2012; Bohlken, Hugdahl, & Sommer 2017). Here as in other areas of the study of inner speech, it is important to recognize that the neural regions underlying speech production (such as Broca’s area, in the left inferior frontal gyrus) are distinct from those governing speech perception (such as Wernicke’s area, in the superior temporal gyrus). This is why damage to one area but not the other (as in some cases of stroke) can result in markedly different language impairments. The fact that the mechanisms governing speech production and perception are dissociable in these ways provides an important means for assessing whether AVHs are best viewed as productive or perceptual (or both) in nature.

Nevertheless, those who see abnormal inner speech episodes as the basis for AVHs or thought insertion face a difficult task in explaining what would lead a person to not identify their own inner speech as their own, or to not feel in control of their own inner speech. Some have offered content-based explanations, where it is some feature of the semantic content of the inner speech that leads a person to disown it. For instance, Stephens and Graham (2000) argue that a patient may disown inner speech episodes with contents that are “intentionally inexplicable”, in the sense that they are not easily accommodated within a coherent self-narrative (see also Roessler (2013), Sollberger (2014), Bortolotti & Broome (2009), and Fernández (2010) on the idea that AVHs or inserted thoughts are episodes with contents the patient is unwilling to endorse). Challenges for this approach are patient reports of voices that are helpful or encouraging. As the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler notes in early work on people with schizophrenia, “besides their persecutors, the patients often hear the voice of some protector”, and, occasionally, the hallucinatory voices “represent sound criticism of the [patient’s] delusional thoughts and pathological drives” (1911 [1950: 98]).

A popular alternative approach—sometimes known as the “comparator” or “sensory feedback” approach—builds on work in cognitive neuroscience concerning the mechanisms by which bodily movements are determined to be one’s own (Feinberg 1978; Frith 1992; Miall et al. 1993; Wolpert, Miall & Kawato 1998). The basic idea behind these approaches is that, below the level of consciousness, the brain is continually generating predictions about the likely sensory consequences of planned actions, which are then compared with actual sensory feedback. When there is a mismatch between the prediction and sensory feedback, one may have the phenomenological sense of not being in control of one’s actions (Frith 2012). A number of authors have proposed that the generation of both inner and outer speech may be attended by the same kind of prediction and comparison mechanisms, and that the malfunctioning of these mechanisms could lead to one’s own inner speech seeming not to be in one’s control (Blakemore, Smith, et al. 2000; Campbell 1999; Langland-Hassan 2016; Proust 2006). These proposals derive some support from the fact that people with schizophrenia have been shown to have broader deficits in automatically anticipating and adjusting for the sensory consequences of their own actions (Blakemore, Smith et al. 2000; Blakemore, Wolpert, & Frith 1998).

Nevertheless, the comparator approach to AVHs and thought insertion has come in for criticism on several grounds (Synofzik, Vosgerau & Newen 2008; Vicente 2014; Vosgerau & Newen 2007). One complaint has been that the lack of sensory features associated with inserted thoughts, in particular, makes sensory-feedback approaches ill-suited to their explanation (Vosgerau & Newen 2007). In response, some defenders have shifted to pitching the thesis in terms of predictive processing models of perception and action (Gerrans 2015; Swiney 2018; Swiney & Sousa 2014; Wilkinson 2014; Wilkinson & Fernyhough 2017), while others have developed other alternatives (Langland-Hassan forthcoming). The matter of how best to characterize the phenomenology and underlying etiology of AVHs and thought insertion—and the relation of each to inner speech—together with the precise relationship between predictive processing models and the comparator approach, remain active areas of research. See Wilkinson & Alderson-Day (2016) for an introduction to an edited special-issue on the topic oriented at philosophers; see López-Silva & McClelland (forthcoming) for a philosophically-oriented anthology on thought insertion. (Note: Parts of this section draw on a more in-depth overview in Langland-Hassan 2021).

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cognition: embodied | introspection | language of thought hypothesis | mental imagery | mind: modularity of | perception: auditory | perception: the contents of | self-consciousness | self-knowledge | speech acts

Acknowledgments

We thank Peter Carruthers, Christopher Gauker, Christopher Hill, Marta Jorba, Fernando Martínez-Manrique, Lucy O’Brien, Stephen Mann, Wade Munroe, Shivam Patel, Agustín Vicente, and Sam Wilkinson for written feedback and responses to queries. We also thank the audience at the Inner Speech Colloquium in February 2023 and the participants in the INACT Work in Progress Seminar (Daphne Bernués, Mariela Destéfano, and Víctor Verdejo, as well as Marta Jorba) for feedback. Work on this entry was supported in part by the State Research Agency and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant number PID2020-115052GA-Ioo).

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Vygotsky's Inner Speech Theory

Peter Langland-Hassan and Agustín Vicente (eds.), Inner Speech: New Voices , Oxford University Press, 2018, 336pp., $70.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198796640.

Reviewed by Marta Jorba, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

This collection offers a comprehensive, diverse and timely treatment of inner speech, the phenomenon of "the little voice in the head". It is the first volume entirely dedicated to inner speech from an interdisciplinary perspective and includes contributions by leading experts in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. Inner speech is a pervasive feature of our minds that is introspectively salient and empirically tractable, a feature whose nature and functions are a matter of debate. It is a language-like phenomenon that has been seen as a form of thought or intrinsically related to it, a conscious phenomenon that involves a perceptual hearing component, and is also involved in several cognitive functions. The book offers an in-depth treatment of the phenomenon from both theoretical and empirical approaches and thus provides a unique platform to contrast and evaluate the various approaches. Moreover, by directly engaging with inner speech, its contributors provide insights into the nature of thinking, consciousness, perception, action, self-knowledge and the self, thus presenting a network of interrelated topics for the study of the mind.

The book is divided into two parts; the first six chapters are devoted to the nature of inner speech and the second six to the self-reflection and self-knowledge functions attributed to inner speech. The chapters can be read quite independently. However, it should be noted that the interdisciplinary value of the book might become an obstacle for readers not familiar with technical terms and methods in philosophy, psychology or neuroscience.

The editors, Peter Langland-Hassan and Agustín Vicente, provide an instructive introduction, presenting the complexity of the phenomenon, the motivation for focusing on it, its intrinsic interest as well as its connection to a wide range of other perennial questions in philosophy and psychology. They offer a general and very useful map to navigate the landscape. They first provide a broad-brush description of the history of the study of inner speech, mainly highlighting the still influential work of the Russian psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky (1987) together with experimental psychology research on working memory (Baddeley 1992, 2007). In analytic philosophy of mind, the topic was of peripheral interest until the nineties, when several thinkers started to focus on inner speech for their theories of consciousness, explanations of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) and inserted thoughts, self-knowledge, or the relation of language and thought. In the rest of the introduction, Langland-Hassan and Vicente summarize the book's main contributions, making use of several guiding questions.

The book's central questions are, first, what is the nature of inner speech and, second, what is/are the function(s) of inner speech in cognitive processes. All the contributors present their  views on one or both questions, as well as discussing other more specific related issues.

Regarding the nature of inner speech: while the "little voice in the head" is a pre-theoretically good enough expression to localize the phenomenon, more technical definitions reveal the discrepancies as to what should count as proper inner speech. It is difficult to find a unified way of referring to the phenomenon in the book, as different definitions are found depending on the focus of inquiry and the level of description or explanation: (i) the experience of inner speech, (ii) the causes and mechanisms that underlie inner speech and (iii) the neurological evidence associated with inner speech-involving tasks. Examples of all these perspectives can be found in the volume. The book leaves quite open the specific ways in which such characterizations are (in)compatible or rather complement each other.

Russell T. Hurlburt and Christopher L. Heavey (Chapter 6) are the main proponents of a detailed description of (i), the experience of inner speech. They focus on what they call the "pristine experience of inner speech", meaning the phenomenon that occurs and is directly apprehended by people in their everyday environment. Using the Descriptive Sampling Method (DES), designed to explore pristine inner experience in high fidelity (p. 179) -- described and discussed in several other works (Hurlburt and Akther 2006; Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel 2007) -- they present different varieties of inner experience: unworded speech, inner speech with complete sentences, and unsymbolized thinking. Hurlburt and Heavey are reluctant to base definitions (and subsequent theories) of inner speech on casual introspection, questionnaires and sampling that does not provide training in bracketing presuppositions or inferences from experimental settings.

As examples of (ii), the causes and mechanisms that underlie inner speech, we find the complex discussion on computational models of inner speech, in particular motor control models. Seven contributions mention or discuss the issue whether inner speech can be regarded as the product of a forward model. A forward model is an internal representation of the system (body, limb, organ) that captures the forward or causal relationship between the inputs to the system (motor commands) and the outputs (Lœvenbruck et al., p. 147). The details of the various existing proposals are presented by Lauren Swiney and by Hèléne Lœvenbruck et al. Swiney (Chapter 12) presents the conceptions of inner speech implied in the different accounts of schizophrenia symptoms such as AVHs and inserted thoughts. She describes in detail two competing models: (i) inner speech as a prediction in the absence of sensory input (which parallels the literature in motor imagery), or (ii) inner speech as an act with sensory consequences that are themselves predicted (which parallels the literature on language production). Swiney's chapter could have appeared in Part I next to the one on computational models by Lœvenbruck et al., which would have also maintained the homogeneity of Part II's contents (self-knowledge and self-reflection functions of inner speech).

A development of (i) is given by Lœvenbruck et al. (Chapter 5) with their clear exposition of the various notions and processes involved in the predictive control model (forward model, efference copy, sensory attenuation, etc.). Lœvenbruck et al. also defend the idea -- in contrast to the other approaches -- of talking about inner language, conceived of as multimodal acts with multisensory percepts (auditory, somatosensory, visual), stemming from coarse multisensory goals. Accepting definitions that rely on the causes and mechanism underlying inner speech, Peter Carruthers argues that inner speech is an attended sensory forward model of a rehearsed speech action, where the action has been selected over the others by unconscious appraisal and decision-making processes.

Focusing on (iii), the neurological evidence associated with inner speech-involving tasks, Sharon Geva (Chapter 4) offers a detailed and exhaustive review of the main findings of the neural basis of mental imagery and inner speech. The bulk of her chapter is dedicated to functional imaging studies, summarizing the main results related to a variety of inner speech-involving tasks (pp. 108-117): word repetition, verb generation, stem completion, rhyme judgment, homophone judgment, fluency, and verbal transformation. After reviewing the studies of inner speech in aphasia (pp. 117-119), she discusses the principles of mental imagery through its common mechanisms: auditory, visual, and olfactory imagery activate primary sensory areas, whereas inner speech and motor imagery are higher brain functions that require multiple steps and processors. In the case of inner speech, linguistic processing, perception and execution are involved.

One interesting question regarding the nature of inner speech treated by several contributors is whether inner speech presents an auditory-phonological nature and whether this is an essential property or an associated episode. Langland-Hassan (Chapter 3) answers affirmatively, claiming that inner speech has an auditory-phonological component (or represents it). His argument summarized is that: (1) inner speech is keyed to a specific natural language, (2) the only feature that inner speech episodes plausibly have that will allow us to swiftly and reliably determine which language they are keyed to is their auditory-phonological component (semantics, syntax, phonology, graphology and articulation are discarded), and (3) therefore, inner speech must have an auditory-phonological component. From this introspective argument, he moves to the essential claim that all inner speech involves an auditory-phonological component by arguing that unconscious inner speech has it as well. Langland-Hassan's article is a good example of an empirically-informed philosophical argument on the topic.

Sam Wilkinson and Charles Fernyhough (Chapter 9) take a different position regarding the auditory-phonological nature of inner speech. They claim that inner speech represents both the sound of an utterance and a state of affairs with semantic content, although just the latter is assessable for accuracy. The auditory-phonological representations are cases of "content without commitment" (p. 256). They further argue that we can be misled about two specific aspects of the representation, the kind of mental state one is in when engaging in inner speech and the agent of the episode, whose speech act it is (thus leading to episodes of AVHs). Even if inner speech episodes represent sounds, Wilkinson and Fernyhough maintain that inner speaking and inner hearing are two distinct but related phenomena. For them, inner speech is a productive rather than a re-creative phenomenon of imagining or inner hearing -- even if inner hearing and inner speaking are related. Hurlburt and Heavey also defend a sharp distinction between these two phenomena.

Christopher Gauker (Chapter 2), in contrast, states that inner speech is a kind of thought that consists in internal tokening of words and sentences of a natural language and, crucially, the auditory-phonological component is not a proper part of inner speech but rather an associated episode by which we become aware of inner speech. This view characterizes inner speech in analogy with outer speech, where we can distinguish between outer speech per se and the perception or comprehension of outer speech. Inner speech per se would be the result of production mechanisms and the perception of inner speech would be a related but separated phenomenon. Interestingly for the discussion on the auditory-phonological component, Geva also concludes her contribution by stating that the activation of brain auditory areas and the presence of auditory percepts of inner speech is still a matter of debate.

One way to know about the nature of inner speech is by exploring its pathologies and the cases in which one or several features of the processes functions differently. The most examined cases are the conditions of AVHs and the delusion of thought insertion. Swiney explains that failures of inner speech that have to do with AVHs and inserted thoughts have been posited to affect the sense of agency, resulting in inner speech that is not felt as one's own. This model, she argues, still presents open questions about the way in which the approach specifies inner speech in relation to overt actions such as hand movement or talking. She then discusses the different views on the mechanisms that might underpin both symptoms. Langland-Hassan proposes a new way of conceiving them in which a unified diagnostic might be available. Inserted thoughts would be a subset of AVHs insofar as reports of inserted thoughts seem to the patient to occur in natural language and, thus, following Langland-Hassan's argument, can be said to possess auditory-phonological properties.

Moving to the second issue, the function/s of inner speech, we again find several views. On the one hand, Carruthers (Chapter 1) suggests that inner speech functions enable the mental rehearsal and evaluation of overt speech actions. The proper function of inner speech is, according to him, conscious planning, although it has evolved to play other roles. For Wilkinson and Fernyhough, we talk to ourselves as a way of expressing and reflecting on our own minds without having to risk giving that information away. Relying on this reflection function, Alain Morin (Chapter 11) reviews a comprehensive body of empirical work to show the self-reflective role of inner speech, understood as involving different forms of what he (perhaps too) broadly calls 'self-awareness': self-ascription, self-concept formation, self-knowledge, self-evaluation, self-esteem, sense of agency, self-regulation, mental time travel, and self-efficiency. He argues that the kind of information about the self that inner speech can provide is mostly conceptual, and so inner speech is not necessary to achieve lower, more perceptual forms of self-referential activities.

Picking out a specific reflection function, Edouard Machery (Chapter 10) argues that inner speech allows us to transparently know our beliefs, in contrast to our desires, which are opaque: beliefs are transparently communicated by assertions (although not all), while desires are not. The listener does not need anything more than the speech act to be justified in believing that the speaker believes so and so (this is why they are transparent). According to him, inner speech is a form of communication and beliefs are social mental states: they exist to be communicated.

Still within the question of the function of inner speech, José Luis Bermúdez (Chapter 7) defends the view that inner speech is required for intentional ascent, i.e., thinking about our thinking. The idea is that we can only think our thoughts when they are linguistically formulated. The two cases presented by Bermúdez are reflective evaluation and monitoring of one's own thinking and propositional attitude mindreading. He presents a nine-step argument (p. 202) to defend his view. He then responds to two main objections to the view: the problem that inner speech is too semantically indeterminate to present a thought as the object of reflective awareness (Martínez-Manrique and Vicente 2010) and the problematic implication that the view has of carrying two different types of content (auditory and propositional) at the same time (Langland-Hassan 2014). Regarding the first, Bermúdez provides an alternative way of thinking about semantic indeterminacy and linguistic understanding (pp. 207-211) and, with respect to the second, he argues that the problem with the two represented contents disappears when one denies that inner speech, besides having auditory-phonological properties, also represents those properties (pp. 213-217).

Bermúdez, together with other authors such as Clark (1998) and Prinz (2007) have been representatives of what have been called 'format views', according to which the proper function of inner speech is to enable thinking, and other functions are derivative of it. In contrast, activity views (Fernyhough 2009, Martínez-Manrique and Vicente 2015) of a Vygotskyan inspiration defend the position that inner speech is the activity of outer speech internalized, thus inheriting the main functions of speech acts: motivation, reminding, aid reasoning, etc. Relevant to this is the view Keith Frankish (Chapter 8) presents according to which, with certain modifications, the format and the activity view are compatible. He holds that one of the functions of inner speech is to provide a format (a representational medium) for conscious thinking, but is typically an activity, which has many functions continuous with those of outer speech. Frankish pairs inner speech with Type-2 thinking -- a slow, serial, conscious form of reasoning linked to language, conceived as a form of intentional action -- in contrast with Type-1 thinking -- fast, non-conscious and automatic. He defends the claim that intentional reasoning is a cyclical process in which inner speech is used in particular steps. This process is an internalization of linguistic exchanges in problem-solving settings.

The recurring and common topics that provide a diversity of approaches to a single issue are one of the most interesting aspects of the book, as we have already seen. Perhaps inevitably, however, some questions are treated only in one chapter or are just briefly mentioned in others. A central issue to inner speech research that could have been included in a separate chapter concerns methodological questions on empirical investigations. Aside from Hurlburt and Heavey's brief discussion on methods, we do not find anything on the usefulness and reliability of questionnaires or sampling methods, on their possibilities and limitations, or on suggestions about how to integrate (if possible) phenomenological reports with indirect measures. Phenomenological reports track subjective qualities of inner speech while indirect measures, relying mainly on articulatory suppression or phonological judgments, purport to show the presence or absence of inner speech in the realization of cognitive tasks. A general methodological discussion could have enriched this already very complete treatment of inner speech.

Another missing element is the treatment and development of the role of inner speech in pathologies other than schizophrenia. Beyond the specific differential functioning of inner speech in AVHs and inserted thoughts, the volume only incorporates brief discussions of the role of inner speech in aphasia (mainly in Geva's chapter, pp. 117-119), but doesn't cover research on the role of inner speech in other linguistic impairments or in other conditions such as autistic spectrum conditions (ASC). Although research on inner speech and autism is not abundant, there are a few studies that have dealt with this issue (see Williams et al. 2016) and could have contributed to expand horizons on inner speech and psychopathologies.

Overall, the volume succeeds in its attempt to provide common general research questions beyond the more or less isolated contributions on the topic that could be found in the literature so far. But as a first comprehensive compilation of approaches to inner speech, it is understandable that "the work of extracting the key points of agreement and dispute among different research programs remains to be done" (p. 4), as the editors point out. In my opinion, this very same fact makes the book an interesting and useful platform for further discussion and development of the topic. All in all, the book is an excellent collection of cutting-edge research on the philosophy, psychology and neuroscience of inner speech, a phenomenon that is key to many different cognitive processes. Carefully engaging with it will prove useful to students, professors, researchers and anyone interested in the nature of the mind.

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Baddeley, A. D. (2007). Working memory, thought and action . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clark, A. (1998). "Magic words: how language augments human computation". In P. Carruthers and J. Boucher (eds.), Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes (pp. 162-83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Fernyhough, C. (2009). "Dialogic thinking". In A. Winsler, C. Fernyhough, and I. Montero (eds.), Private Speech, Executive Functioning, and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 42-52.

Hurlburt, R. T., and Akhter, S. A. (2006). "The Descriptive Experience Sampling method", Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences , 5, 271-301.


Hurlburt, R. T., and Schwitzgebel, E. (2007). Describing inner experience? Proponent meets skeptic . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.


Langland-Hassan, P. (2014). "Inner speech and metacognition: In search of a connection", Mind and Language , 29, 511-33.


Martínez-Manrique, F., and Vicente, A. (2010). "What the . . . ! The role of inner speech in conscious thought", Journal of Consciousness Studies , 17, 141-67.


Martínez-Manrique, F., and Vicente, A. (2015). "The activity view of inner speech", Frontiers in Psychology , 6(232), 1-13.

Prinz, J. J. (2007). "All consciousness is perceptual". In B. P. McLaughlin and J. D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind , Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 335-57.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech . In The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 1) . New York: Plenum (Original work published 1934).

Williams, D.M., Peng, C., Wallace, G. L, (2016). "Verbal Thinking and Inner Speech in Autism Spectrum Disorder", Neuropsychol Rev 26:394-419.

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The Emergence of Inner Speech and Its Measurement in Atypically Developing Children

Constance th. w. m. vissers.

1 Royal Dutch Kentalis, Sint-Michielsgestel, Netherlands

2 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Ekaterina Tomas

3 National Research University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

4 School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Inner speech (IS), or the act of silently talking to yourself, occurs in humans regardless of their cultural and linguistic background, suggesting its key role in human cognition. The absence of overt articulation leads to methodological challenges to studying IS and its effects on cognitive processing. Investigating IS in children is particularly problematic due to cognitive demands of the behavioral tasks and age restrictions for collecting neurophysiological data [e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or electromyography (EMG)]; thus, the developmental aspects of IS remain poorly understood despite the long history of adult research. Studying developmental aspects of IS could shed light on the variability in types and amount of IS in adults. In addition, problems in mastering IS might account for neuropsychological deficits observed in children with neurodevelopmental conditions. For example, deviance in IS development might influence these children’s general cognitive processing, including social cognition, executive functioning, and related social–emotional functioning. The aim of the present paper is to look at IS from a developmental perspective, exploring its theory and identifying experimental paradigms appropriate for preschool and early school-aged children in Anglophone and Russian literature. We choose these two languages because the original work carried out by Vygotsky on IS was published in Russian, and Russian scientists have continued to publish on this topic since his death. Since the 1960s, much of the experimental work in this area has been published in Anglophone journals. We discuss different measurements of IS phenomena, their informativeness about subtypes of IS, and their potential for studying atypical language development. Implications for assessing and stimulating IS in clinical populations are discussed.

Inner Speech From a Developmental Perspective

“ There is no doubt that specifically human cognition is completely intertwined with speech. ” Galperin (1957)

“Inner speech” (IS) was a term originally coined by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to capture the process by which the private speech (PS) of young children, talking to themselves out loud during play, starts accompanying their activity in a variety of cognitive tasks ( Vygotsky, 1934 ). IS results from gradual internalization of overt speech in children, comprising three stages in Vygotsky’s original model ( 1934 , 1986 ). In our paradigm, we split the final stage into two ( Figure 1 ).

Schematic representation of stages of IS development.

Stage I occurs during early language acquisition when children master the fundamentals of an external dialogue (ED). It focuses on connecting with others – on communication and regulation of one another’s behavior.

Around the age of 3–4 years, as children’s linguistic experience increases, they enter Stage II and start talking to themselves ( Winsler et al., 2000 ). This phenomenon is known as PS, when the child attempts to imitate an adult talking to them, thereby regulating their behavior. At this stage, the main function of PS is self-regulation or self-guidance ( Berk and Garvin, 1984 ): children “whisper” to themselves planning their next step or commenting on their current activity. A distinguishing feature of PS compared to ED is the absence of an interlocutor, which allows simplifying compositional and syntactic conventions required in a dialogue with an interlocutor. However, the linguistic aspects of PS remain unexplored and require further study. ED and PS also share similarities: they represent overt speech and involve conscious control, focusing on the current, planned, or sometimes recalled event. Despite variability in the amount of PS observed in children, it is universally used across languages ( Vygotsky, 1934 ; Berk and Garvin, 1984 ; Winsler et al., 2000 , 2003 ; Al-Namlah et al., 2006 ).

The flexibility in using speech covertly develops after the age of 6–7 years ( Vygotsky, 1934 ), when children fully internalize their thoughts during various cognitive tasks, such as silent remembering, reading, and writing. In Vygotsky’s model, this occurs during Stage III, suggesting the full mastery of IS . Following this paradigm, the studies on IS have explored a wide variety of phenomena involving covert self-talk, ranging from silent reading and mental arithmetic (i.e., so-called “speech minus sound”; Müller, 1864 ) to unconscious “thinking in a language.” Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015) have recently introduced the terms “expanded” and “condensed” IS to differentiate between these typologically distinct phenomena. We adopt their approach throughout the paper: Stage III represents the development of expanded, and Stage IV, condensed IS.

Expanded IS often occurs during linguistic tasks, such as silent reading and writing, or mental rehearsal of a dialogue. This type of IS shares similarities with PS, as both activities are task-driven and conscious . The latter makes it possible to easily recall the content of the recent PS/expanded IS event. Since PS and expanded IS are task-driven, they focus on current or planned activity, representing top–down processes . Finally, both PS and expanded IS involve linguistically well-formed, grammatical utterances. Adults often use expanded IS and PS interchangeably, switching from covert to overt speech, depending on the situational context. Interestingly, based on experience sampling questionnaires, adults are estimated to engage in expanded IS approximately 20% of the time (e.g., Heavey and Hurlburt, 2008 ), suggesting that this form of IS coexists with condensed IS during cognitive processing.

Condensed IS represents the final stage of speech internalization. It is a fluid , spontaneous , and unconscious process, during which an utterance is often reduced to a single grammatical form ( Vygotsky, 1934 ; Galperin, 1957 ; Sokolov, 1967 ) associated with the current experience. This type of covert speech intertwines with human thinking, occurring spontaneously and unconsciously . It resembles a bottom–up perception of sensory input, most of which is processed automatically through implicit/unconscious neural mechanisms. The attentional account of multisensory processing claims that integrating information coming from different modalities is dependent on both top–down and bottom–up processes and that our mental representations of the surrounding environment are shaped by internal cognitive processes and the sensory input ( Talsma, 2015 ). The dual nature of IS – its interplay between top–down and bottom–up processing – suggests its possible role in integrating multisensory information into internally consistent mental representations. Recent neuroscientific evidence supports this: the neuroanatomic substrates engaged in multisensory processing, such as parts of the parietal [angular gyrus – Brodmann area (BA) 39] and temporal cortex (BA 20, BA 37, BA 38), are also involved in language functioning ( Seghier, 2013 ; Ardila et al., 2016 ).

Children not only internalize but also contract or abbreviate their IS over time. The more familiar and automatic the cognitive process/task becomes, the more abbreviated (and thus more condensed) is the accompanying IS ( Galperin, 1957 ). The complexity of cognitive tasks also contributes to the IS involvement in adults and children ( Sokolov, 1967 ; Fatzer and Roebers, 2012 ). In more cognitively demanding tasks, articulatory suppression has a detrimental effect on performance because it debilitates IS. This evidence supports the integrative role of IS in multisensory processing. It also explains why children, who have less cognitive resources and control than adults, prefer less abbreviated PS and expanded IS, particularly during novel cognitively demanding tasks.

Is Effects on Cognitive Functioning and Cognitive Development

Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015) have summarized findings on the role of IS during cognitive processing, highlighting its effects on executive functions, including short-term memory ( Williams et al., 2012 ) planning ( Al-Namlah et al., 2006 ; Lidstone et al., 2010 ), control of behavior ( Cragg and Nation, 2010 ; see also DeGraaf and Schlinger, 2012 ), inhibition, and cognitive flexibility ( Fatzer and Roebers, 2012 ). IS also supports Theory of Mind ( Fernyhough and Meins, 2009 ), communicative and social interactions, self-awareness, self-monitoring, motivation, and creativity ( Brinthaupt et al., 2009 ; Barkley, 2012 ; Alderson-Day and Fernyhough, 2015 ).

Additional evidence on the interactive relationship between cognitive processing and IS comes from clinical populations. For example, adults with aphasia ( Feinberg et al., 1986 ; Geva, 2010 ; Farrar et al., 2009 ; Geva et al., 2011b ; Langland-Hassan et al., 2015 ) do not rely on IS during cognitive tasks to the same extent as their unimpaired peers. However, the interplay between IS and verbal skills in adult clinical populations is unclear: some patients with aphasia demonstrate better preserved IS abilities compared to their overt speech, and others show the opposite pattern ( Farrar et al., 2009 ; Geva et al., 2011a ). The multifaceted nature of covert speech suggests that the dissociation between IS and overt speech in these individuals arises from different types of deficits. It might be the case that a patient with aphasia is suffering from only condensed IS deficits or that both expanded and condensed IS are impaired. The distinction between different subtypes of IS phenomena may therefore help account for heterogeneity in neurocognitive profiles and behavioral phenomenology observed in typical and clinical populations. It is also possible, of course, that measurement issues, which are key to the assessment of IS may be especially salient when it comes to atypical populations.

Interactions between language development, cognitive development, and behavioral problems have been reported for children with atypical language profiles – related to developmental language disorder (DLD), hearing loss, and autism (e.g., Jamieson, 1995 ; Wallace et al., 2009 ; Lidstone et al., 2012 ; Vissers et al., 2018 ). Communication with these children can be challenging, leading to insufficient input and language practice and subsequent social isolation. This contributes to delays in Theory of Mind (ToM) Development, executive deficits, and related social–emotional disorders ( Vissers et al., 2015 ; Vissers et al., 2016 ). Consistent with this assumption are studies showing that deaf children of deaf parents who communicate in sign language from birth and hence have less difficulty constructing adequate social dialogues appear to follow undisrupted development of sign language internalization and self-regulation ( Vissers et al., 2018 ). For instance, Hall et al. (2017) , working with deaf parents of deaf children, who had exposed their child to a natural sign language from birth, asked them to complete the parent-report Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) about their children and found that the children, on average, received age-appropriate scores on all of the executive function domains assessed by the BRIEF (inhibitory control, flexibility, emotional control, initiate, working memory, plan/organize, organization of materials, and monitor). Similarly, deaf and hard-of-hearing children raised by deaf compared to hearing mothers demonstrate more mature PS (i.e., self-directed covert signing) and its more frequent use ( Jamieson, 1995 ). Based on questionnaire data, more private signing and increased positive/motivational PS is also observed in congenitally deaf adults ( Zimmermann and Brugger, 2013 ), raising questions about typological differences in IS across spoken and sign languages.

Delay or deviance in IS development has been reported for 7- to 10-year-old children with DLD ( Lidstone et al., 2012 ). Although at this age, children with DLD have shown normal effects of articulatory suppression on a Tower of London task, overall, their PS was less internalized compared to controls, indicating a delay in their IS development reflecting that in their external expressive and receptive language. These deficits possibly account for the poorer performance of the DLD group on the Tower of London task despite similar non-verbal IQ scores across groups.

Studying speech internalization in children with atypical language development (i.e., the status of their PS, expanded IS, and condensed IS) could contribute to tailored assessment and intervention. For example, a recent intervention study has demonstrated that self-regulatory speech training, which is analogous to PS stimulation, can improve planning and problem-solving performance in children with DLD ( Abdul Aziz et al., 2016 ), suggesting environmental origins of IS and direct implications for future clinical practice.

To summarize, it appears that IS optimizes cognitive performance in adults and accounts for cognitive deficits in children with DLD, hearing loss, and autism, although it is difficult to anticipate the detail of qualitatively different manifestations of IS across clinical populations. Impaired overt speech (“communication with others”) leads to disruptions in PS and IS throughout the speech internalization process, but more evidence is needed to explore the fine-grained differences in the IS profiles across clinical populations.

Direct and Indirect Measurements of Is

Researchers have long investigated IS directly and indirectly using behavioral ( Emerson and Miyake, 2003 ; Miyake et al., 2004 ; Holland and Low, 2010 ; Lidstone et al., 2010 ; Fatzer and Roebers, 2012 ; also see for review Alderson-Day and Fernyhough, 2015 ) and cognitive experiments ( Morin and Michaud, 2007 ; Geva et al., 2011b ; Tian and Poeppel, 2012 ).

Behavioral experiments rely on encouraging IS in participants and explore the quality and quantity of IS across individuals. They involve verbal reporting on recent IS experiences as they spontaneously occur in daily life. These paradigms encompass classical questionnaires or experience sampling ( McCarthy-Jones and Fernyhough, 2011 ; Morin et al., 2011 ; Alderson-Day and Fernyhough, 2015 ; Hurlburt and Heavey, 2015 ). While questionnaires force participants to endorse pre-existing IS content, sampling methods require reporting specific aspects of inner experiences at random – as a reaction to an external signal, e.g., a beep. Importantly, the studies demonstrate a lot of variability in the amount and the quality of IS reported by participants ( Ren et al., 2016 ). However, this may be due to the participants’ reflection abilities rather than to individual variability in the amount of covert speech. Questionnaires and experience sampling methods involve direct reports on IS experiences, and both methods likely tap into expanded IS because they require reporting consciously memorized events.

Alternative indirect behavioral methods come from the cognitive literature and include protocol analysis and the “silent dog” paradigm ( Hayes et al., 1998 ; Alvero and Austin, 2006 ; Arntzen et al., 2009 ). Both methods involve training the participants to verbalize their thoughts when performing a non-verbal task and explore whether the resulting self-talk helps in controlling their behavior. The advantage of these paradigms is that they control for variability in the amount of reported IS experiences compared to questionnaires and experience sampling. However, the ecological validity of this approach for exploring condensed IS and for differentiating between PS and expanded IS remains unclear: the participants are aware that others observe and record their self-talk, and thus, their verbalizations are likely to be fully grammatical and intelligible utterances compared to the truncated sentences typical for IS.

Cognitive methods include dual-task paradigms ( Coltheart and Langdon, 1998 ; Emerson and Miyake, 2003 ; Miyake et al., 2004 ; Wallace et al., 2009 ; Holland and Low, 2010 ; Lidstone et al., 2010 ; Fatzer and Roebers, 2012 ), involving suppression of covert speech when the participant is performing another cognitive task (such as logical reasoning) or blocking covert speech by presenting items at a fast rate. These paradigms assume that blocking articulation impedes linguistic processing in general, including IS. Negative effects of articulatory suppression on task performance suggest that participants cannot rely on IS to optimize their cognitive processing. One limitation of this paradigm is its indirect nature: participants perform two unfamiliar cognitive tasks, which increases the cognitive load. Thus, any increase in reaction time, or decrease in accuracy, may be due to cognitive difficulty performing a dual task. This approach also cannot separate the effects of expanded vs. condensed IS on task performance.

A second cognitive method is a dual-task paradigm involving a linguistic task, such as silent rhyming, which requires subvocalization ( Levine et al., 1982 ; Feinberg et al., 1986 ; Geva et al., 2011a , b ; Langland-Hassan et al., 2015 ). Since this type of task involves focused activity, it is likely to measure predominantly expanded IS and does not tap into the spontaneous and fluid unconscious phenomenon of condensed IS. Similar to questionnaires, dual-task paradigms with linguistic tasks cannot explore the role of IS in cognitive processing directly and are particularly vulnerable to linguistic constraints especially when the child’s language development is immature or disordered.

The neural substrates governing IS can be investigated with neurophysiological measurements. The neurophysiological signatures of overt vs. covert naming have been explored in positron emission tomography (PET) studies. For example, the participants saw written words and pictures of objects in the scanner and were instructed to read the words and name the objects covertly and overtly (e.g., Bookheimer et al., 1995 ). Overt naming of objects produced very similar patterns of neural activation to covert naming of objects, except for regions associated with motor activity. Generally, studies comparing overt and covert speech have found somewhat mixed results, suggesting that overt speech cannot be conceptualized as covert speech plus motor and auditory cortex activation ( inter alia Huang et al., 2001 ; Shuster and Lemieux, 2005 ). Until now, overt and covert speech have not been compared in the same study or under the same experimental conditions, limiting the generalizability of these findings.

Recent fMRI studies investigated IS in healthy adult participants, requiring them to silently complete sentences ( Friedman et al., 1998 ; Sherrgill et al., 2001 ). Similarly, Bullmore et al. (2000) presented single words on a screen, asking the participants to covertly articulate their semantic judgment on the animacy of the stimulus, i.e., whether the word indicated a living or non-living object. Activation was found for the ventral extrastriate and prefrontal cortices governing word recognition and semantic processing, and for the prefrontal cortex and Broca’s area related to (subvocal) planning and articulation. Similarly, activation in the inferior parietal lobule, precuneus, and temporal gyrus presumably represents monitoring of Broca’s area output. This method, therefore, has the potential for disentangling the neural correlates of expanded and condensed IS (see Jones, 2009 ).

An alternative neurophysiological method for studying IS is electromyography (EMG), which can be used for measuring activation/tenseness of articulatory organs ( Sokolov, 1967 ). In a series of experiments using a dual-task paradigm with adults and children, Sokolov has demonstrated that tenseness of articulatory organs increases when performing cognitively demanding and unfamiliar tasks, supporting the idea that IS optimizes cognitive processing. More recent EMG studies confirm that IS is accompanied by activity in the orofacial musculature ( Loevenbruck et al., 2018 ). For example, Livesay et al. (1996) reported an increase in EMG activity during silent recitation compared to rest but no increase during a non-linguistic visualization task. Nalborczyk et al. (2017) reported an increase in labial EMG activity during rumination (having negative thoughts during IS) compared with relaxation. To summarize, the EMG paradigm combining behavioral and neurophysiological methods is another alternative for exploring expanded and condensed IS, using an ecologically valid experimental design.

Inner speech serves as a valuable concept that has withstood the test of time since it was first articulated by Vygotsky and his colleagues. The covert nature of IS makes it challenging to study, and particularly to disentangle typologically distinct phenomena, such as expanded and condensed IS. Behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological paradigms have made progress exploring covert speech in adults, but few of them could be used with children, including preschoolers and those from atypical populations. This suggests that we need to use a modified combination of the existing paradigms in order to study IS from developmental perspective. For example, instead of fMRI, one could use more child-friendly electroencephalography (EEG) in combination with EMG to measure neurophysiological activity during cognitive and linguistic tasks.

The area that has the most potential for future research is the study of IS in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, because in such conditions, children often experience deficits in expressive and receptive language skills in combination with self-regulation and Theory of Mind problems (both clearly associated with IS). At present, it is impossible to formulate specific hypotheses about the likely manifestations of IS deficits across clinical conditions, such as DLD, autism, and hearing loss. For example, it is unknown to what extent children with different developmental deficits rely on expanded and condensed IS during cognitive processing, and we know little about the role their specific speech and language deficits play in their IS profiles. For example, is IS level a function of individual variability or is it driven by expressive or receptive language levels or other aspects of cognition, and how sensitive are these differences to the features of specific disorders, for example, Theory of Mind deficits in autism or phonological deficits in DLD? Studying the development and functions of overt speech in these children is important from both theoretical and clinical perspectives. For example, stimulating IS development during intervention might enhance the cognitive and linguistic efficacy of the program. These findings are also important for fundamental research. The comparison of IS in typical and atypical development has the potential to inform our understanding of this uniquely human phenomenon.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This work was supported by Royal Dutch Kentalis and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant 18-312-00188).

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CATEGORIES:

There are three ways of reproducing actual speech: a) repetition of the exact utterance as it was spoken (direct s p e e c h), b) conversion of the exact utterance into the relater's mode of expression (i n-direct speech), and c) representation of the actual utterance by a second person, usually the author, as if it had been spoken, whereas it has not really been spoken but is only represented in the author's words (represented speech). There is also a device which conveys to the reader the unuttered or inner speech of the character, thus presenting his thoughts and feelings. This device is also termed represented speech. To distinguish between the two varieties of represented speech we call the representation of the actual utterance through the author's language uttered represented speech, and the representation of the thoughts and feelings of the character — unuttered or inner represented speech. The term direct speech came to be used in the belles-lettres style in order to distinguish the words of the character from the author's words. Actually, direct speech is a quotation. Therefore it is always introduced by a verb like say, utter, declare, reply, exclaim, shout, cry, yell, gasp, babble, chuckle, murmur, sigh, call, beg, implore, comfort,assure, protest, object, command, admit, and others. All these words help to indicate the intonation with which the sentence was actually uttered. Direct speech is always marked by inverted commas, as any quotation is. Here is an example: "You want your money back, I suppose," said George with a sneer. "Of course I do—I always did, didn't I? says Dobbin. (Thackeray) The most important feature of the spoken language—intonation— is indicated by different means. In the example above we have 1) graphical means: the dash after 'I do', 2) lexical: the word 'sneer', and 3) grammatical: a) morphological—different tenses of the verb to say ('said' and 'says'), b) syntactical: the disjunctive question—'didn't I?'. Direct speech is sometimes used in the publicistic style of language as a quotation. The introductory words in this case are usually the following: as... has it, according to..., and the like. In the belles-lettres style direct speech is used to depict a character through his speech. In the emotive prose of the belles-lettres style where the predominant form of utterance is narrative, direct speech is inserted to more fully depict the characters of the novel. In the other variety of the belles-lettres prose style, i.e. in plays, the predominant form of utterance is dialogue. In spite of the various graphical and lexical ways of indicating the proper intonation of a given utterance, the subtleties of the intonation design required by the situation cannot be accurately conveyed. The richness of the human voice can only be suggested. Direct speech can be viewed as a stylistic device only in its setting in the midst of the author's narrative or in contrast to all forms of indirect speech. Even when an author addresses the reader, we cannot classify the utterance as direct speech. Direct speech is only the speech of a character in a piece of emotive prose. We have indirect speech when the actual words of a character, as it were, pass through the author's mouth in the course of his narrative and in this process undergo certain changes. The intonation of indirect speech is even and does not differ from the rest of the author's narrative. The graphical substitutes for the intonation give way to lexical units which describe the intonation pattern. Sometimes indirect speech takes the form of a précis in which only the main points of the actual utterance are given. Thus, for instance, in the following passage: "Marshal asked the crowd to disperse and urged responsible diggers to prevent any disturbance which would prolong the tragic force of the rush for which the publication of inaccurate information was chiefly responsible." (Katherine Prichard) In grammars there are rules according to which direct speech can be converted into indirect. These rules are logical in character, they merely indicate what changes must be introduced into the utterance due to change in the situation. Thus the sentence: "Your mother wants you to go upstairs immediately" corresponds to "Tell him to come upstairs immediately." When direct speech is converted into indirect, the author not infrequently interprets in his own way the manner in which the direct speech was uttered, thus very often changing the emotional colouring of the whole. Hence, indirect speech may fail entirely to reproduce the actual emotional colouring of the direct speech and may distort it unrecognizably. A change of meaning is inevitable when direct speech is turned into indirect or vice versa, inasmuch as any modification of form calls forth a slight difference in meaning. It is probably due to this fact that in order to convey more adequately the actual utterances of characters in emotive prose, a new way to represent direct speech came into being—r ep resented speech. Represented speech is that form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the peculiarities of the speaker's mode of expression. Represented speech exists in two varieties: 1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered or inner represented speech. a) Uttered Represented Speech Uttered represented speech demands that the tense should be switched from present to past and that the personal pronouns should be changed from 1st and 2nd person to 3rd person as in indirect speech, but the syntactical structure of the utterance does not change. For example: "Could he bring a reference from where he now was? He could." (Dreiser) An interesting example of three ways of representing actual speech is to be seen in a conversation between Old Jolyon and June in Galsworthy's "Man of Property." "Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn't the "man of property" going to live in his new house, then? He never alluded to Soames now but under this title. 'No'—June said—'he was not; she knew that he was not!' How did she know? She could not tell him, but she knew. She knew nearly for certain. It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed!" The first sentence is the author's speech. In the second sentence 'Wasn't the "man. .."' there is uttered represented speech: the actual speech must have been 'Isn't the. ..'. This sentence is followed by one from the author: 'He never...'. Then again comes uttered represented speech marked off in inverted commas, which is not usual. The direct speech 'No—', the introductory 'June said' and the following inverted commas make the sentence half direct half uttered represented speech. The next sentence 'How did she know?' and the following one are clear-cut models of uttered represented speech: all the peculiarities of direct speech are preserved, i. e. the repetition of 'she knew', the colloquial 'nearly for certain', the absence of any connective between the last two sentences and, finally, the mark of exclamation at the end of the passage. And yet the tenses and pronouns here show that the actual utterance passes through the author's mouth. Two more examples will suffice to illustrate the use of uttered represented speech. "A maid came in now with a blue gown very thick and soft. Could she do anything for Miss Freeland? No, thanks, she could not, only, did she know where Mr. Freeland's room was?" (Galsworthy) The shift from the author's speech to the uttered represented speech of the maid is marked only by the change in the syntactical pattern of the sentences from declarative to interrogative, or from the narrative pattern to the conversational. Sometimes the shift is almost imperceptible—the author's narrative sliding over into the character's utterance without any formal indications of the switch-over, as in the following passage: "She had known him for a full year when, in London for a while and as usual alone, she received a note from him to say that he had to come up to town for a night and couldn't they dine together and go to some place to dance. She thought it very sweet of him to take pity on her solitariness and accepted with pleasure. They spent a delightful evening." (Maugham) This manner of inserting uttered represented speech within the author's narrative is not common. It is peculiar to the style of a number of modern English and American writers. The more usual structural model is one where there is either an indication of the shift by some introductory word (smiled, said, asked, etc.) or by a formal break like a full stop at the end of the sentence, as in: "In consequence he was quick to suggest a walk... Didn't Clyde want to go?" (Dreiser) Uttered represented speech has a long history. As far back as the 18th century it was already widely used by men-of-letters, evidently be- , cause it was a means by which what was considered vulgar might be excluded from literature, i.e. expletives, vivid colloquial words, expressions and syntactical structures typical of the lively colloquial speech of the period. Indeed, when direct speech is represented by the writer, he can change the actual utterance into any mode of expression he considers appropriate. In Fielding's "History of Tom Jones the Foundling" we find various ways of introducing uttered represented speech. Here are some interesting examples: "When dinner was over, and the servants departed, Mr. Alworthy began to harangue. He set forth, in a long speech, the many iniquities of which Jones had been guilty, particularly those which this day had brought to light; and concluded by telling him, 'That unless he could clear himself of the charge, he was resolved to banish him from his sight for ever."' In this passage there is practically no represented speech, inasmuch as the words marked off by inverted commas are indirect speech, i.e. the author's speech with no elements of the character's speech, and the only signs of the change in the form of the utterance are the inverted commas and capital letter of 'That'. The following paragraph is built on the same pattern. "His heart was, besides, almost broken already; and his spirits were so sunk, that he could say nothing for himself but acknowledge the whole, and, like a criminal in despair, threw himself upon mercy; concluding, 'that though he must own himself guilty of many follies and inadvertencies, he hoped he had done nothing to deserve what would be to him the greatest punishment in the world.'" Here again the introductory 'concluding' does not bring forth direct speech but is a natural continuation of the author's narrative. The only indication of the change are the inverted commas. Mr. Alworthy's answer is also built on the same pattern, the only modification being the direct speech at the end. "—Alworthy answered, "That he had forgiven him too often already, in compassion to his youth, and in hopes of his amendment: that he now found he was an abandoned reprobate, and such as it would be criminal in any one to support and encourage," 'Nay,' said Mr. Alworthy to him, 'your audacious attempt to steal away the young lady, calls upon me to justify my own character in punishing you.—'" Then follows a long speech by Mr. Alworthy not differing from indirect speech (the author's speech) either in structural design or in the choice of words. A critical analysis will show that the direct speech of the characters in the novel must have undergone considerable polishing up in order to force it to conform to the literary norms of the period. Colloquial speech, emotional, inconsistent and spontaneous, with its vivid intonation suggested by elliptical sentences, breaks in the narrative, fragmentariness and lack of connectives, was banned from literary usage and replaced by the passionless substitute of indirect speech. Almost in any work of 18th century literary art one will find that the spoken language is adapted to conform to the norms of the written language of the period. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the elements of colloquial English began to elbow their way into the sacred precincts of the English literary language. The more the process became apparent, the more the conditions that this created became favourable for the introduction of uttered represented speech as a literary device. In the modern belles-lettres prose style, the speech of the characters is modelled on natural colloquial patterns. The device of uttered represented speech enables the writer to reshape the utterance according to the normal polite literary usage. Nowadays, this device is used not only in the belles-lettres style. It is also efficiently used in newspaper style. Here is an example: "Mr. Silverman, his Parliamentary language scarcely concealing his bitter disappointment, accused the government of breaking its pledge and of violating constitutional proprieties. Was the government basing its policy not on the considered judgment of the House of Commons, but on the considered judgment of the House of Lords? Would it not be a grave breach of constitutional duty, not to give the House a reasonable opportunity of exercising its rights under the Parliament Act?" 'Wait for the terms of the Bill,' was Eden's reply." Uttered represented speech in newspaper communications is somewhat different from that in the belles-lettres style. In the former, it is generally used to quote the words of speakers in Parliament or at public meetings. b) Unuttered or Inner Represented Speech As has often been pointed out, language has two functions: the communicative and the expressive. The communicative function serves to convey one's thoughts, volitions, emotions and orders to the mind of a second person. The expressive function serves to shape one's thoughts and emotions into language forms. This second function is believed to be the only way of materializing thoughts and emotions. Without language forms thought is not yet thought but only something being shaped as thought. The thoughts and feelings going on in one's mind and reflecting some previous experience are called i n n e r spec c h. Inasmuch as inner speech has no communicative function, it is very fragmentary, incoherent, isolated, and consists of separate units which only hint at the content of the utterance but do not word it explicitly. Inner speech is a psychological phenomenon. But when it is wrought into full utterance, it ceases to be inner speech, acquires a communicative function and becomes a phenomenon of language. The expressive function of language is suppressed by its communicative function, and the reader is presented with a complete language unit capable of carrying information. This device is called inner represented speech. However, the language forms of inner represented speech bear a resemblance to the psychological phenomenon of inner speech. Inner represented speech retains the most characteristic features of inner speech. It is also fragmentary, but only to an extent which will not hinder the understanding of the communication. Inner represented speech, unlike uttered represented speech, expresses feelings and thoughts of the character which were not materialized in spoken or written language by the character. That is why it abounds in exclamatory words and phrases, elliptical constructions, breaks, and other means of conveying feelings and psychological states. When a person is alone with his thoughts and feelings, he can give vent to those strong emotions which he usually keeps hidden. Here is an example from Galsworthy's "Man of Property": "His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that—a wife and a husband being one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down, and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was hard, when a man worked hard as he did, making money for her—yes and with an ache in his heart—that she should sit there, looking—looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table." The inner speech of Soames Forsyte is here introduced by two words describing his state of mind—'irritated' and 'wondered'. The colloquial aspect of the language in which Soames's thoughts and feelings are expressed is obvious. He uses colloquial collocations: 'she had no business', 'what on earth', 'like that' and colloquial constructions: 'yes and with...', 'looking—looking as if ...', and the words used are common colloquial. Unuttered or inner represented speech follows the same morphological pattern as uttered represented speech, but the syntactical pattern shows variations which can be accounted for by the fact that it is inner speech, not uttered speech. The tense forms are shifted to the past; the third person personal pronouns replace the first and second. The interrogative word-order is maintained as in direct speech. The fragmentary character of the utterance manifests itself in unfinished sentences, exclamations and in one-member sentences. Here is another example: "An idea had occurred to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The odd—the very odd feeling those words brought back. Robin Hill—the house Bosinney had built for him and Irene— the house they had never lived in—the fatal house! And Jolyon lived there now! H'm!" (Galsworthy) This device is undoubtedly an excellent one to depict a character. It gives the writer an opportunity to show the inner springs which guide his character's actions and utterances. Being a combination of the author's speech and that of the character, inner represented speech, on the one hand, fully discloses the feelings and thoughts of the character, his world outlook, and, on the other hand, through efficient and sometimes hardly perceptible interpolations by the author himself, makes the desired impact on the reader. In English and American literature this device has gained vogue in the works of the writers of the last two centuries—Jane Austen, Thackeray, Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Jack London, Galsworthy, Dreiser, Somerset Maugham and others. Every writer has his own way of using represented speech. Careful linguistic analysis of individual peculiarities in using it will show its wide range of function and will expand the hitherto limited notions of its use. Inner represented speech, unlike uttered represented speech, is usually introduced by verbs of mental perception, as think, meditate, feel, occur (an idea occurred to...), wonder, ask, tell oneself, understand and the like. For example: "Over and over he was asking himself: would she receive him? would she recognize him? what should he say to her?" "Why weren't things going well between them? he wondered." Very frequently, however, inner represented speech thrusts itself into the narrative of the author without any introductory words and the shift from the author's speech to inner represented speech is more or less imperceptible. Sometimes the one glides into the other, sometimes there is a sudden clear-cut change in the mode of expression. Here are examples: "Butler was sorry that he had called his youngest a baggage; but these children—God bless his soul—were a great annoyance. Why, in the name of all the saints, wasn't this house good enough for them?" (Dreiser) The only indication of the transfer from the author's speech to inner represented speech is the semicolon which suggests a longish pause. The emotional tension of the inner represented speech is enhanced by the emphatic these (in 'these children'), by the exclamatory sentences 'God bless his soul' and 'in the name of all the saints'. This emotional charge gives an additional shade of meaning to the 'was sorry' in the author's statement, viz. Butler was sorry, but he was also trying to justify himself for calling his daughter names. And here is an example of a practically imperceptible shift: "Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind was always the secret ache that the son of James—of James, whom he had always thought such a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his own son—!" (Galsworthy) In this passage there are hardly any signs of the shift except, perhaps, the repetition of the words 'of James'. Then comes what is half the author's narrative, half the thoughts of the character, the inner speech coming to the surface in 'poor thing' (a colloquialism) and the sudden break after 'his own son' and the mark of exclamation. Inner represented speech remains the monopoly of the belles-lettres style, and especially of emotive prose, a variety of it. There is hardly any likelihood of this device being used in other styles, due to its specific function, which is to penetrate into the inner life of the personages of an imaginary world, which is the exclusive domain of belles-lettres.   ; view: 17808 | next page ==> | Inner Speech and ‘Pure’ Thought – Do we Think in Language? Open access Published: 31 January 2023 Volume 15 , pages 645–662, ( 2024 ) Cite this article You have full access to this open access article Nikola A. Kompa   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5581-7371 1   7793 Accesses 7 Citations 10 Altmetric Explore all metrics While the idea that thinking is a form of silent self-talk goes back at least to Plato, it is not immediately clear how to state this thesis precisely. The aim of the paper is to spell out the notion that we think in language by recourse to recent work on inner speech. To that end, inner speech and overt speech are briefly compared. I then propose that inner speaking be defined as a mental episode that substantially engages the speech production system; the underlying model of speech production is sketched. Next, the cognitive role of inner speaking is explored, especially its role in thinking and reasoning. The question of whether it is a way of making thoughts accessible (to whomever) or whether it is a means of thinking itself is raised. I argue that there are two reasons for assuming that, occasionally, we think in language. More specifically, I will claim that some instances of thinking are instances of inner speaking as they exploit certain properties of natural language, and that some instances of inner speaking are instances of thinking as they play a decisive role in paradigmatic cases of thinking that result from internalizing and re-using certain social-linguistic practices. Finally, the Language-of-Thought hypothesis as an alternative account is critically discussed. Similar content being viewed by others Speaking for Thinking: “Thinking for Speaking” Reconsidered Thinking, Inner Speech, and Self-Awareness From speech to voice: on the content of inner speech Explore related subjects. Artificial Intelligence Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript. 1 Do we Think in Language? Ever since Plato let the stranger in the dialogue Sophistes [263e] explain that thinking is a conversation of the soul with itself, speaking and thinking have been thought to be intimately intertwined (cf. Plato & Fowler 1921 ). One point of contention, however, was whether we think in a natural language, as Plato, for example, seemed to have assumed (Gacea 2019 ), or in a mental language that is not made up of natural language, as St. Augustin claimed (Meier-Oeser 2011 ). In modernity, St. Augustin’s assumption that we think in a lingua mentis was in turn challenged and the idea that thought occurs in a natural language was variously reconsidered; thinking in (natural) words was claimed to obviate the need to keep the associated ideas active in mind all the time. Footnote 1 In the 1970s, the idea of a mental language was also revived (Fodor 1975 ), but came under attack with the advent of non-symbolic, embodied (Shapiro 2011 , 2014 ; Chemero 2011 ) and non-representationalist models of mind and cognition (cf., e.g., van Gelder 1995 ; Clark 2015 ; cf. the contributions in Smortchkova et al. 2020 , for a critical discussion). More recently, renewed interest in inner speech as an internalized natural language can be observed. The debate owes much to Vygotsky’s exposition of the topic (cf., e.g., Vgyotsky 1978 , 1986 , 1987 , 1999 ). Another point of contention, however, concerns the function inner speech is thought to serve. Is inner speech—just as, arguably, language in general—predominately a means of making thoughts accessible (to whomever); is it merely a means to a communicative end? Or is inner speech a means (of thinking) in itself, perhaps even a means of enhancing our reasoning abilities? In what follows, I will argue for the latter. To that end, I will introduce the phenomenon of inner speech by briefly comparing it to overt speech in terms of form and use, a comparison that is suggested by the (Neo-)Vygotskian approach adopted here. I will propose that inner speech be defined, not as is commonly done, by recourse to phenomenology but more ‘mechanistically’ and discuss ways in which it might provide us with cognitive benefits, some of which might even go beyond those provided by overt speech. I will then turn to the question of whether inner speaking is mainly a way of making thoughts somehow accessible, or whether it may be more crucially implicated in thinking. I will argue for the latter. And while others have done so before me (cf. for more recent suggestions, e.g., Deamer 2021 ; Gauker 2018 ; Roessler 2016 ; Vicente and Jorba 2019 ; Wilkinson 2020 ), I will advance a somewhat novel route to this conclusion. First, and drawing on the Vygotskian idea of inner speech being internalized overt speech, I will argue that inner speaking is, occasionally at least, thinking. Second, the ‘mechanistic’ definition will allow me to, conversely, argue that thinking is, occasionally, inner speaking. I will close by summarizing the main points. 2 Inner Speech and Overt Speech Inner speech is a familiar phenomenon, even if people differ in how much inner speech they report (Hurlburt et al. 2013 , p. 1483). Many of us experience episodes of inner speech whilst thinking about a theoretical problem, rehearsing the shopping list, preparing a talk or recalling the row we had with our partner last night. Moreover, the mental life of many a fictional character is revealed to us as we are made privy to the character’s inner monologues and dialogues. However, the study of inner speech raises a host of methodological questions (cf. Alderson-Day and Fernyhough 2015 for a discussion). It also raises pressing conceptual questions. What exactly is inner speech? What other phenomena ought it to be distinguished from? One way of approaching these questions is by comparing inner speech to overt speech and examining the manner in which it is similar to and the extent to which it differs from overt speech. It seems to be similar to overt, social speech in that it comes in similar forms and is amenable to similar distinctions. There is—phenomenologically speaking—inner monologue and inner dialogue; maybe inner polyphony as well. There is inner speaking and signing, which is accompanied by a sense of agency, and inner hearing or auditory imagery (Gauker 2018 ), where one experiences oneself as being passive. There is inner reading or rehearsing, and inner writing; there are even co- thought gestures (Chu and Kita 2016 ). And inner speech can be experienced as being more or less goal-directed. More fully, it seems to be in the service of deliberation, clarification, planning, or problem-solving; self-motivation (“You can do this”), self-regulation (“Don’t do this”), self-evaluation (“Good job”), and maybe even self-entertainment; keeping something in mind, rehearsing something; gauging the potential effects of an utterances on an imagined audience; divergent, creative thinking (as in daydreaming or mind-wandering); and it, presumably, fulfils other functions as well; many, if not all, of which can also be fulfilled by overt or private speech (—the latter being a form of audible self-talk; cf. Diaz and Berg 2016 ; Winsler et al. 2009 ). From this angle, inner speech looks very much like a silent version of outer speech (Martinez-Manrique and Vicente 2010 ). Thus, one might wonder whether all these functions are equally served by inner and overt speech. If that were so, one could venture to guess that if we engage in silent self-talk, we do so merely for reasons of social etiquette, as audible self-talk is commonly frowned upon (cf. Hatzigeorgiadis et al. 2011 for a discussion of overt and covert self-talk in sports performance). If, on the other hand, some cognitive functions were better served by inner speech than by overt speech, this additional benefit had to accrue from differences between inner and overt speech or from the manner in which inner speech transforms our cognitive infrastructure in ontogeny (or maybe did so in phylogeny). And indeed, inner speech differs from overt speech—most notably in the extent to which it exhibits sensory qualities such as a particular tone, prosody or accent, or is accompanied by motor sensations such as a slight contraction of the muscles of lip or tongue (or of the hands in inner sign). Also, it may involve imagistic elements (Wiley 2016 ) or even be multimodal (Perrone-Bertollotti et al. 2014 ). According to the Vygotskian approach adopted here (Vygotsky 1986 ), language, while being acquired in social interaction, becomes internalized in the course of development, first morphing into private speech, which is still audible but no longer other-directed, and finally turning into (inaudible) inner speech. Importantly, we internalize all kinds of social (or social-linguistic) practices, repurposing them as “means of individual psychological organization” (Vygotsky and Luria 1994 , p. 138). Moreover, according to Vygotsky, speech is transformed in the process of internalization, becoming truncated or “incomplete” (Vygotsky 1986 , p. 235). It is thus a well-rehearsed point in the literature by now that inner speech can be more or less condensed or expanded (Fernyhough 2004 ). Footnote 2 Often, inner speech is experienced as being in a more telegraphic style and lacking phonological or articulatory detail. Footnote 3 As Vygotsky put it: “in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings. It is a dynamic, shifting unstable thing, fluttering between word and thought […]” (Vgyotsky 1986 , p. 249). 3 Towards a Definition How to best define inner speech, then? Broader and narrower definitions seem possible. Some authors highlight phenomenological experience and claim that “[i]nner speech can be defined as the subjective experience of language in the absence of overt and audible articulation” (Alderson-Day and Fernyhough 2015 , p. 931). And while this definition is tailor-made to capture consciously experienced episodes of inner speech, one might also define inner speaking more ‘mechanistically’ (cf. Kompa and Mueller 2020 ), less phenomenologically. Focusing on inner speaking (i.e., inner speech acts)—as opposed to inner reading, writing, or listening—I propose that inner speaking be defined as an inner episode that substantially engages the speech production system. What does it take to substantially engage the speech production system, then? According to the influential model of speech production developed by Levelt and colleagues, speech production involves four levels of processing: “the activation of lexical concepts, the selection of lemmas, the morphological and phonological encoding of a word in its prosodic context, and, finally, the word’s phonetic encoding” (Levelt et al. 1999 , p. 2). More precisely, the speaker has to first select a lexical concept in light of their communicative intent or goal (Levelt 1989 ). As a particular object or event can be referred to differently, this involves perspective taking, i.e. selecting the lexical concept that will best serve the communicative goal in light of the doxastic state of the audience (Levelt et al. 1999 ). In a next step, the stage of lexical selection, a lexical item, called ‘Lemma’, that specifies the syntactic properties of the word (whether it is a noun or a verb, its grammatical gender, etc.) has to be retrieved. The third step, form encoding, requires that a morpho-phonological code be retrieved, followed by the stage of phonetic encoding, and resulting in an articulatory score whose execution will then yield overt speech (cf. Figure 1 in Indefrey and Levelt 2004 ; p. 104; cf. also Levelt et al. 1999 ). If we omit the last step(s), this seems to be a pretty good (even if still rough) model of inner speech production– except for one thing that I will come back to in Sect.  5 . More specifically, then, the suggestion is that we (tentatively) define inner speaking as a mental episode that engages the speech production system at least up to the level of lemma representations . This would nicely accommodate, along the lines suggested by Vicente and Martínez-Manrique ( 2016 ), what Hurlburt and colleagues label ‘unsymbolized thinking’ (Hurlburt and Akther 2008 ). As Vicente and Martínez-Manrique point out, unsymbolized thought may be taken to be the syntactically structured, “semantic content of an interrupted inner speech act” (Vicente and Martinez-Manrique 2016 , p. 11; cf. also Vicente and Jorba 2019 ). Whether phonological or articulatory representations are also activated during inner speech episodes is a matter of some controversy (Oppenheim and Dell 2010 ; Loevenbruck et al. 2018 ; Grandchamp et al. 2019 ; cf. Alderson-Day and Fernyhough 2015 for a discussion). Also, the exact mechanism underlying inner speech production is subject of debate. According to Carruthers, for example, inner speech “is just a sensory forward model in auditory code produced by activated (but not executed) speech actions” (Carruthers 2018 , p. 35). We formulate a motor plan for an utterance, thereby generating a forward model that predicts the sensory consequences of the planned utterance (what it would sound like). If the executing of the motor plan is aborted, we consciously experience the forward model as inner speech. But then, why make a prediction of what the utterance would sound like if one never even plans on uttering it out load in the first place (cf. Gauker 2018 )? Also, what is the prediction compared to in inner speech? There is no actual outcome that can be compared to either the predicted outcome or to the desired outcome (cf. Perrone-Bertolotti et al. 2014 , Lœvenbruck et al. 2018 ; Swiney 2018 ). The only possible comparison is between prediction and original communicative intention. But that presupposes that there always is a communicative intention determinate enough to make comparison possible. Yet what language would it be formulated in? If it were (innerly) formulated in a natural language, this would land us in a regress. Assuming that it would be in a Language of Thought (LoT, for short) is also not without its problems (more on this in Sect.  6 ). It seems therefore worthwhile to look for (or rather develop) an alternative account of how (and why) inner speech is produced and what accounts for the experience of inner speech. (This is a topic for another paper, however). Pending a fuller account of inner speech production, and in order not to prejudge the issue and exclude interesting cases of inner speech, I suggest that we stick with the lean definition put forward above. However, one might happily admit that in many cases of inner speech, phonological or articulatory representations may in fact be activated; yet there is (as far as I can see) no good reason to make this a definitional feature. Thus only the first two stages would be mandatory—no language without semantics and syntactics—while the next two stages would be engaged in a task-specific and context-sensitive manner, and only if need be. Such a lean definition might be useful if our aim is to explain the full cognitive potency of inner speech, as it makes room for less costly forms of inner speech (given that phonological and articulatory encoding makes demands on the cognitive system) and also for unconscious forms of inner speech. Yet there is a general worry one might have concerning this definition of inner speech. Machery ( 2005 ) argues that introspective evidence of inner speech is no evidence that thought is linguistic as the latter is a claim about the vehicles of thought, to which we have no introspective access. In a similar vein, one might object to my definition of inner speech that it has not been shown that what is experienced as inner speech always engages the speech system. By way of reply, one might point out that evidence is accumulating that inner speech recruits similar albeit not exactly the same regions as overt speech (Perrone-Pertollotti et al. 2014 ; Loevenbruck et al. 2018 ; Grandchamp et al. 2019 ; Geva et al. 2011 ; Geva 2018 ). Footnote 4 The motor cortex seems to be less active, for example (Jones 2009 ; Perrone-Bertolotti et al. 2014 ). And since we also have to distinguish not only between inner speaking and inner listening, rehearsing, writing or reading, but also between spontaneous and task-elicited inner speech (Geva and Fernyhough 2019 ; Hurlburt et al. 2016 ;) as well as between wilful and involuntary inner speech (Perrone-Bertollotti et al. 2014 ; Loevenbruck et al. 2018 ), one would expect that somewhat different areas of the brain are recruited in each case. Still, there is ample evidence by now that during episodes of inner speech, relevant parts of the language system are activated. Whenever this has been experimentally investigated, inner speech has been shown to engage similar areas of the brain as does overt speech production. And no one so far has observed a case of subjectively experienced inner speech without engagement of (some relevant parts of) the language system. Footnote 5 4 The Cognitive Benefits of Inner Speech A certain cognitive potency of inner speech—one that goes (partly, at least) beyond that of overt speech—is commonly acknowledged. Vygotsky’s ( 1986 ) idea that in the course of development speech becomes internalized, thereby turning into a cognitive or psychological tool, has intrigued psychologists and philosophers alike. Among the possible candidates for how inner speech may prove cognitively beneficial are the following (—the list is by no means exhaustive). Inner speech is said to help us. plan ahead and solve problems (Vygotsky 1986 ; Lidstone et al. 2010 ). manage our knowledge effectively (Gauker 2011 ). make thoughts conscious (Carruthers 1998 , 2011 , 2018 ). engage in reflexive/higher-order thinking (Bermudez 2018 ). gauge the social effects of our utterances (Carruthers 2018 ). train perspective-switching (Fernyhough 2009 , 2016 ). broadcast information throughout the cognitive system (Carruthers 2002 , 2012 ). reduce cognitive load (Kompa and Müller 2020 ). gain self-knowledge and aid self-reflection (Morin 2005 ). augment cognitive control (Gade and Paelecke 2019 ; Miyake et al. 2004 ; Granato et al. 2020 ). enhance working memory (via the phonological loop) (Baddeley 1986 ). It is worth noting that some of these suggestions allow for unconscious inner speech, while others explicitly tie inner speech to consciousness. Some require phonologically specified inner speech, while others do not. Still others seem to require that the inner speech utterance in question not be phonologically specified, for example, if it serves to reduce cognitive load or to broadcast information throughout the cognitive system. Footnote 6 Moreover, some seem to accord inner speech a cognitive role that goes beyond that of overt speech. This would be most pronounced in cases in which inner speech is not simply used due to social etiquette (i.e., because self-directed out-loud speech is commonly frowned upon), but rather turns into an integral part of our cognitive infrastructure and becomes (part of) a cognitive mechanism in its own right. It seems to be implicated in the phonological loop, for example, as a component of working memory (Buchsbaum and D’Esposito 2019 ). And some argue that it is a mechanism for integrating and broadcasting information in the cognitive system (e.g., Carruthers 2002 ; cf. also Godfrey-Smith 2016 ). Also, it has been said to be implicated in cognitive control mechanisms (Granato, Borghi and Baldassare 2020 ; Miyake et al. 2004 ), and to play a role in the processing of abstract concepts (Fini et al. 2022 ). More generally, if we allow for unconscious inner speech (and some methods used to examine inner speech such as dual tasks studies seem to rely on such a notion; cf., e.g., Sokolov 1972 ; Emerson and Miyake 2003 ; Miyake et al. 2004 ; Fini et al. 2022 ), one might argue that inner speech thereby assumes a cognitive function of its own. However, one of the most foundational questions bearing on the issue of how and to what extent inner speech serves cognitive needs is, arguably, the question of how it relates to thought; i.e., whether it enhances our cognitive abilities by crucially figuring in thought processes or not. 5 Inner Speech and Thought Very roughly, one might distinguish two positions here. Inner speaking is exclusively a way of making thoughts accessible (to whomever). There is a prior occurrent thought that is entertained independently of any inner speech act and that may then be expressed in inner speech. Footnote 7 Inner speaking and thinking are more intimately intertwined. Inner speaking is, occasionally, a form of thinking; no independent, prior act of propositional thought is required. Footnote 8 And, conversely, some paradigmatic cases of thinking are cases of inner speaking. Account A claims a primacy of thought over language. It rests on the idea that thinking is different from speaking and, initially or in its purest form, (natural) language-independent. ‘Pure’ thought is completely untainted by (natural) language. Thinking is one thing, inner speaking is something else; it is a means to an end as it gives linguistic form to our language-independent thoughts. Before we engage in inner speech acts, there is a prior propositional thought act whose content might, eventually, be expressed by means of an inner speech utterance. Account A may be construed as a version of the so-called ‘communicative conception of language’ (Carruthers 1998 ) when applied to inner speech. According to an old idea that features prominently in the work of John Locke, language in general is an expedient adopted for the purpose of making our thoughts accessible to our conspecifics, or, in other words, making them communicable (Locke 1979 ,  Essay III.II.1). Analogously, inner speech may be a means of making thoughts accessible to oneself. Also, the current literature mostly takes inner speaking to occur in a natural (albeit possibly condensed or fragmented) language. Given this, those in favor of a language of thought (LoT) might be inclined to subscribe to A. Moreover (as discussed before), one might think it necessary to assume a prior, language-independent thought in order to explain speech production. Levelt, for example, seems to commit himself to an initial, propositional communicative intention (preverbal message) that is “cast in the propositional language of thought” (Levelt 1989 , p. 73). This “preverbal message is a semantic representation that refers to some state of affairs” (ibid.). Postulating an antecedent thought couched in an LoT may seem like an elegant option. However, it raises other difficult questions; we will come back to this in Sect.  6 . And note that postulating a prior thought in an LoT does not help with the problem of how (inner or outer) speech is generated as long as there is no account of how utterances in an LoT are generated. Let me thus put forth an argument in favor of account B. I will argue, in what follows, that there are two (connected) reasons for assuming that (occasionally at least) we think in language. We think in language to the extent that we re-use internalized social-linguistic practices. And we think in language to the extent that we thereby exploit the syntactic and semantic features of natural language. More specifically, I will first argue—or at least lend some plausibility to the claim—that some instances of inner speaking are instances of thinking. Footnote 9 Yet the problem is (as just discussed), that in order to do so, one would have to provide an account of how an inner speech utterance is generated without requiring a prior language-independent thought (doing the ‘real’ cognitive work). What is needed is an account of how inner speech production is initiated. As of yet, no such account exists. The question of which thought processes lead up to the production of speech is surprisingly under-researched (cf. Garagnani and Pulvermüller 2013 ). One might nonetheless take some, admittedly exploratory, steps in this direction. Given that inner speech utterances somehow have to be generated, there must be antecedent thought processes. In defending a version of B, one clearly ought to allow for antecedent imagistic (Gauker 2011 , 2018 ) or affective processes. There may also be prior conceptual and representational states. Following Crane ( 2009 ), one might distinguish between a mental state bearing representational content, propositional content, or conceptual content. Whether we also allow for prior propositional states will depend on whether we think that there can be non-linguistic propositional states (e.g., imagistic propositional states) – something I will not go into here. One might also take hints from discussions on animal cognition. Bermudez ( 2003 ), e.g., suggests that non-linguistic creatures may engage in imagistic reasoning, empathetic reasoning, trial and error reasoning, analogical reasoning and reasoning involved in exercising complex bodily skills. In humans, too, processes such as these might precede (and also accompany) the production of linguistically formulated contents. Also, inner speech production may be rather spontaneous or haphazard (Dennett 1991 ), or a reaction to an external or internal (such as a prior inner speech utterance) stimulus, as we are all in the habit of linguistically reacting to our environment. Yet which cases of inner speech may be cases of thinking, then? Those that play a decisive role in processes that we deem paradigmatic processes of thinking, and which are thus not merely acts of inner speech (e.g., cases of auditory imagery) but inner speech acts (Roessler 2016 ; Wilkinson 2020 ). Interestingly, we often seem to engage in inner speaking during deliberation, problem-solving or similar cognitively demanding tasks. And inner speech is not a mere by-product or a convenient expedient in these cases. Rather, it seems that the yielding of antecedent thought processes to linguistic formulation itself enables us to engage in certain forms of complex deliberative reasoning. Frankish ( 2018 ) considers the example of wondering whether or not to go to a party to which he has been invited. He silently asks himself a question (“Do I want to go to the party?”), hears his own utterance and then his language comprehension system comes up with an interpretation that is broadcast to parts of his cognitive system. Further (partly autonomous) processes predict that Henry will be at the party. He silently utters these words, which give rise to another question (“Do I want to meet Henry?”). Further (again, partly autonomous) reasoning reveals that Henry will probably want to talk about the budget cuts, which results in the decision (which may be a sort of self-commitment) that he’d rather avoid meeting Henry and will thus not go to the party (Frankish 2018 , p. 234). As soon as antecedent cognitive contents are linguistically formulated in inner speaking, they acquire a level of semantic determinacy and differentiation, of explicitness and syntactic structure (that admits of productivity), that allows them to serve as premises in theoretical and practical deliberation, be denied and affirmed, stand in all kinds of inferential relations, and become communicable and interpretable by ourselves and others. Moreover, many paradigmatic cases of thinking such as deliberation or problem-solving strikingly resemble social-linguistic practices of argumentation, question-answer-protocols, dialogue, or joint goal-directed action more generally. On the Vygotskian account adopted here, we learn to engage in deliberative activities like these when acquiring language and by being immersed in various social(-linguistic) practices (Vygostky 1978 , p. 57). But once language is internalized, we can engage in these practices by inner speaking, resulting in paradigmatic cases of thinking, or so I would like to suggest. Second , I would like to argue that some instances of thinking are instances of inner speaking, namely all those that exploit the syntactic and semantic features of natural language. I will thereby draw on the definition of inner speaking suggested before in order to argue as follows: Thinking, i.e. entertaining a thought, either engages at least the first two levels of the speech production system, namely selection of a lexical concept and corresponding lemma, or it does not. If it does, it is a form of inner speaking (given the definition proposed before). If it does not, the thought entertained has no semantic or syntactic features, i.e., it is neither syntactically structured not semantically meaningful (does not invoke lexical concepts), as the speech system is where these features are being processed. Therefore: Entertaining a thought is either an instance of inner speaking or the thought entertained does not exhibit syntactic structure or invoke lexical concepts. Note that I am not claiming that all structured thought is linguistic in nature. There might be structured thought that does not result from imposing syntactic structure on lexical items. Rules, for example, provide structure; structured thought thus only requires the application of a rule to more basic items, whatever these may be (as in a conditional—a common notion or ‘rule’ in neuropsychology; cf. Bunge and Wallis 2008 ). The distinction between (otherwise) structured thought and linguistically structured thought is important to keep in mind, especially if we assume an evolutionary perspective and aim to explain how complex thought might have evolved. One way to block the conclusion is by rejecting the definition employed in premise 2. One might argue instead that inner speech has to be phonologically specified (as does, for example, Langland-Hassan 2018 ; cf. Bermudez 2018 for a critique). Another way to block the conclusion is by rejecting premise 3, to which the following section now turns. 6 The Language-of-Thought (LoT) Hypothesis One might object to the first claim (that some instances of inner speaking are instances of thinking), instead arguing that thinking and inner speaking are two separate and distinct cognitive acts. And while inner speaking is performed in a natural language, thinking is performed in an LoT. By way of reply, one might point to the fact that we are trained in these social-linguistic practices (argumentation, dialogue, question-answer-protocols, etc.) by using natural language. Why change the language, then, when turning inwards? What would be the point of training these practices by using natural language and then re-purposing them in inner deliberation and problem-solving by switching to an LoT? That does not look like computationally very efficient strategy; wouldn’t we thereby incur unnecessary cognitive costs? Also, it raises the tricky question of how an utterance in an LoT is translated into an inner speech utterance and vice versa, and whether this can be done without loss. So unless there are other good reasons for postulating an LoT (see below), one might think that we are better off without it (in terms of cognitive economy). With regard to the second claim (that some instances of thinking are instances of inner speaking), and in particular with regard to premise 3 in the argument, one might claim (once more) that there is an LoT that has syntax and semantics but does not engage the speech production system. Fodor ( 1975 ) famously argued that we need to postulate an LoT in order to explain, among other things, how children can acquire a natural language, and also in order to account for (certain forms of) animal cognition. My aim in this paper is not to refute the LoT-hypotheses (as abler minds have tried before me) but to put forward an alternative account that tries to do without. However, it is worth noting that Fodor argued mostly abductively and that today, there are sensible alternative explanations that seem more compatible with the available empirical evidence. For example, insight into the extent to which children are statistical learners (cf., e.g., Rebuschat and Williams 2012 ; Romberg and Saffran 2010 ) and the advent of usage-based approaches to language acquisition (Tomasello 2003 ) go some way towards providing viable alternative explanations of how children manage to acquire language. Also, the notion that the cognitive accomplishments of various animals are best explained on the assumption that they avail themselves of an LoT (and that we share with them this rather basic element of cognitive infrastructure) has fallen somewhat out of fashion. Rather, comparative research examines whether (or to what extent) animals can learn to use symbols (Pika 2015 ); engage in rule-governed (Pika et al. 2018 ) or intentional (Townsend et al. 2017 ) communicative behavior; whether there is a rudimentary form of morpho-syntax (as is argued, e.g., by Collier et al. 2014 or Engesser et al. 2016 ; cf. Suzuki et al. 2021 for a review) in animal communications systems; to what extent animals can reason (cf. Wynne and Udell 2020 or Kaufmann et al. 2021 for an overview) and, at the more general level, how linguistic and other cognitive functions might have coevolved in the first place. To the best of my knowledge, no plausible story of how the LoT could possibly have evolved in non-human animals has been told thus far. Still, a defender of the LoT hypothesis might point to empirical evidence suggesting a dissociation between linguistic and other cognitive abilities. As studies with people with aphasia, e.g., make clear, some show severe deficits in various cognitive domains, while others display only little cognitive impairment. Varley and Siegal ( 2000 ), for example, discuss the case of an agrammatical aphasic, S.A., with severe difficulties in sentence and verb comprehension; performance was above chance only on tasks requiring the comprehension of spoken and written nouns. Footnote 10 Yet S.A. nonetheless performed well in several cognitive tasks requiring causal reasoning, and also in false-belief-tasks (—however, other studies suggest a strong correlation between language impairment due to aphasia and performance in reasoning tasks, cf. Baldo et al. 2015 ). How is this to be explained on the proposed account? First, note that all I am claiming is that some instances of thinking are instances of inner speaking, not that all thinking is inner speaking. Second, in light of cases such as these, one could either go for a low-level explanation and argue that these tasks, contrary to appearance, do not require linguistically structured thought but rather, for example, conditional or associative reasoning. Given that various animals seem to engage in forms of causal reasoning (yet without clear evidence for human-like capacities; cf. Schloegel and Fischer 2017 ), and that pre-verbal infants have been shown to master non-verbal versions of the false-belief task (Buttelmann et al. 2009 ; Onishi and Baillargeon 2005 ), we clearly need to acknowledge that these cognitive accomplishments do not presuppose natural language mastery. Of course, one could postulate an LoT in animals and pre-verbal infants to explain these cognitive achievements. However, unless a plausible tale can be told of how an LoT might have evolved, and pending neuropsychological evidence of neural correlates of an LoT, this should be our last resort. Alternatively, one could claim that in cases such as Varley’s aphasic, inner speech is preserved to the extent required for mastering the respective tasks, while overt speech production and comprehension is disabled due to problems with phonological or articulatory encoding (primarily of verbs). In fact, there are various studies with aphasics who have impaired overt speech yet preserved inner speech, i.e. they “can say words in their head that they cannot say out loud” (Fama et al. 2019 , p. 106; cf. also Fama et al. 2017 ; Stark, Geva and Warburton 2018 ). This dissociation is especially prominent—as is to be expected on the model suggested—when the problem concerns mostly speech output (Fama and Turkeltaup 2020 ). Let me sum up. The claim that we think in language is as old a claim as it is hard to spell out in exact terms. I tried to spell it out by drawing on recent work on inner speech. To that end, I proposed that inner speaking be defined as a mental episode that substantially engaged the speech production system (at least up to the level of lemma representation). And while many agree that inner speech is somehow cognitively beneficial, the extent to which (and the manner in which) it is implicated in thinking is still a matter of some controversy. I argued, first, that inner speaking is, occasionally, a form of thinking in that it prominently figures in thought processes that result from re-using social-linguistic practices of argumentation, dialogic interaction, problem-solving, etc. in inner deliberation and reasoning. No antecedent, natural language-independent, thought is required to kick-start the inner speech utterance. As Vygotsky aptly put it: “Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them” (Vygotsky 1986 , p. 218). I also argued, second, that thinking is, occasionally, inner speaking, namely when it exploits linguistic features of a natural language and thereby engages the speech production system. I closed by discussing the hypothesis of an LoT and whether it serves to provide a better account of various cognitive accomplishments than the notion of an inner (or internalized) natural language. It underlies, e.g., Leibniz’ notion of cognitio symbolica. Note that the more condensed inner speech is, the more effort it takes to transform it into overt speech. Vygotsky claimed that it ”is evident that the transition from inner speech to external speech is not a simple transition from one language into another. It cannot be achieved by merely vocalizing silent speech“ ( 1986 , p. 248). Even the rate of expanded inner speech seems to be faster than that of overt speech (cf. Korba 1990 ). There is some controversy over whether conceptual information is encoded in amodal or modality-specific representations, and thus whether areas in the brain such as the default mode network or rather sensory-motor areas are recruited in conceptual processing (cf. Barsalou 1999 ; and Mahon and Hickok 2016 , or Meteyard et al. 2012 , for reviews). Yet given that the speech production process requires conceptualization, whatever area is devoted to conceptual processing will have to be part of the speech production system. One might think that the account sketched here relies too heavily on Levelt’s model of speech production, and that no argument has been provided in favor of this particular model. What about other models? Pickering and Garrod ( 2013 ), for example, develop a model that integrates speech production and speech comprehension. Yet note that it also draws on Levelt’s model. Others develop cascading or spreading activation models of speech production (e.g. Dell et al. 1997 ). But they differ from Levelt’s model mainly in that they allow information to flow forward and backward in the system. Thus, the basic components of the model developed by Levelt and colleagues (e.g., Levelt 1989 ; Levelt et al. 1999 ; Indefrey and Levelt 2004 ) are widely accepted. Yet note that I am not endorsing Levelt’s model as it stands. He is committing himself to an LoT in which a preverbal message is generated, which is then subjected to linguistic encoding. However, I think that we need a different account of how speech production gets initiated (more on this in Sects.  5 and 6 ). Carruthers claims that inner speech may be a means of broadcasting information throughout the cognitive system (Carruthers 2012 ). But what reasons are there for thinking that phonological or articulatory representations are particularly suited to the job? While he assumes that only sensory representations can be consciously accessed, it is not obvious why sensory representations in particular should help to distribute information throughout the cognitive system or to integrate information from different domains (this is even less plausible on a modular model of the mind). More abstract representations may be better at this job. This is similar to what Martinez-Manrique and Vicente ( 2015 ) call the “format view”. This notion that inner speaking is involved in the activity of thinking is compatible with there being prior contents (reasons or beliefs) that one is disposed to act on; I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this journal to point this out to me. I am not claiming that language is constitutively involved in conscious thinking, as does Carruthers ( 1998 , 2002 ). He has it that “an imaged sentence will occupy the causal role of a thought if it has the distinctive causes and effects of that thought, but without these being mediated by events which themselves carry the same (or a sufficiently similar) content. So the sentence ‘The world is getting warmer’ will count as constitutive of my conscious thought if it (together with my other beliefs and desires) causes my intention to walk to work […]” (Carruthers 1998 , p. 461). Here Carruthers conceives of inner speech in terms of imagined sentences. 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Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Wilkinson, S. 2020. The Agentive Role of Inner Speech in Self-Knowledge. Teorema: Revista Internacional de Filosofia 39 (2): 7–26. Winsler, A., C. Fernyhough, and I. Montero, eds. 2009. Private Speech, Executive Functioning, and the development of Verbal Self-Regulation . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wynne, C. D. L., and M. A. R. Udell 3 2020. Animal Cognition: Evolution, Behavior and Cognition . London: Red Globe Press. Download references Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of the RTG ‘Situated Cognition’ (Osnabrück/Bochum) for helpful discussions, especially Francesco Fanti Rovetta and Benjamin Angerer, as well as audiences at the universities of Bielefeld, Düsseldorf, Münster, and Osnabrück for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. I am very grateful to the participants of the Workshop “INSL - Current Approaches to Inner Speech and Inner Language” (University of Vienna, July 2021) for their comments and debate, especially Christopher Gauker, Sharon Geva, Hélène Loevenbruck, and Benjamin Alderson-Day. I am particularly grateful to Jutta Mueller for organizing the workshop, inviting me, and for inspiring discussions on the topic. Finally, I would like to thank Charles Lowe for proofreading the manuscript and two anonymous referees for their very helpful feedback. Gefördert durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer GRK-2185/2 (DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Situated Cognition) [Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) - project number GRK-2185/2 (DFG Research Training Group Situated Cognition)]. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Author information Authors and affiliations. Institute of Philosophy, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany Nikola A. Kompa You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Nikola A. Kompa . Ethics declarations Conflict of interest. The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Additional information Publisher’s note. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. 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beginning of the twentieth century. One of the most important finding is that inner and overt speech differ in many respects, not only in the absence/presence of articulatory movements. In addition, studies implicate the involvement of various brain regions in the production and processing of inner speech, including areas involved in phonology and semantics, as well as auditory and motor processing. By looking at parallels between inner speech and other domains of imagery, studies explore two major questions: Are there common types of representations that underlie all types of mental imagery? And, is there a neural substrate for imagery, above and beyond modality? While these questions cannot yet be fully answered, studies of the neuroscience of imagery are bringing us a step towards better understanding of inner speech. 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Month: Total Views: October 2022 14 November 2022 3 December 2022 18 January 2023 12 February 2023 11 March 2023 15 May 2023 9 June 2023 7 July 2023 5 August 2023 8 September 2023 8 October 2023 14 November 2023 27 December 2023 16 January 2024 15 February 2024 15 March 2024 14 April 2024 13 May 2024 10 June 2024 2 July 2024 4 August 2024 6 About Oxford Academic Publish journals with us University press partners What we publish New features   Open access Rights and permissions Accessibility Advertising Media enquiries Oxford University Press Oxford Languages University of Oxford Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press Cookie settings Cookie policy Privacy policy Legal notice This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only Sign In or Create an Account This PDF is available to Subscribers Only For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. Request new password the living handbook of narratology Primary tabs. View (active tab) Speech Representation Verbal narrative, it has long been assumed, is especially qualified to represent speech events because in this case, unlike any other, the object and the medium of representation are identical―language. The speech of characters can be represented directly, through quotation: “She said, ‘No, no, I can’t just now, but tomorrow I will.’” Or it can be paraphrased by a narrator and represented indirectly: “She said that she couldn’t just then, but that the next day she would.” There is also the option to narrate speech acts in an intermediate mode, called free indirect discourse: “No, no, she couldn’t just now, but tomorrow she would.” Consciousness, at least that part of it that resembles unspoken interior speech, can be represented using the same three forms: directly, as quoted interior monologue; indirectly, as thought report, also called psycho-narration (cf. Cohn 1978 ); or using free indirect discourse. It has been clear for some time, however, that the three discrete forms fall far short of exhausting the range of speech representation in narrative, much less the representation of consciousness, so that analysts have become increasingly willing to consider more diffuse and generalized effects of voice (e.g., Baxtin [1934/35] 1981 ) and fictional mind (e.g. Palmer 2004 ). Explication Speech representation in verbal narrative can be conceived in terms of a relationship between two utterances, a framing utterance and an inset (framed) utterance (Sternberg 1982 ), or alternatively in terms of interference or interaction between two texts, the narrator’s text and the character’s text. (For further details on the Textinterferenz approach advocated by Schmid and others, see section 3.3 below.) In direct discourse (DD), whether it represents a speech event or an unspoken thought, the transition from frame to inset is clearly visible, typically signaled typographically and/or by an introductory verb of speech or thought: “She said,” “She thought.” DD is conventionally understood to replicate exactly what the quoted character is supposed to have said or thought, preserving (for instance) expressive elements of the original utterance: “No, no.” Of course, the “originality” of direct quotation in fiction is entirely illusory (Fludernik 1993 : 409–14); moreover, so is the independence of the quoted inset, which is always controlled by the framing context. DD shorn of its introductory clause, which some call free direct discourse (FDD), is the basis of interior monologues, and a staple of modernist novels. In indirect discourse (ID), the narrator is much more evidently in control. Here the inset is grammatically subordinated to the framing utterance, with person, tense, and deixis adjusted to conform to those of the frame. According to some authorities (e.g. Banfield 1982 ), expressive and dialectal or idiolectal features are excluded from ID, but in fact such features are well-attested in actual narrative texts (Vološinov [1929] 1973 : 131–2; McHale 1978 , 1983 ). Types and degrees of paraphrase and summary vary widely in ID, from instances that appear quite faithful to the original utterance (though of course, no such “original” exists), through instances that preserve only its content or gist to those that minimally acknowledge that a speech event took place (Vološinov [1929] 1973 : 129–33; Leech & Short 1981 : 318–51). In representing consciousness, ID shades off into psycho-narration (Cohn 1978 : 21–57) where the narrator analyzes the content of the character’s mind, potentially including its habitual and/or subliminal (unconscious) aspects. Free indirect discourse (FID) is the most problematic and, no doubt for that very reason, still the most widely discussed form for representing speech, thought, and perception. (For further details on the free indirect representation of perception, see section 3.4 below.) Here frame and inset become much harder to distinguish. FID handles person and tense as ID would (though in French it is identifiable by a distinctive past-tense form, the imparfait , in narrative contexts where the passé simple would be expected). On the other hand, it treats deixis as DD would, reflecting the character’s rather than the narrator’s position: “she couldn’t just now , but tomorrow she would.” FID also tolerates many of the expressive elements characteristic of direct quotation―how many, and which ones, remains controversial. In terms of the Textinterferenz model, person and tense evoke the narrator's text, while deictic, expressive and other features evoke the character’s text. To further complicate matters, many instances of FID entirely lack the form’s defining features so that, taken out of context, they appear indistinguishable from non-quoting narrative sentences. Manifestly, it is contextual cues more than formal features that determine, in many cases, whether or not a sentence will be interpreted as a free indirect representation of speech, thought or perception (McHale 1978 ; Ehrlich 1990 ). In view of the range and diversity of each of these forms, especially ID and FID, and the evidence of intermediate or ambiguous instances, some analysts have concluded that a scale of possibilities would be more adequate than the three-category model (McHale 1978 ; Leech & Short 1981 ). Such scalar approaches, however, are hardly an improvement on the three-category model when it comes to capturing those diffuse and transient effects of “voice” that are such a regular experience of reading novels. Especially pointed is the dissatisfaction of some analysts with the mapping of categories deriving from speech representation onto the phenomena of represented consciousness. Consciousness in fiction, it has been compellingly argued (e.g. Palmer 2004 ), is much more ubiquitous and variegated than speech and is not adequately captured by speech-based models of interior discourse. (For further discussion, see section 3.4 below.) History of the Concept and its Study The foundation for the categorical approach to speech representation, and the source for many of the conceptual difficulties that continue to beset it, can be traced back to the ancient world. Plato in Republic III distinguishes between situations in which the poet speaks in his own voice (Plato calls this “pure narration,” haple diegesis ) and those in which the poet mimics a character’s voice. Classical rhetoric recognized two categories of speech representation proper, oratio recta and oratio obliqua , direct and indirect discourse; however, FID, though already present in ancient Greek and Latin literature and in biblical narrative, would not be identified until the last decades of the 19th century. Pervasive in the 19th-century novel, from Austen to Flaubert, Zola, James and beyond (Pascal 1977 ), FID did not attain the threshold of visibility until, arguably, the 1857 trial of Madame Bovary, which hinged on whether certain free indirect expressions of indecent and anti-social sentiments were attributable to the author (LaCapra 1982 ; Toolan 2006 ). In any case, French and German Romance philologists identified this “new” form around the turn of the nineteenth century, calling it erlebte Rede , verschleierte Rede , or style indirect libre (Tobler 1887 ; Kalepky 1899 , 1913 ; Bally 1912 ; Lorck 1914 ; Lerch 1914 ; Lips 1926 ). In English, FID has also been called “narrated monologue” (Cohn) and “represented speech and thought” (Banfield); Israeli scholars call it “combined discourse.” A prescient critique of grammar-based descriptions of FID was mounted as early as 1929 by Vološinov, Baxtin’s collaborator and/or alter ego . However, Vološinov’s contribution dropped out of sight until the “rediscovery” of the Baxtin circle in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in the meantime the forms of speech representation continued to be treated less as narratological than as grammatical phenomena, whether according to traditional models of grammar (e.g. Ullmann 1957 ) or in terms of the transformational- generative paradigm (Banfield 1982 ). Over the course of the 20th century, scholars of FID gradually expanded the range of what had initially been perceived as a rather local and specialized phenomenon limited to third-person (heterodiegetic) literary narratives. It was identified in first-person, second-person, and present-tense contexts as well as in non-literary prose and oral narrative (Todemann 1930 ; Cohn 1969 ; Fludernik 1993 : 82–104), and its historical roots were pushed back to the Middle Ages and earlier. Apart from the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, it has been attested in Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese, and Chinese, among others (Steinberg 1971 ; Coulmas ed. 1986 ; Hagenaar 1992 ; Tammi & Tommola eds. 2006 ). Above all, it has come to be recognized not only as a tool for regulating distance from a character―from empathetic identification at one extreme to ironic repudiation at the other―but also as one of the primary vehicles of what modernist poetics taught us to call the stream of consciousness . Stream of consciousness is best thought of not as a form but as a particular content of consciousness, characterized by free association, the illusion of spontaneity, and constant micro-shifts among perception, introspection, anticipation, speculation, and memory (Humphrey 1954 ; Friedman 1955 ; Bickerton 1967 ). It can be realized formally by first-person “autonomous” interior monologue (as in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses , or the first three sections of Faulkner’s T he Sound and the Fury ), or by FID (as in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , or Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.Dalloway and To the Lighthouse ), or indeed by a combination of means. Modernist innovations in stream of consciousness technique seemed to monopolize the agenda of scholarly investigation of the representation of consciousness for much of the 20th century, at least until Cohn ( 1978 ) reasserted the importance and ubiquity of less “glamorous” techniques, such as psycho-narration. Since then, cognitive narratologists in particular have taken up the challenge of investigating the presence of consciousness in fiction outside the well-worn channels of the stream of consciousness (e.g. Fludernik 1993 , 1996 ; Palmer 2004 ; Zunshine 2006 ). Progress in understanding speech and consciousness representation has been hampered by fundamental confusion about the concept of mimesis . Two senses of mimesis are regularly conflated: on the one hand, mimesis in the sense, derived ultimately from Plato, of the author’s speaking in a character’s voice rather than his own; on the other hand, mimesis in the sense of faithful reproduction of what we take to be reality. An unexamined assumption throughout much of the discussion of speech representation has been that mimesis in the sense of speaking for the character should correlate with mimesis in the sense of faithfulness of reproduction―that the more direct the representation was, the more realistic or life-like it would be (Sternberg 1982 ). Thus, DD should be the most faithful to reality, and ID the least, with FID somewhere in between. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, speech representation is a classic illustration of what Sternberg ( 1982 ) decries as the fallacy of “package deals” in poetics whereby forms and functions are bundled together in one-to-one relationships. Actually, the forms of speech representation stand in a many-to-many relationship to their reproductive functions: some instances of DD are highly imitative of “real” speech, while others are deliberately stylized and un-mimetic; some instances of ID or FID are more imitative of “real” speech than DD often is, while other instances are less so; etc. (Fludernik 1993 : 312–15). Attempts to elaborate the three-category repertoire of speech representation into a continuous scale from maximally to minimally mimetic, in the faithfulness-of-reproduction sense (e.g. McHale 1978 ; cf. Genette [1972] 1980 ), stumble at just this point. They invariably place DD (or FDD) at the most-mimetic pole and ID at the opposite pole. But no matter how many gradations such scales admit in between, they obscure the fact that degree of faithfulness does not correspond to formal categories: one scale cuts across the other. Moreover, the very notion of “faithfulness to reality” here is highly suspect. Another of the unexamined assumptions of speech representation scholarship is that verbal narrative is better able to represent speech than anything else because narratives share one and the same medium, namely language (e.g. Genette [1972] 1980 : 169–74). But this, too, is fallacious, as a glance at a transcription of spontaneous conversation would immediately confirm. At one level of analysis, conversation in novels may indeed reflect the “rules” of spontaneous real-world conversation (e.g. Toolan 1987 ; Thomas 2002 ; Herman 2002 : 171–93). But at a finer-grained level, speech in the novel appears utterly unlike real-world speech. Novelistic speech is always highly schematized and stylized, depending for its effects of verisimilitude on very limited selections of speech-features, many of them derived not from actual speakers’ behavior but from literary conventions, linguistic stereotypes, and folk-linguistic attitudes. This is especially evident in representations of foreign accents, regional dialects, and specialized professional registers (Page 1973 ). Perhaps the most powerful factor in producing effects of “realistic” speech is textual context, which induces the reader to accept thin sprinklings of conventional or possibly arbitrary features as faithful representations of real-world speech behavior (McHale 1994 ). In short, the mimesis of speech in fiction is a “linguistic hallucination” (Fludernik 1993 : 453); it depends on our willingness to play a “mimetic language-game” (Ron 1981 ). If speech in fiction is not a faithful imitation but an effect produced by a combination of convention, selection, and contextualization, then this must also be the case for consciousness in fiction, only more so, for consciousness is at best only partly linguistic. Nevertheless, the operating assumption of much recent cognitivist work on consciousness in narrative is that fictional minds are modeled on real-world mental processes (e.g. Palmer 2004 : 11). But what if consciousness in fiction is just as conventional, schematic, selective, and context-dependent as speech in fiction―just as much an effect, just as much a hallucination or language-game? Surely this is a hypothesis that ought to be entertained (Mäkelä 2006 ). If speech representation always involves a quoting frame and quoted inset, this means that it involves two agents or instances of speech―two voices. The two voices are readily distinguished in DD and in content- paraphrase types of ID, but only with difficulty in FID. In FID, the effects of voice all seem to derive from the quoted character, with the narrator’s contribution reduced to the bare grammatical minimum of tense and person. Indeed, an early controversy in the scholarship on FID hinged on the question of the narrator’s putative self-effacement and empathetic identification with the character. However, FID is just as likely to serve as a vehicle of irony, and it is in these instances that the so-called dual-voice hypothesis (Vološinov [1929] 1973 ; Baxtin [1929] 1984 ; Pascal 1977 ) seems most compelling. According to the dual-voice hypothesis, in sentences of FID (and some instances of ID) the voice of the narrator is combined with that of the character (hence “combined discourse”) or superimposed on it. “It partook, she felt, helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity”: in this famous sentence from To the Lighthouse , the parenthetical clause (“she felt, helping Mr. Bankes,” etc.) introduces a plane of narratorial comment that ironizes Mrs. Ramsay’s experience of eternity. (Or does it? This is actually an interpretative crux in the novel.) Irony of this kind seems best accounted for in terms of the dual-voice hypothesis (Uspenskij 1973 : 102–5). With the rediscovery of the Baxtin circle, the dual-voice analysis of FID, already anticipated by Vološinov ( [1929] 1973 ), came to be viewed in the light of wider phenomena of dialogue in the novel. According to Baxtin and his school, the text of the novel is shot through with more or less veiled dialogues between voices that “speak for” social roles, ideologies, attitudes, etc. The forms of dialogue range from outright parody and stylization to implicit rejoinders and veiled polemics (Baxtin [1929] 1984 ). FID is folded in among these categories, reflecting as it does (according to the dual-voice hypothesis) the internal dialogization of the sentence of speech representation itself. Related to the Baxtinian approach, but less ideologically driven, and capable of much finer-grained analyses, is Schmid’s model of Textinterferenz ( [1973] 1986 , 2010 : 137–74; see also Doležel 1973 ; de Haard 2006 ). The Textinterferenz approach treats speech representation as a matter of interference or interaction between two texts, the narrator’s text and the character’s text. Textual segments display varying kinds and degrees of interaction between these two texts, depending upon how various features are distributed between the narrator’s and the character’s voices. These features include thematic and ideological (or evaluative) markers; grammatical person, tense and deixis; types of speech acts ( Sprachfunktion ); and features of lexical, syntactical and graphological style. In DD, all the markers point to the character’s voice. In ID, person, tense and syntax can be assigned to the narrator’s text, while thematic and ideological markers, deixis, and lexical style point to the character’s voice; the speech-act level points both directions. Finally, in FID, person and tense evoke the narrator’s text, while all the other features can be assigned to the character’s text. In the light of dialogism and Textinterferenz , speech representation comes to be reconceived as only more or less discrete instances of the pervasive heteroglossia (Tjupa → Heteroglossia ) of the novel, its multiplicity of voices (Baxtin [1934/35] 1981 ). According to the Baxtinian account, samples of socially-inflected discourse―styles, registers, regional and social dialects, etc. with their associated attitudes and ideologies―are dispersed throughout the novel, appearing even where there is no frame/inset structure of quotation to “legitimize” or naturalize them. The language of a novel diversifies into various zones , including zones associated with specific characters, even in the absence of syntactical indications of quotation or paraphrase. This analysis of novelistic discourse was paralleled in the Anglophone world, albeit in a casual and pre-theoretical way, by Kenner’s ( 1978 ) jocular proposal of the “Uncle Charles Principle,” named after a typical sentence from Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist : “Uncle Charles repaired to the outhouse.” The sentence is attributable to the heterodiegetic narrator, but it is “colored” by Uncle Charles’ characteristic periphrasis, “repaired.” The Uncle Charles Principle, also called stylistic “contagion” or “infection” (Spitzer [1922] 1961 ; Vološinov ( [1929] 1973 : 133–36; Stanzel [1979] 1984 ; Fludernik 1993 : 332–38), involves the dispersal of a character’s idiom into the narrative prose in the proximity of that character (Koževnikova 1971 ). At the opposite extreme from the dual-voice hypothesis and its extensions is the controversial no-narrator hypothesis advanced by Banfield ( 1982 ). According to Banfield, free indirect sentences of thought representation (though not of speech) in third-person hetereodiegetic contexts entirely lack a narrator, and so could hardly be dual-voiced. In effect, Banfield has revived the empathetic reading of FID endorsed by early commentators, but in a way calculated to scandalize anyone committed to a communications-model approach to narrative. Indeed, it might be argued that in certain FID representations of thought, those representing what Banfield calls non-reflective consciousness, there is no discernible voice at all: “It was raining, she saw” (Banfield 1982 : 183–223; Fludernik 1993 : 376–79). Whereas sentences of reflective consciousness express what the character is aware of as passing through her mind―what she “thought to herself”―sentences of nonreflective consciousness express what the character perceives or apprehends without being aware of perceiving or apprehending. At this point, issues of voice shade off into even more diffuse issues of fictional minds. Pervasive voice in the novel is mirrored by a parallel pervasiveness of consciousness. Investigating the presence of fictional consciousness, cognitive narratologists have become impatient with the so-called “speech-category approach,” which in effect limits consciousness in fiction to varieties of inner speech. Not all consciousness in fiction is inner speech, they argue―perhaps relatively little of it. As we have already seen, however, even approaches to the representation of consciousness using speech categories eventually run up against phenomena that exceed those categories in various ways. Speech categories “bleed” at their edges, trailing off into less category-bound forms of fictional mind. At one edge, for instance, ID bleeds into psycho-narration, whereby the narrator takes charge of analyzing the character’s mind, including subconscious levels that might not be accessible to the character herself, or habitual dispositions that might not manifest themselves in inner speech. At the other edge, FID bleeds into nonreflective consciousness. Indeed, almost from the earliest days of scholarship on FID, it was recognized that the speech category of FID was intimately related to a form of so-called “substitutionary perception” (Fehr 1938 ; see also Bühler 1937 ), sometimes called “represented perception” (Brinton 1980 ) or even “free indirect perception” (Palmer 2004 ): “She opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves.” The third and fourth of these sentences are unmistakably FID (as indicated by the past-tense modals would and could , and the adverbial of doubt, perhaps ), but the second is substitutionary perception. Reorienting the study of represented consciousness away from speech categories opens up new areas of inquiry. For instance, characters can be shown to read each other’s minds―not in any science-fiction sense, but in the sense that they develop working hypotheses about what others are thinking, inferring interior states from speech and external behavior, just as one does in everyday life; they do “Theory of Mind,” in other words (Zunshine 2006 ). Indeed, all actions of characters in a narrative fiction must be animated by mental states or acts; otherwise, we might not be disposed to call them “actions” at all. So thought ought not to be viewed as separable from action, but rather as forming together with action a “thought-action continuum” whereby actions are animated by consciousness throughout (Palmer 2004 : 212–14). The most radical statement of this reorientation of analysis away from the speech-category approach and toward “mind in action” must surely be Fludernik’s redefinition of narrativity itself as experientiality (Fludernik 1996 : 20–43; compare Antin 1995 ). According to Fludernik’s account, narrativity is not adequately defined in terms of sequences of events or even in terms of causal connections among events, but only in terms of the experiencing of events by a human (or anthropomorphic) subject. In other words, it is ultimately the presence of consciousness that determines narrative, and not anything else. This is a far cry from the carving up of blocks of prose into discrete units labeled DD, ID, FID. Nevertheless, it is not as unprecedented a development as some cognitive narratologists have claimed. For instance, the analysis of informational gaps and gap-filling, as practiced by exponents of the Tel Aviv school (Perry & Sternberg [1968] 1986 ; Perry 1979 ), is every bit as finely attuned to characters’ ventures in mind-reading and the thought-action continuum as anything to be found in the new cognitivist narratology (Palmer 2004 : 182; Herman → Cognitive Narratology ). But if cognitive narratology sometimes overestimates its own novelty and underrates its precursors, this does not prevent it from standing at the cutting edge of research into the representation of fictional mind at the present time. Topics for Further Investigation (a) One is tempted to recommend (albeit facetiously) a moratorium on further research into FID proper until other, more diffuse and pervasive effects of mind and voice in fiction are better understood. Among other advantages, this might give us the opportunity to evaluate critically some of the bold claims of the cognitive narratologists with respect to fictional minds, and of the Baxtin school with respect to “dialogue” (Shepherd → Dialogism ). Baxtin, in particular, has become a victim of his own (posthumous) success; serial (mis)appropriations of his approach by a diverse range of literary and cultural theories, coupled with uncritical endorsement of his ideological positions, has made critical evaluation of his account of dialogue virtually impossible. (b) Too little is still known about the role of models (schemata, stereotypes, folk-linguistic knowledge, etc.) in the production and recognition of representations of language varieties (styles, dialects, registers, etc.) in fiction. (c) Similarly, there is still much that remains to be clarified about the operation of textual context and its interaction with models of speech and thought in producing the effect or illusion of mimesis (though with respect to context see Ehrlich 1990 ). (d) “Currently, there is a hole in literary theory between the analysis of consciousness, characterization, and focalization […] a good deal of fictional discourse is situated precisely within this analytical gap” (Palmer 2004 : 186). Palmer perhaps underestimates the quantity and value of the work that has already gone into knitting together consciousness, characterization and focalization. Nevertheless, he is basically right: this is one of the holes that remain in narrative theory, and closing it should be a high priority of future research. Bibliography Works cited. Antin, David (1995). “The Beggar and the King.” Pacific Coast Philology 30, 143–54. Bally, Charles (1912). “Le style indirect libre en français moderne I et II.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4, 549–56, 597–606. Banfield, Ann (1982). Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and representation in the language of fiction . Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Baxtin, Mikhail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1929] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics . Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. Baxtin, Mixail (Bakhtin, Mikhail) ([1934/35] 1981). “Discourse in the Novel.” M. B. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays . Austin: U of Texas P, 259–422. Bickerton, Derek (1967). “Modes of Interior Monologue: A Formal Definition.” Modern Language Q uarterly 28, 229–39. Brinton, Laurel (1980). “‘Represented Perception’: A Study in Narrative Style.” Poetics 9, 363–81. Bühler, Willi (1937). Die “erlebte Rede” im englischen Roman, ihre Vorstufen und ihre Ausbildung im Werke Jane Austens . Zürich: Niehans. Cohn, Dorrit (1969). “Erlebte Rede im Ich-Roman.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 19, 305–13. Cohn, Dorrit (1978). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction . Princeton: Princeton UP. Coulmas, Florian, ed. (1986). Direct and Indirect Speech . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Doležel, Lubomír (1973). Narrative Modes in Czech Literature . Toronto: U of Toronto P. Ehrlich, Susan (1990). Point of View: A Linguistic Analysis of Literary Style . London: Routledge. Fehr, Bernhard (1938). “Substitutionary Narration and Description: A Chapter in Stylistics.” E nglish Studies 20.3, 97–107. Fludernik, Monika (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic R e presentation of Speech and Consciousness . London: Routledge. Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology . London: Routledge. Friedman, Melvin (1955). Stream of Consciousness: A Study in Literary Method . New Haven: Yale UP. Genette, Gérard ([1972] 1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method . Ithaca: Cornell UP. 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Madame Bovary on Trial . Ithaca: Cornell UP. Leech, Geoffrey N. & Michael H. Short (1981). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose . London: Longman. Lerch, Eugen (1914). “Die stylistische Bedeutung des Imperfektums der Rede (‘style indirect libre’).” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 6, 470–89. Lips, Marguerite (1926). Le Style indirect libre . Paris: Payot. Lorck, Etienne (1914). “Passé defini, imparfait, passé indefini I, II et III.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 6, 43–57, 100–13, 177–91. Mäkelä, Maria (2006). “Possible minds: Constructing―and reading―another consciousness as fiction.” P. Tammi & H. Tommola (eds.). FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology . Tampere: Tampere UP, 231–60. McHale, Brian (1978). “Free Indirect Discourse: A Survey of Recent Accounts.” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 3, 249–78. McHale, Brian (1983). “Unspeakable Sentences, Unnatural Acts: Linguistics and Poetics Revisited.” P oetics Today 4, 17–45. McHale, Brian (1994). “Child as Ready-Made: Baby-Talk and the Language of Dos Passos’s Children in U.S.A.” E. Goodenough et al. (eds.). Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 202–24. Page, Norman (1973). Speech in the English Novel . London: Longman. Palmer, Alan (2004). Fictional Minds . Lincoln: U of Nebraska P. Pascal, Roy (1977). The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and Its Functioning in the Nineteenth- Century European Novel . Manchester: Manchester UP. Perry, Menakhem (1979). “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates its Meaning.” Poetics Today 1.1–2, 35–64, 311–61. Perry, Menakhem & Meir Sternberg ([1968] 1986). “The King Through Ironic Eyes: Biblical Narrative and the Literary Reading Process.” Poetics Today 7, 275–322. Ron, Moshe (1981). “Free Indirect Discourse, Mimetic Language Games and the Subject of Fiction.” Poetics Today 2.2, 17–39. Schmid, Wolf ([1973] 1986). Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs . Amsterdam: Grüner. Schmid, Wolf (2010). Narratology. An Introduction . Berlin: de Gruyter. Spitzer, Leo ([1922] 1961). “Sprachmengung als Stilmittel und als Ausdruck der Klangphantasie.” L. Spitzer. Stilstudien II . München: Hueber, 84–124. Stanzel, Franz K. ([1979] 1984). A Theory of Narrative . Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Steinberg, Günther (1971). Erlebte Rede: ihre Eigenart und ihre Formen in neuerer deutscher, französischer und englischer Erzählliteratur . Göppingen: Kümmerle. Sternberg, Meir (1982). “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse.” Poetics Today 3, 107–56. Tammi, Pekka & Hannu Tommola, eds. (2006). FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology: Linguistic, Translatological and Theoretical Encounters . Tampere: Tampere UP. Thomas, Bronwen (2002). “Multiparty Talk in the Novel: The Distribution of Tea and Talk in a Scene from Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief.” Poetics Today 23, 657– 84. Tobler, Adolf (1887). “Vermischte Beiträge zur französischen Grammatik.” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 11, 433–61. Todemann, Friedrich (1930). “Die erlebte Rede im Spanischen.” R omanische Forschungen 44, 103–84. Toolan, Michael (1987). “Analysing Conversation in Fiction: The Christmas Dinner Scene in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Poetics Today 8, 393– 416. Toolan, Michael (2006). “The ‘irresponsibility’ of FID.” P. Tammi & H. Mommola (eds.). FREE language INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology . Tampere: Tampere UP, 261–78. Ullmann, Stephen (1957). “Reported Speech and Internal Monologue in Flaubert.” St. Ullmann. Style in the French Novel . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 94–120. Uspenskij, Boris (Uspensky, Boris) (1973). A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic T e x t and Typology of a Compositional Form . Berkeley: U of California P. Vološinov, Valentin (Voloshinov, Valentin) ([1929] 1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language . New York: Seminar P. Zunshine, Lisa (2006). Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel . Columbus: Ohio State UP. Further Reading Ginsburg, Michal Peled (1982). “Free Indirect Discourse: A Reconsideration.” Language and Style 15, 133–49. Hernadi, Paul (1972). “Appendix: Free Indirect Discourse and Related Techniques.” P. Hernadi. Beyond Genre: New Directions in Literary Classification . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 187–205. Lintvelt, Jaap ([1981] 1989). Essai de typologie narrative. Le ‘point de vue’. Theórie et analyse . Paris: Corti. Neumann, Anne Waldron (1986). “Characterization and Comment in Pride and Prejudice: Free Indirect Discourse and ‘Double-Voiced’ Verbs of Speaking, Thinking, and Feeling.” Style 20, 364–94. Patron, Sylvie (2009). Le narrateur. Introducion à la théorie narrative . Paris: Armand Colin. Rivara, René (2000). La langue du récit: Introduction à la narratologie énonciative . Paris: L’Harmattan. A) Uttered represented speech Uttered represented speech demands that the tense should be switched from present to past and that the personal pronouns should be changed from 1st and 2nd person to 3rd person as in indirect speech, but the syntactical structure of the utterance does not change. For example: " Could he bring a reference from where he now was ? He could ." (Dreiser) An interesting example of three ways of representing actual speech is to be seen in a conversation between Old Jolyon and June in Galsworthy's "Man of Property." "Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn ' t the "man of [property" going to live in his new house, then? He never alluded I to Soames now but under this title. “No",— June said — "he was not; she knew that he was not!" How did she know? She could not tell him, but she knew . She knew nearly for certain . It was most unlikely; circumstances had changed!" Two more examples will suffice to illustrate the use of uttered represented speech. "A maid came in now with a blue gown very thick and soft. Could she do anything for Miss Freeland? No , thanks , she could not , only, did she know where Mr. Freeland's room was ?" (Galsworthy) "Mr. Silverman, his Parliamentary language scarcely concealing his bitter disappointment, accused the government of breaking its pledge and of violating constitutional proprieties. Was the government basing its policy not on the considered judgement of the House of Commons, but on the considered judgement of the House of Lords? Would it not be a grave breach of constitutional duty, not to give the House a reasonable opportunity of exercising its rights under the Parliament Act?" "Wait for the terms of the Bill," was Eden's reply. Nancy Pelosi is a villain in Biden's inner circle — and a hero to the rest of the Democratic Party CHICAGO — In the morality play that yielded a new Democratic presidential nominee last month, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., could be seen as a heroine who risked a political backlash to save her party's chances in November or a villain who bloodlessly, needlessly and rashly pushed aside its sitting president. When she stepped to the lectern at the Democratic National Convention here Wednesday night — as a two-time speaker of the House who voluntarily gave up her own power last year after helping deliver the legislative agendas of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden — she was greeted as a favorite. In a brief address, Pelosi recounted for the audience that former President Donald Trump — the Republican nominee — tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and that his supporters attacked the Capitol on the day Biden's victory was certified in Congress. "Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on Jan. 6: He did," she said. "The parable of Jan. 6 reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with its care, and we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections, who respect the peaceful transfer of power." And, she added, "The choice couldn't be clearer." To the extent that there is a certain uneasiness about this convention, which was supposed to renominate Biden for a second term, it is limited to a small circle of party power brokers whose relationships were fractured when Biden was dumped and replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's standard-bearer. No one was more central to the first part of that push than Pelosi. When Biden insisted that he would stay in the race following a calamitous debate against former President Donald Trump in June, Pelosi said he still had a decision to make . Whenever he gained a tenuous foothold against a mudslide of Democratic doubts, new Pelosi allies called on him to abandon his campaign. She spoke to him privately to voice the concerns of fellow Democrats that he might not only lose the election but could also rob the party of its hopes of winning the House. The real moral of the story for Democrats here is that their only priority is beating Trump, and most of them think Pelosi put them in a better position to do that. Biden was the beneficiary of that sentiment when he won the party's nomination in 2020 and faced nominal opposition in 2024 — right up until the moment many Democrats, led by Pelosi, decided he was no longer their best option. "With love and respect for Joe Biden, she kept us in the game," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., a longtime Pelosi ally, said two hours before she spoke. "She did the right thing." Her efforts to pressure Biden were complemented by Obama confidants who turned on him publicly. Biden was personally hurt by betrayals that occurred at a time when he thought he could bounce back from the debate performance and win the presidency again. Those wounds may never heal. John Morgan, a major Democratic donor from Florida who said he speaks frequently with Pelosi, described her as being “extremely distraught about this because she genuinely loves Joe Biden.” On Wednesday, former New Orleans mayor and senior Biden White House adviser Mitch Landrieu declined to address whether Pelosi deserves praise or blame. "The torch has been passed," said Landrieu, who was a co-chair of Biden's campaign and continues in that role for Harris. "We're talking about the future now." But for more than three weeks, as fellow Democrats lobbied Biden publicly and privately to drop his re-election bid, he and his allies took ever greater umbrage. He had sent Trump packing from the White House by winning the 2020 election, he had delivered substantive policy wins on national infrastructure, climate change and other priorities, and he had carried out his job with dignity. The lack of faith in his ability to bounce back from adversity stung, as did the cascade of calls for his departure that they believe were encouraged, if not orchestrated, by Pelosi and other elites. Anita Dunn, a longtime adviser to Biden who served in similar roles for Obama, needled Pelosi for not having done a better job holding onto the House in the 2022 midterms in an interview with Politico earlier this month. "You know, clearly there were leaders of the party who decided to go ahead and go very public," Dunn said. "And that gave permission to other people to go public." Asked whether she was talking about Pelosi, specifically, Dunn replied, "Absolutely." Did Pelosi, Obama and others force out a man who stubbornly clung to power at the expense of the people who elected him? Or did they create a self-fulfilling prophecy that Biden couldn't win by knee-capping him? If that question is ever fully answered, it likely won't be until after all the votes are counted in November. For now, Pelosi is being treated as the Democratic Party's godmother and its godfather, as caretaker and enforcer. Mindy Kaling, the comedian hosting the third night of the Democratic convention, introduced her as "the mother of dragons" — a reference to the powerful queen in the television program "Game of Thrones." "The ethos of the party and here at this convention is there is no more paramount goal than ensuring Donald Trump comes nowhere near the Oval Office again — everything else is secondary to that," said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. "Nancy Pelosi gave expression to that and acted on it." The reception Pelosi received Wednesday night suggests that the party's delegates quickly forgave any venal sin committed in the name of the larger goals of defeating Trump and capturing congressional majorities. It was the same crowd that showered affection on Biden — who quickly departed the convention scene after his Monday night speech — on the previous two nights. "I think there are, understandably so, deeply hurt feelings — but not among grassroots Democrats," said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. "The people who were the most loyal to Joe Biden were loyal to him because they are loyal Democrats. And so the moment the switch was made, the moment Joe Biden said this is our best path forward, all of those very loyal Democrats behaved like very loyal Democrats." If Biden and his allies remain frustrated with Pelosi — and many of them do — their anger hasn't filtered down through the ranks of a party that is jubilant about Harris. "She's a person that did what she thought was best for the situation," said Alex Davis, a 26-year-old grocer from Portland, Oregon, who attended the convention as a delegate. "Given her experience, she felt very comfortable in the position that she took as far as the primary and Biden's decision." After speaking for more than 45 minutes on the opening night of the convention, in remarks split between promoting his legacy and cheering on Harris, Biden didn't stick around to hear Obama's address on Tuesday or Pelosi's remarks Wednesday. Both of them applauded his presidency and his character. "History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger," Obama said. "And I am proud to call him my president, but I am even prouder to call him my friend." In her speech Tuesday night, Pelosi ticked through a list of Biden's accomplishments and thanked him for "one of the most successful presidencies of modern times." Their words appeared designed to paper over their roles in fomenting the revolt that led Biden to end a career as a candidate that spanned more than half a century — from county councilman to senator to vice president and president. For the delegates here, and for most Democrats across the country, the consensus that quickly formed around Harris and the energy her candidacy has injected into the party are evidence that Pelosi acted in their best interests. "I've just never heard a complaint from someone who’s not in power about Nancy Pelosi," Schatz said. "These are some principals and some operatives having a disagreement about tactics and strategy. That doesn’t mean that those feelings aren’t hurt. It’s just that they don’t reverberate in any way that would affect the vote." Jonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News. Natasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News. After historic speech by Teamsters president at RNC, it's clear Democrats no longer have a hold on labour vote At dnc, sen. bernie sanders questions why historically anti-labour gop has made inroads with working class. Social Sharing During a daytime labour council meeting at the Democratic National Convention, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders stood at the podium, booming against Donald Trump in his typically blunt manner: explaining how he had eroded democracy, divided the country and sold out the working class. Then, Sanders got quiet. "When you're a phony and a fraud billionaire like Donald Trump, why is it — now here is the hard question, and don't slump it off," he told the crowd. "How come a majority of working class people are supporting him?" It's an uncomfortable question that the Democratic Party, which has traditionally held the support of organized labour, has had to grapple with in recent years.  Various polling shows that Republicans are leading Democrats with white, working class voters without a college degree, including a New York Times/Siena poll released in April, before Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.  Harris is now trying to regain some of the ground lost by the current president, as Trump and the Republican Party continue to court voters from working class and union households. And while Democrats still have the majority support of union voters, a Pew Research poll from last year  found that almost 40 per cent of registered voters who are in a union are Republicans. How Kamala Harris changed the presidential race for the Democrats "The labour vote is huge in this election," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told CBC News. But, she said, "labour leaders are not monolithic. We do not have magic wands. Frankly, our unions are really democratic." Some of those tensions have played out on convention stages. Harris received endorsements from a number of labour leaders on the first night of the Democratic convention, all of whom upheld her as a champion of the working class.  But just last month, Teamsters president Sean O'Brien gave an eyebrow-raising speech at the Republican convention, making an appeal to the party to support labour and calling Trump a "tough SOB" for surviving an assassination attempt. O'Brien then thanked Trump for opening the convention doors to a union president.  The speaking slot, which O'Brien called "unprecedented," marked the first time in the organization's 121-year history that a Teamsters leader spoke at the RNC.  "Never forget: American workers own this nation," O'Brien told delegates. "We are not renters, we are not tenants, but the corporate elite treat us like squatters, and that is a crime. We have got to fix it." Obamas give full-throated endorsement of Harris, slam Trump in DNC speeches Who is Tim Walz? Things to know about Kamala Harris's choice for vice-president The Democrats did not invite O'Brien (whose union is one of the largest in the U.S. with 1.3 million members) to their convention, though he reportedly requested a speaking slot. His address to the RNC was a firecracker of a speech that got a bemused but well-received   response from the audience of Republicans, a historically anti-union party that has made further inroads with union voters for a variety of reasons. "What happened at the RNC is a blip as far as I'm concerned, as far as everybody here in this room is concerned," said Larry Rousseau, the executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Council, who was attending the same event where Sanders spoke.  "And I think the Teamsters are having a real internal discussion and debate as to who they should be endorsing." Working-class shift began well before Trump Sen. Sanders said the reason for the working class shift to the Republican Party is economic. "I think the answer is that a lot of people are hurting," he told the crowd, citing years of high inflation, expensive groceries and soaring housing costs.  Others disagree. "With all due respect to the senator from Vermont, that's not exactly right," said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "If it were simply a story of people feeling left behind, you'd expect to see some variation as the underlying economic conditions change." He said the shift is partly tied to the " radical decline " of organized labour, which held the white working class within the Democratic Party's tent for a long time. And Republicans have capitalized on cultural issues that resonate more broadly with working-class voters, both white and non-white.  "I think that goes some way towards explaining this shift," Rosenfeld said. "But the shift goes a long way back , well before Trump arrived on the scene with his set of cultural grievances." That's the position held by Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, who delivered a fiery speech during the Democratic convention and wore a T-shirt printed with the words "Trump is a scab." Speaking during the same event as Sanders, Fain said that the Democratic Party had begun to lose its way with union voters decades ago during the Reagan and Bush administrations, moving further to the political centre and supporting big business "to make everybody happy." "We're helping the [Democratic] party find its way back to its roots," he said, calling it a matter of moral clarity to stand with working-class people. "That's our fight." Walz the modern face of a union voter? Trump has, especially in rhetorical terms, found a niche with working-class voters. He's taken a protectionist stance on trade and has claimed that immigrants are taking American jobs. But  some pundits say his policies contradict his messaging to workers, including tax cuts that would benefit the wealthy. His opponents seized on a recent blunder, when Trump told Tesla founder Elon Musk during an interview that workers on strike lines should be fired . Still, the Democrats needn't sit back and relax.  "It is absolutely the case that Democrats are going to have to worry about further erosion among rural and exurban voters, especially those who aren't professional white-collar workers, because that is a long-term trend," said Rosenfeld. Trump has been able to capture "a fraction of the population that might have leaned GOP when it came to their cultural views but were really repelled by the GOP standard economic take on economic issues."  Analysis Kamala Harris wants to be U.S. president. Her mixed record might make it an uphill battle Biden, who has positioned himself as the most pro-union president in U.S. history, lagged behind Trump in working class support. The Harris campaign is now trying to regain some of that ground, especially with the choice of Tim Walz, a former teacher, as the vice-presidential nominee. Walz is popular with labour voters. His first solo event as a vice-presidential candidate was an address to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Los Angeles. When accepting his nomination at the DNC on Wednesday, he derided Trump's agenda as one that "serves nobody but the richest people." He also emphasized his teaching background and vowed that Harris would stand up to corporate interests if elected president. Michigan a key state on the road to the White House — in a race with Canadian implications "That's how we'll keep moving forward. That's how we'll turn the page on Donald Trump," Walz told the crowd. "That's how we'll build a country where workers come first, health care and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of our bedrooms." Rosenfeld said Walz reflects the modern face of the union movement. "He's a public school teacher, right? That is where unions are anchored in the U.S. today," the sociologist said. "Half of all union members now in the United States are in the public sector. These are not construction workers, where unionization rates have bottomed out. Walz is a much more typical union member." Sanders, for his part, had a reminder for the crowd. That even at a week-long gathering for a union-friendly party, the "big boxes" in the DNC convention hall cost "hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars … paid for by the largest corporations in America." "They're investing in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. They don't care who wins. They represent the one per cent," Sanders said. "So, our job is to mobilize our people, as we represent the 99 per cent." ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jenna Benchetrit is the senior business writer for CBC News. She writes stories about Canadian economic and consumer issues, and has also recently covered U.S. politics. A Montrealer based in Toronto, Jenna holds a master's degree in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. You can reach her at [email protected]. With files from Katie Simpson Related Stories Election 2024 Entertainment Newsletters Photography AP Buyline Personal Finance AP Buyline Shopping Press Releases Israel-Hamas War Russia-Ukraine War Global elections Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East Delegate Tracker AP & Elections U.S. Open Tennis College football Auto Racing Movie reviews Book reviews Financial Markets Business Highlights Financial wellness Artificial Intelligence Social Media What to watch on the Democratic National Convention’s fourth and final day in Chicago Copy Link copied ▶ Follow the AP’s live coverage and analysis from the 2024 Democratic National Convention. CHICAGO (AP) — The Democratic National Convention will kick off its fourth and final night on Thursday. After a week of Democrats’ most prominent figures rallying the party faithful, Vice President Kamala Harris will accept her party’s nomination during a speech in which she is widely expected to offer her vision and policy agenda to the American people. The theme of the final night is “For Our Future.” Only weeks ago, the Democratic Party was wracked by debate over whether President Joe Biden should step aside as the party’s nominee and over the party’s general message and values ahead of the 2024 election. In the weeks since Biden decided to stand down , however, left-of-center politics has taken hold around Harris at the top of the party ticket. While Harris’ candidacy has unleashed a high level of enthusiasm and determination among Democrats, she is still defining her policy priorities and the ideological direction she will take the party. Last Friday, she unveiled her first major goal when she announced a raft of economic policies meant to lower the cost of living for working- and middle-class Americans. It’s Day 4 of the DNC. Here’s what to know: A look at the prepared schedule for the fourth and final night, which does not include potential surprise guests . An unexpected highlight of the DNC Day 3 was an outburst of pride from Gus, the son of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz . What to watch tonight: Vice President Kamala Harris will accept her party’s nomination during a speech in which she is widely expected to offer her vision and policy agenda to the American people. ‘The answer is no': Pro-Palestinian delegates say their request for a speaker at the DNC was shut down . Live updates: Follow The AP’s live coverage and analysis from the 2024 Democratic National Convention . The convention’s final night will include remarks from some of the party’s most prominent battleground state Democrats, including figures in competitive statewide races. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy will all deliver remarks. Tennessee state lawmakers Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson, the “ Tennessee Three, " will speak. Jones and Pearson were expelled from the state Legislature for participating in a protest on gun control at the state Capitol. Other speakers include Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge; Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Bob Casey, D-Pa., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.; Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., Lucy McBath, D-Ga., Joe Neguse, D-Colo., Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Colin Allred, D-Texas, and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., as well as former Reps. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz. The Rev. Al Sharpton, the prominent civil rights leader, also will speak. The pop star Pink will perform. Kamala Harris ushers in a new Democratic era, stepping out of Biden shadow Kamala Harris has less than three months to convince the rest of America to entrust her with a four-year presidential term. Harris has managed to close the gap with Trump in key battleground states and improve her favorability rating by several points. Harris has to communicate her priorities to voters, she said. But she also needs to define her opponent. CHICAGO − As President Joe Biden gave a tearful goodbye to the Democratic Party, a liberated Kamala Harris stepped out of his shadow and commandeered the national stage . The handoff at the Democratic convention, one of several Biden farewells, was a visceral example of how the country is changing, with the first Black and Asian American woman topping a presidential ballot. Biden’s policies formed a foundation for her candidacy. But it was the 59-year-old Harris’ turn to lead four weeks after the 81-year-old president teed her up to serve in the nation's most powerful office. For the first time, activists who have sought to see more gender and minority representation in politics said they felt as if they truly belonged. “We're being seen and we see ourselves in her,” said Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju, who spoke at the convention Wednesday night. “It’s really emotional.” Harris has less than three months to persuade the rest of America to entrust her with a four-year presidential term. She has raced to lay out an agenda that hits on Americans’ most pressing problems that excites the party’s base and is palatable to moderates. After years of quiet inroads on issues she cares about without undermining the president’s agenda, the pressure is on for Harris to provide a detailed vision of her own coming out of the party’s four-day gathering in Chicago. Biden has mostly stayed out of her way, making fewer public appearances and going on an August vacation. She has managed to close the gap with Trump in key battleground states and improve her favorability rating by several points. “She needs to be herself. And she needs to get out there and … send the message that we are focused on the middle class, we are focused on families,” said Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign.  It’s the post-Labor Day slog, when the newness of her candidacy wears off, that Democrats say Harris needs to brace for, and when Republican 2024 presidential nominee Donald Trump finds a soft spot. Harris’ honeymoon can’t last forever, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro suggested Wednesday. “I do, of course, expect Donald Trump to figure out how to land a political punch. I mean, he's been horrible, right?  “But he'll figure out how to get a message and land a political punch. I think what you've seen with her is an ability to absorb the criticism and just keep going,” he told reporters at a Bloomberg News event. Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, offered a similarly blunt assessment in a Tuesday evening convention speech. His wife can smell weakness, he said. “Kamala doesn’t tolerate any B.S. You’ve all seen the look. You know what I’m talking about. It’s not just a meme – it reflects her true belief in honest and direct leadership,” he said. “It’s also why she won’t be distracted by the nonsense." Emhoff’s passionate speech in support of his wife, who was at a rally that evening in Wisconsin, was yet another reminder of how the power structure in the Democratic Party was shifting with a woman back in charge. The convention has helped the country get to know Harris, said Obama-era Labor Secretary Tom Perez. “This convention is perfectly timed, in the sense that we’re four weeks into this,” Perez, a senior White House adviser to Biden and former Democratic National Committee chair, told USA TODAY in an interview. Defining the generational shift But it’s not only the face of the ticket changing. It’s the first major signal that the party’s priorities are shifting, too. Two years ago came a preview of the change after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries succeeded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House.  Now, as Harris becomes the face of the new, multicultural Democratic Party, the torch is also being passed to a younger generation within the party. “In that generational shift, we have an opportunity to define what that shift means,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Tuesday at a breakfast of roughly 150 advocates pushing for progressive policies like criminal justice, climate change reforms and AI regulation. And that’s what Harris is doing, her allies said. Ahead of the convention, Harris laid out an economic platform that hits on key policies that are top of mind for voters: housing, high costs and credit to Americans with children. “This is a moment when we're going to have a new leader … that is being responsive and understands a lot of what many Americans go through, that can speak to different experiences,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a progressive advocacy nonprofit.  While Harris was thrust to the top of the ticket, voters’ excitement for the historic nominee was on full display at the convention.  “As a woman of color, it means everything. It means everything to me,” said Angela Evans, 48, a delegate from Lexington, Kentucky.  Evans, who is following a tradition of serving as a delegate that her mother set 40 years ago, said Harris’ resume and life experience allows her to carve her own lane in the path the Biden White House laid out. “I'm just thrilled that she can continue it on, but bring her own unique perspective as a prosecutor, as a woman, as a woman of color, to all of that,” Evans said. “She just brings different attributes to the table, and she needs to highlight those for herself.” Perez said the vice president is expanding on Biden’s policies − pointing to her proposal taking on “greedifcation” through the first-ever federal ban on price gouging of food and groceries and expanding the child tax credit. “She is not reluctant to take on these powerful interests,” he said, noting Harris’ attorney general background.  ‘Her record is Joe Biden’s record’ But Harris is still running on a platform that reflects her current boss and partner, Biden. “She’s running on her record. Her record is Joe Biden's record,” Timmaraju said. Harris had been a “real partner” to Biden, said Perez, bringing up her deciding votes on the Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan, in her capacity as president of the Senate.  Part of the reason she would be able to seamlessly transition into the presidency, he said, is because she is the last person in the room with Biden as he makes consequential decisions.  “He kept that promise,” Perez said. “She was a trusted partner, and someone who has been battle-tested.” Ultimately, any policies that Harris wants to push forward comes down to the makeup of Congress, Timmaraju said. For example, signing abortion rights legislation would be the biggest accomplishment of Harris’ presidency, she said. And without Democrats controlling the Senate, in particular, her agenda would be stymied. “If she doesn't get a solid congressional majority, a lot of the things that are in the party platform, and a lot of the things she wants to do she won't be able to, like codifying a federal right to abortion,” Timmaraju said. Democrats are worried about holding two Senate seats in particular that could make all the difference: incumbents Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Neither planned to attend the convention where Harris was set to deliver a speech accepting her party's presidential nomination. Another issue: the abbreviated campaigning cycle.  Rohini Kosoglu, a former top aide to Harris and an outside policy adviser, suggested during a Bloomberg roundtable on Wednesday that the truncated campaign won’t leave time for Harris to lay out detailed proposals to advance issues such as paid leave and Black maternal health. Those are two areas that Harris had led in the Biden administration but are not the core economic issues that most Americans will be voting on over the next 2½ months. “The questions around even what voters want to hear in terms of her work over her career, her time as vice president and then moving forward, may sound a little bit different than our traditional sort of longer term-campaigns,” she said, which have typically had “huge apparatuses.” Still, allies believe Harris can put “her own stamp” on the agenda laid out for her during the Biden administration, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. “She is uniquely qualified and capable of speaking to reproductive rights, to speaking to housing, to speaking to voting rights, and I think that she will do that with incredible qualifications and quality,” Jayapal said. She said Democrats were close to being able to pass legislation that included paid leave, child care and long-term leave after the last presidential election. It passed in the House and failed because Democrats could not get the votes in the Senate. Harris understands how important passing legislation that encompasses those policies are to Democrats, she said.  “We will be ready to pass those things quickly,” Jayapal said. ‘She’s one of us’ Biden relied heavily on male senators he served with to help him muscle through legislation when he took office.  Female lawmakers with whom Harris, a former California senator, was elected would be her administration’s backbone. “She’s one of us. She knows how the institution works, and she’s going to be able to help us lead and get legislation passed that’s going to support her administration,” Duckworth said. When Biden took office in 1973, representing Delaware, there were no female senators. A quarter of the Senate is now female. Harris has hosted them at her home, and several Democratic senators are part of her inner circle. Those relationships will help her to keep reproductive rights at the fore, Timmaraju said. Though the president has been an advocate, Harris “is much more steeped and versed and an expert, and with the women's senators completely will be transformative.” 182 IMAGES PPT PPT How Inner Speech Serves Memory. Where does the voice in our head come TYPES OF NARRATION REPRESENTED SPEECH Lecture 5 Types PPT Figure 2 from Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions COMMENTS Inner Speech Inner speech is known as the "little voice in the head" or "thinking in words." It attracts philosophical attention in part because it is a phenomenon where several topics of perennial interest intersect: language, consciousness, thought, imagery, communication, imagination, and self-knowledge all appear to connect in some way or other to the little voice in the head. Vygotsky's Inner Speech Theory Vygotsky suggested that inner speech is monological. He also believed that, in some ways, the expressive dimension of inner speech is a manifestation of the deepest states of your consciousness. Philosophers have always had an interest in inner language. In fact, one of the most renowned authors in Western psychology studied this subject. Inner speech: Development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and Inner speech—also known as covert speech or verbal thinking—has been implicated in theories of cognitive development, speech monitoring, executive function, and psychopathology. ... according to which there is only one kind of inner speech, represented at the level of phonemic selection, but where that representation can be modulated by ... Inner speech as language process and cognitive tool The term 'inner speech' is preferred because it emphasizes the active nature of the phenomenon and does not prejudge featural and functional issues such as the dialogicality or plurality of IS voices. ... of cognitive science, studies that incorporate humanities (including literary) methods and concepts [102] may represent a fruitful line of ... When Inner Speech Misleads 9.1. Introduction. Most philosophers think that at least some experiences have representational content: they represent the world as being a certain way. 1 Representational content dictates accuracy conditions, namely, what would need to be the case in order for the experience to be accurate. Inner speech, that "interior monologue" or familiar voice inside your head, is something that we ... Inner Speech: New Voices Even if inner speech episodes represent sounds, Wilkinson and Fernyhough maintain that inner speaking and inner hearing are two distinct but related phenomena. For them, inner speech is a productive rather than a re-creative phenomenon of imagining or inner hearing -- even if inner hearing and inner speaking are related. Inner speech Abstract. Inner speech travels under many aliases: the inner voice, verbal thought, thinking in words, internal verbalization, "talking in your head," the "little voice in the head," and so on. It is both a familiar element of first-person experience and a psychological phenomenon whose complex cognitive components and distributed ... Concepts, abstractness and inner speech Inner speech might play a role in this searching process and be differentially involved in concept learning compared with use of known concepts. Importantly, inner speech comes in different varieties—e.g. it can be expanded or condensed (with the latter involving syntactic and semantic forms of abbreviation). The Emergence of Inner Speech and Its Measurement in Atypically Inner Speech From a Developmental Perspective "There is no doubt that specifically human cognition is completely intertwined with speech. Galperin (1957) "Inner speech" (IS) was a term originally coined by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to capture the process by which the private speech (PS) of young children, talking to themselves out loud during play, starts accompanying their ... Inner Speech: New Voices In the last 10 years, inner speech - the little voice in the head - has started to become established as a topic in the philosophy of psychology. The two philosophers who have contributed most to this development are Agustín Vicente 1 and Peter Langland-Hassan. Together, they have now edited the first largely philosophical anthology on the ... From speech to voice: on the content of inner speech However, as we shall see in Sect. 6, inner speech violates this downward dependency: in inner speech we can represent voices directly communicating propositions and words. Central to vocal content is the voice slot. As I noted, voices are channels of communication, not sources or signals. But there are multiple ways a channel can be characterized. Introduction This introduction both provides historical context to explain why these questions are now particularly pressing, and summarizes how the authors of each chapter aim to offer new answers. Keywords: inner speech, language, thought, consciousness, self-knowledge, auditory verbal hallucination, speech act, reasoning, forward models, motor control. Inner speech: Development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and Inner speech—also known as covert speech or verbal thinking—has been implicated in theories of cognitive development, speech monitoring, executive function, and psychopathology. Despite a growing body of knowledge on its phenomenology, development, and function, approaches to the scientific study of inner speech have remained diffuse and largely unintegrated. This review examines prominent ... Represented Speech Represented speech is that form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the peculiarities of the speaker's mode of expression. Represented speech exists in two varieties: 1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered or inner represented speech. a) Uttered Represented Speech. Inner Speech and 'Pure' Thought A certain cognitive potency of inner speech—one that goes (partly, at least) beyond that of overt speech—is commonly acknowledged. Vygotsky's idea that in the course of development speech becomes internalized, thereby turning into a cognitive or psychological tool, has intrigued psychologists and philosophers alike.Among the possible candidates for how inner speech may prove cognitively ... Inner Speech and Mental Imagery: A Neuroscientific Perspective Inner speech has been investigated using neuroscientific techniques since the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the most important finding is that inner and overt speech differ in many respects, not only in the absence/presence of articulatory movements. In addition, studies implicate the involvement of various brain regions in the ... Speech Representation Definition. 1 Verbal narrative, it has long been assumed, is especially qualified to represent speech events because in this case, unlike any other, the object and the medium of representation are identical―language. The speech of characters can be represented directly, through quotation: "She said, 'No, no, I can't just now, but ... How Does the Brain Represent Speech? Summary. This chapter provides a brief overview of how the brain's auditory system represents speech. Animal experiments have been invaluable in elucidating basic physiological mechanisms of sound encoding, auditory learning, and pattern classification in the mammalian brain. The human auditory nerve contains about 30,000 such nerve fibers ... The emotional component of inner speech: A pilot These data also further support the hypothesis that phonological characteristics can be represented in inner speech. Recently, the special cognitive architecture of inner speech has been developed (Chella & Pipitone, 2020). This cognitive model is based on the integration of the Standard Model of Mind and Baddeley's working memory model. Inner Speech in Second Language Acquisition Inner speech is a socially derived mechanism that makes possible verbal (symbolic) thought. Lev Vygotsky (1986), who may be considered to date the foremost proponent of a theory of inner speech, maintained that to understand verbal thought it was necessary to trace the development of inner speech to its ontogenetic precursors. Working within a ... Inner represented speech Represented speech is form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the pecu­liarities of the speaker's mode of expression. Represented speech exists in two varieties: 1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered or inner represented speech. As has often been pointed out, language ... Represented Speech Represented speech is that form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the peculiarities of the speaker's mode of expression. Represented speech exists in two varieties: 1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered or inner represented speech. Работа по теме: Galperin ... A) Uttered represented speech Inner represented speech, unlike uttered represented speech, expresses feelings and thoughts of the character which were not materialized in spoken or written language. That is why it abounds in exclamatory words and phrases, elliptical constructions, breaks, and other means of conveying the feelings and psychological state of the character. ... Tim Walz's DNC Speech: 20 Minutes of Utter Lies, Stolen Valor The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com. AP Photo/Matt Rourke Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has formally accepted the Democratic Party's nomination to be Kamala Harris's vice president, giving the keynote speech on the third night of the party's national convention. Nancy Pelosi is a villain in Biden's inner circle Nancy Pelosi is a villain in Biden's inner circle — and a hero to the rest of the Democratic Party. ... In her speech Tuesday night, Pelosi ticked through a list of Biden's accomplishments and ... After historic speech by Teamsters president at RNC, it's clear The Democrats are trying to regain ground with union voters after Teamsters president Sean O'Brien delivered a firecracker of a speech at the Republican National Convention last month. DNC 2024: Kamala Harris speaks on Day 4 of the convention It's Day 4 of the DNC. Here's what to know: A look at the prepared schedule for the fourth and final night, which does not include potential surprise guests.; An unexpected highlight of the DNC Day 3 was an outburst of pride from Gus, the son of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.; What to watch tonight: Vice President Kamala Harris will accept her party's nomination during a speech in ... New data shows US job growth has been far weaker than initially ... US job growth during much of the past year was significantly weaker than initially estimated, according to new data released Wednesday. Barack and Michelle Obama boost Kamala Harris: DNC Day 2 takeaways Harris was offered up as the antidote in Obama's roughly 30-minute speech. He said Democrats cannot rest on past accomplishments, including his 2010 healthcare overhaul, but must not demonize ... Harris steps out of Biden's shadow Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, offered a similarly blunt assessment in a Tuesday evening convention speech. His wife can smell weakness, he said. "Kamala doesn't tolerate any B.S. assignment essay homework phd report resume review speech thesis