Inner speech has been a focus of multidisciplinary interest. It is a long-standing phenomenon of study in philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. Researchers from different disciplines have turned their efforts to understand this inherent experience of being "talking to oneself". In psychology, Vygotsky managed to develop a complete description of the phenomenon, giving rise to a great line of research related to inner speech in the human experience.
Including a compilation of theoretical and empirical advances related to inner speech phenomenon, this book is aimed at academics and researchers in the area of psychology, education and culture. This book will be of interest to international research programs, related to cultural psychology, socio-constructivism, developmental psychology and education.

Pablo Fossa is a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. He received a PhD degree in Psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He later held a postdoctoral position financed by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) of Chile, with a research project on thought trajectories from a microgenetic orientation. His research lines are related to Cognition, Cultural Psychology and Phenomenology. He is also an active member of the Society for Historical Cultural Activity Research (ISCAR), International Society for Dialogical Self (ISDS) and International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP). Currently, he is PhD candidate in Philosophy at Universidad de Navarra, Spain. 

INTRODUCTION

Pablo Fossa, Editor.

 

 

PART I - THEORETICAL ADVANCES ON INNER SPEECH

 

Chapter 1

Reflective and Pre-reflective Inner Speech.

Pablo Fossa, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile.

 

Talking about the phenomenon of Inner Speech is talking about the functioning of consciousness. Vygotsky made a detailed description of the microgenetic development of Inner Speech, which takes place from the deepest zones of thought to vocalized speech. By this, he refers to forms of inner speech in which thought is not mediated by the word, and advanced forms of inner speech when thought is mediated by the word. Edmund Husserl, on the other hand, in his attempt to develop a transcendental phenomenology, proposes a complete theory of reflective and pre-reflective consciousness in human experience. In this chapter, an integration between the Vygotskian theory of inner speech and the Husserlian theory of consciousness is made, to reach a phenomenological description of what I have called Reflective and Pre-Reflective Inner Speech.

 

Keywords: Inner Speech; Reflective Consciousness; Pre-Reflective Consciousness; Vygotsky; Husserl. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

The constitution of the identity and the role of the otherness: Arguments from psychoanalysis and cultural psychology in order to consider the inner speech

Raffaele de Luca Picione - Giustino Fortunato University, Italy.

 

A long-standing tradition in philosophy, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc., has showed that human identity is not a monolithic object, namely a static and not divisible entity; rather it is a dynamic structure, where the alterity plays a great function in its constitution and in the development of interacting stances. In this sense, a recursive process occurs in the development of human identity by means of an ongoing dialogue between the inner and the outer, the part and the whole, the intra-subjective and the inter-subjective, the individual and the social. Considering primarily  the contributions from the cultural psychology and psychoanalysis, the author argues the identity is a liminal process of sensemaking, namely an affective semiotic process aimed to organize itself between continuity and discontinuity, several point of views on the world, different systems of intersubjective relations.

 

 

Chapter 3

Inner Speech: Living Materiality of Incessant Formations

 

Marie-Cécile Bertau, University of West Georgia, USA, mbertau@westga.edu

Andrea Karsten, Universität Paderborn, Germany, andrea.karsten@upb.de

Antonia Larrain, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile, alarrain@uahurtado.cl

 

Vygotsky's (1987/1934) considerations of inner speech represent a cornerstone of cultural-historical theory. His approach is unique in theorizing mutual formations of language and thinking. Inner speech appears as both an inbetween process belonging to the thought and the word as well as a distinctive formation, i.e. displaying an own form within pluriform speech activities. Vygotsky describes inner speech by linking his ideas in particular to Jakubinskij's (1979/1923) dialogic-pragmatic linguistics articulating the entangled dynamics between body and language in different forms. Starting with Vygotsky and continuing the dialogic line incipient in his late work, we base our approach in dialogism and view inner speech as an activity producing our life and common world through incessant living material formations. We develop four key arguments to articulate inner speech beyond idealistic, mentalistic and materialistic views. First, we insist on inner speech as language: the verbal aspect of inner speech has to be recognized and cannot lose its pragmatically founded dialogicality. Second, inner speech is material, it displays a moving, oscillating materiality considered core to its understanding. Third, inner speech is a distinctive formation, while of transitional quality. How relations of inner speech to social speech and experiences of "inner" and "outer" can theoretically be made fruitful without ontologizing container spaces will be addressed. Fourth, inner speech is specifically dialogical: its formations display dialogic relations to forms of social speech as given by the sociohistorical and biographical developments of inner speech and by actual interactions within what we call a stream of language formations.

Key words: inner speech, language activity, language form, body, dialogism, Vygotsky, Jakubinskij

 

 

Chapter 4

The institution of interior life

Victor Rosenthal - Institut Marcel Mauss (CNRS/EHESS), Paris.

 

I intend to recast the issue of our having an interior life, not as an avatar of an innate or pregiven apparatus (call its psyche or soul), but as a social process of institution in which the phenomenon of talking to ourselves (in Greek: epilegein - "to say more"), of inner speech emitted by our own voice plays a major role. Indeed, the very idea of interior life hinges upon our being on speaking terms with ourselves and to converse at any time with our own self. For this very reason, inner speech is an essential vehicle of semiotization of human existence and enables the institution of full-fledged forms of interior life. It substantiates the intricate nexus of the social and the individual in each human being: it incarnates the social character of interior life and at the same time embodies the individual dimension of our selfhood as it plays the dual function of an agent of our social world (shared language, conversational codes, cultural repertories) and makes up a vehicle of individuality (autonomy of attention, intimate spokesperson). Moreover, inner voice (but isn't it also outer, since we hear it) is also the voice of the subject as a person and as a moral instance. For, because I talk to myself, I am two-in-one, and I have to live up to the constraints of this coexistence (the pressure of the other voice), to become accountable to myself (if I disagree with other people, I can walk away; but I cannot walk away from myself; if I do wrong, I have to live along with a wrongdoer). Viewed as the principal agency of interior life, inner voice is the device which seems to endow us with a moral stance and to confer upon us the status of a thinking subject. And finally, it is also the necessary component of self-government, intersubjectivity, self-knowledge and social knowledge.

 

 

PART II - EMPIRICAL ADVANCES ON INNER SPEECH

 

In this section we present two empirical approaches to exploring inner speech. The first of them a biographical investigation of a single case and, the second, an experimental phenomenological approach to Inner Speech.

 

Chapter 5

Discursive markers of subjectivity in inner biographical speech

Andrés Haye - Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Antonia Larraín - Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Alberto Hurtado.

 

The chapter contributes to inner speech theory and research, linking discourse-analysis tools to the problem of identity as involved in autobiographical speech, and presenting an empirical study that deepens our understanding of the discursive complexities of inner speech. Far form being abbreviated and private, inner speech can be highly differentiated in subjective nuances and highly political. The concept of inner speech endorsed includes both self-directed speech and interpersonal speech. The mail focus of the chapter is the relevance of distinguishing thre layers of subject formations in discourse: the subject of enunciation and subject of the utterance, of the enunciation and of the narrative.

The chapter explores discursive markers of subjectivity. Based on studies on identity construction in talk, we understand discourse as the home of self-hood and in particular life narrative accounts as works of identity. From this perspective it is possible to see how identity does not only expresses though discourse but also is generated by discursive operations. Moreover, a dialogical approach to inner speech and autobiographical discourse implies the orchestration of a multiplicity of voices in discourse. We can describe operations of discursive differentiation and articulation not only tracing identity work across different contexts but also from-within, distinguishing layers of subjetivity crossed by the difference between author (subjective positioning towards the story) and hero (character that the narrative describes of talks about), which destabilizes both the unity of the subject and the coherence of the narrative.

The chapter addresses an example with detail: The biographical discourse produced by one Chilean man aged 88, based on both life-story interviews and spontaneous recording, summing about 70 hours of transcribed discourse. Analyzing the uses of the 'I', we propose some distinctions among voices, distinguishing in specific examples who is qualified in the utterance, who emits an utterance, who is the responsible for an utterance, and who endorses the point of the utterance. We propose to organize the operations involved in the effort after identity in these instances in terms of three conceptual categories: The 'I' of autobiographical discourse is used to produce a hero by accounting for a continuity of motives or of learning; to produce a narrator by the articulation of pronouns, subjective verbs, style, and modalization; and to produce a speaker by reference to the conditions or experience of enunciation, the speaking body, or an image of the author. Based on this case study, we elaborate on theoretical issues regarding the notions of discourse and inner speech, and their relation to the problem of identity performativity. The chapter also discusses methodological issues, particularly the relevance of a biographical approach to discourse studies.

 

Keywords: identity, subject of enunciation, biographical methods, discourse analysis, autobiographical discourse.

 

 

Chapter 6

AN EXPERIMENTAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY TO INNER SPEECH

Mayte Vergara-Manríquez, Valentina Carrera-Arévalo, Victoria Silva-Mack, Alejandro Troncoso Trujillo, Ignacio Cea Jacques & David Martínez-Pernía.

 

Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Chile.

 

 

INTRODUCTION: Traditionally, inner speech has been studied from different cognitive perspectives, which have implemented many third-person methods (EEG, fMRI, eye tracker, self-report questionnaires, among others). Nevertheless, the study of the subjective experience associated with the inner speech has been neglected. OBJECTIVE: To study the inner speech from an experimental phenomenological approach in a healthy population sample. METHOD: To this end, an experimental psychological design, previously used in affective neuroscience, was implemented. Twenty-eight healthy subjects were exposed to videos of other people having car accidents. Immediately after the exposure to the stimuli, a phenomenological interview was conducted to gather data about bodily sensations, emotions, motivations, and inner speech of watching other people's accidents. Data analysis was made through the descriptive phenomenological psychological method. RESULTS: An experiential structure arose following the analysis. It showed that participants' inner speech was related to thoughts and judgments concerning the drivers' health condition mixed with negative thoughts. Simultaneously, participants' inner speech happened with negative emotional feelings, aversive kinesthetic motivations, and many bodily sensations. In addition, a temporal structure was found: at the beginning of the video, the inner speech was mainly related to the expectations about persons involved in the car accident and participant's distress. At the moment of the collision, the inner speech turned to the concern of the other and unpleasant feelings. Finally, after the accident occurs, participants wished for the welfare of the subjects, and they felt their bodily relaxation. DISCUSSION: Our findings show that inner speech is not merely a psycholinguistic process, but rather it is an experience constituted by bodily sensations, emotions, motivations, and inner speech. Our phenomenological results are discussed from an enactive approach and the neurobiological empirical evidence.

KEYWORDS: Inner Speech - Phenomenology - Experimental Setting - Bodily sensations - Emotions - Motivations.

 

 

PART III - FINAL COMMENTS

 

 

Conclusion

Pablo Fossa, Editor.