Speaking for Thinking: “Thinking for Speaking” Reconsidered

Abstract

Two connected questions that arise for anyone interested in inner speech are whether we tell ourselves something that we have already thought; and, if so, why we would tell ourselves something that we have already thought. In this contribution I focus on the first question, which is about the nature and the production of inner speech. While it is usually assumed that the content of what we tell ourselves is exactly the content of a non-linguistic thought, I argue that there can be a lot of transformation in the process of converting a thought into words. Thus, the content of what we tell ourselves, being intrinsically linguistic, is different from the content of the thought our speech transmits. Fleshing out this kind of approach implies dealing with complicated questions which we lack enough knowledge about: the nature of non-linguistic thinking is, and how speech (inner and overt) is produced; i.e., how the speaker goes from format a (format of thought) to format b (language). I show that these are pressing issues for any other position, but also suggest ways in which we could tackle such complicated issues.KeywordsInner speechThinking for speakingSpeech productionLinguistic relativity