¤ jetless heights

makin’ tea in your underwear

+ Wed, October 20

No Voices-In-My-Head Cracks, Please

I’m taking a linguistics class this semester and last night, while reading in bed and slowly fading out of consciousness, something I read got me thinking about that voice in your head.  The one you hear when you read to yourself or think a thought in words - not that other one I’m expecting you all to make jokes about in the comments.  What voice is that?  Why does it feel like you hear it when you’re obviously not and why am I calling it a voice?  How is it able to play back music, drum kits and guitar parts included, when there’s absolutely no way you could possibly make that noise with your body?

If there’s a term for this, or any information online about this that you know of, I’d love to hear it.  Has  anyone ever even studied this really?  Weird stuff.

7 people have chimed in.
→ Add your 2¢ by reading through and commenting at the end.

1 → Dan  –  (Oct 20 2004, 10:57 AM)

I’ve got a whole coursepack full of this stuff from my philosophy class last year—“Thinking and speaking about thinking and speaking.”  It focused more on intentionality, ie: what you mean when you say “mean”, but we addressed language and whether it is something that we hear/learn and then use (pragmatic) or of it is something we have (ie: inner voice/language) and then express.  It’s really cool, but so very very aggravating.  Stay away from it Phil, don’t fall into the trap.

2 → pd  –  (Oct 20 2004, 11:26 AM)

I see that dichotomy, but it’s not quite what I’m referring to.  Certainly, I believe, thinking in words is not the native mode.  Try doing math work via this internal speech.  I’d say there’s a more natural conceptual level most thinking is done at.  This leads me to wonder where/how this voice you hear developed?  Is it just a form of imagination, similar to how you can imagine detailed events and sensations that have no basis in reality?  I’m leaning towards that explanation, but then again, I really have no idea.

3 → colleen  –  (Oct 20 2004, 12:03 PM)

” Without moving either lips or tongue, we can talk to ourselves or recite silently a piece of verse. We grasp th ewords of a language as sound patterns. That is why it is best to avoid reffering to them as composed of ‘speech sounds’. Such a term, implying the activity of vocal apparatus, is appropriate to the spoken word, to the actualisation of sound pattern in discourse. Speaking of the sounds and syllables of a word ned not give rise to any misunderstanding, provided one always bears in mind that this refers to sound pattern.”

Ferdinand de Saussure

From the book ’ Course in General Linguistics’
Part One, General Principles
Chapter I
Nature of the Linguistic Sign.

We had to read this for my cultural semiotics class….There are a ton of interesting concepts in this book, I highly reccomend it to you, youd love it.

4 → shanecavanaugh  –  (Oct 20 2004,  1:49 PM)

This might be of interest:

“A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly, it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal chords do receive speech signals from the brain.”

5 → skippy  –  (Oct 21 2004, 11:14 AM)

i find the lack of comments about the voices phil hears in his head disturbing. how many of these voices do you hear phil? do they ever tell you to dress like a clown and kill people? do they send you to the store to buy  large amounts of green peppers to add to your brownies? where are the comments like this i have come to know and love from that man who always says “chug a beer!”….. sigh, when you dont get a comment from the beer drinking man, thats when you have to wonder what this sights is coming to

6 → skippy  –  (Oct 21 2004, 11:16 AM)

sorry about that phil, i know what your comment for this post was, but i couldnt let your commentary in the main body of the post down. you expected it, so i gave it to youu

7 → Gabe  –  (Oct 24 2004,  1:21 PM)

There are also thoughts that are created without one’s knowledge… like the song in your head that is playing without you knowing… a smell that reminds you of something from a long time ago….  synapsis that just won’t die…

A THOUGHT went up my mind today 
That I have had before, 
But did not finish, some way back, 
I could not fix the year, 
 
Nor where it went, nor why it came       
The second time to me, 
Nor definitely what it was, 
Have I the art to say. 
 
But somewhere in my soul, I know 
I ’ve met the thing before;       
It just reminded me t’was all
And came my way no more.






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