"[Inner speech] is not quite the way we'd talk to those around us, though, with its cropped syntax and a 'note-form' shorthand that represents your familiarity with your own thoughts."

— Horowitz, Alexandra


Date
August 2, 2019
Metaphor
"[Inner speech] is not quite the way we'd talk to those around us, though, with its cropped syntax and a 'note-form' shorthand that represents your familiarity with your own thoughts."
Metaphor in Context
Of course, through all our talking, dogs are more or less silent. Researchers keep looking for the language-using dog, though. Some dogs -- like the Border collies Rico and Chaser, who died last week -- have learned hundreds upon hundreds of words. Dogs in fMRI studies both distinguish familiar from nonsense words and process the emotional content of words. Nonetheless, dogs are not talking back. Some scholars think dog-human communication represents a "human fantasy" of how communication might go: all listening, no responding. "We like our pets' silence," the animal studies researcher Erica Fudge suggests, "because it allows us to write their words for them." I do think this begins to explain our nonstop chatter with dogs. When we talk to dogs, it's as if our private speech, the conversation we're having in our heads, has slipped out.

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, formulating his theories of child development, described a stage of children internalizing conversations with those around them -- social speech -- into a conversation in their own heads. He called it "inner speech" and thought it enabled children to use language to reflect on and consider their own behavior. We continue that monologue with ourselves as we age into adults. It's not quite the way we'd talk to those around us, though, with its cropped syntax and a "note-form" shorthand that represents your familiarity with your own thoughts. But it's just like what we're saying to our dogs -- as if they were in our heads.
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Alexandra Horowitz, "Things People Say to Their Dogs," The New York Times (August 2, 2019). <Link to nytimes.com

Reading in print. Sunday Review, p. 7.
Theme
Inner Speech
Date of Entry
08/06/2019

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.