Let's highlight the main types of human speech. This is oral and written speech, dialogical and monologue speech, external (sounding and conscious) and internal (not accompanied by sounds and not conscious) speech. Let us briefly define all the types of speech indicated above. Oral speech is called speech, with the help of which people directly communicate with each other, pronouncing certain sets of sounds associated with certain objects or phenomena known from experience. These sets of sounds are transmitted and perceived by other people by ear through the corresponding fluctuations in air pressure. Oral speech does not involve the use of signs depicted on any material media and perceived visually or by touch (such as writing signs for blind people). Written speech is called speech based on images of symbols (signs, letters, hieroglyphs) on any or material media: on papyrus, parchment, paper, monitor screen, on any other visually perceived material. Written speech has a figurative basis; in it, any images are used to convey the content of the statement. Dialogical speech is a speech in which at least two people participate. Each of them utters a remark addressed to another person or several people; their own speech utterances, in turn, act as reactions to a replica of a given person. A monologue is a speech that belongs to only one person, pronounced from beginning to end only by himself. For example, it can be a text written by one person, a speech delivered by one person and not interrupted by the remarks of other people. Oral monologue is the speech of a person in front of the public. Dialogue involves the repeated interruption of the speech of this person by the statements of other people; at the same time, the remarks of each of the participants in the dialogue act as speech reactions to the statements of other people and without this they may be incomprehensible to those who listen or read this dialogue. The monologue, in turn, does not imply any speech reaction on the part of the person who perceives it and should be understandable in itself. Both dialogue and monologue can be, respectively, oral or written. In an oral dialogue, for example, a person can make a speech on behalf of two or several different persons, successively changing roles with them (if more than two people participate in such an exchange of speech remarks, then their joint conversation is called a polylogue). This is what actors often do. Writers often reproduce various forms of written dialogue in their literary works. External (sounding, conscious) speech is called such speech, which is realized by the speaker himself and which is also perceived by other people. In everyday business, household and other types of communication, we constantly use this speech to exchange information with each other. Inner speech is a special kind of speech that is involved in managing only internal, psychological processes that occur in a person’s head. This speech has its own characteristics and its own specific functions. Let us consider them in more detail and illustrate them with relevant specific examples. Inner speech is primarily silent speech. When a person uses this type of speech, he does not pronounce words aloud and does not produce any sounds that could be perceived by himself or others. The process of generating this speech is a completely internal process that does not have obvious external manifestations. Inner speech is unconscious. When a person uses inner speech, he himself is not aware of this fact and, in connection with this, cannot say which words, phrases, etc. he speaks in inner speech. It follows, for example, that a person is not able to consciously control the process of his inner speech. Inner speech has its own special structure that distinguishes this speech from other varieties of speech. First of all, it is predicative. This means that in inner speech there are only words and expressions related to the predicate of the utterance, and there are practically no words and expressions related to the subject of the utterance. Second, inner speech is agglutinated. Inner speech is used by a person only to organize his own thinking and to control his mental processes, states and behavior. It is never used as a means of exchanging information or communicating between people. This does not mean that a person is not able to convey to other people what exists at the level of his inner speech. But he does this not with the help of inner speech as such, but with the help of other varieties of speech, in particular those of which we spoke above. Inner speech can pass into other types of speech, and the process of this transition is also basically internal.

In accordance with the functions, external and internal speech is distinguished.

Inner speech is the linguistic formulation of a thought without its expression, oral or written. The process of internal, mental speech proceeds at great speed; it is not the same and differs in the degree of linguistic formalization depending on its purpose.

So, preparing at the level of inner speech, i.e. “to ourselves”, a sentence for recording, we build it strictly according to the rules of grammar, using various constructions, for example, subordinate clauses, isolated secondary members, we verify the correctness of case endings, personal endings of the verb, we use all the necessary prepositions, conjunctions, sometimes we even outline punctuation marks.

However, simply thinking about our actions, without the intention of describing them, reflecting, indulging in memories, without the intention of speaking, we do not adhere to the rules of the language so strictly, and in our inner speech, images and diagrams, representations of the world around us, which, like words, the role of signs.

In the life of a modern person, inner speech plays a very important role as a means of theoretical, cognitive activity: a person “silently” generalizes and comprehends information constantly coming from the outside world through receptors, “silently” reads and processes information gleaned from books, “silently solves problems, makes decisions, etc.

Since inner speech is intended only for itself, and the thinking subject himself understands himself literally from a half-word, it is fragmentary, fragmentary, very dynamic, and lacks a strict grammatical structure. Because of this, by the way, there are situations known to every teacher: the student is sure that he knows the material of the lesson, because at the level of his inner speech he understands himself: he really caught some connections in the topic being studied. But to tell this material coherently, consistently, as required by the conditions of the lesson, he cannot because of the gap between internal speech and external, oral. The student understands the logic of his thought, but he poorly formulates it in external speech, and his answer turns out to be incomplete, incoherent, insufficient, and difficult to understand.

The simplest, accessible to everyone method of studying inner speech is self-observation. Specialists also use the method of registering micro-movements of articulatory organs in the process of inner speech.

More on the topic § 15. TYPES OF SPEECH. INTERNAL SPEECH:

1. 48. Ways of transmitting someone else's speech. Direct speech, indirect speech, indirect speech.
2. Section I. LANGUAGE AND ITS MAIN FUNCTIONS. SPEECH: TYPES AND FORMS OF SPEECH TEXT AS THE LEADING UNIT OF COMMUNICATION
3. 7.45. Alien speech. The concept of someone else's speech and ways of its transmission
4. L.S. Vygotsky’s Understanding of Inner Speech and the Logic of Dialogue
5. Part I. ORAL SPEECH Chapter I. CULTURE OF PRE-LETTEN SPEECH

One of the most difficult problems studied by philosophy, general linguistics and psychology is the relationship between language and consciousness, speech and thinking. Inner speech is mental speech, therefore, this chapter introduces the reader to the understanding of this problem.

External speech and internal speech are opposed to each other according to the following characteristics:
a) by purpose, by goals: external speech includes a person in the system of social interaction, internal speech not only does not fulfill this role, but is also reliably protected from outside interference, it is realized only by the subject himself and can only be controlled by him (internal speech in its content , of course, is associated with social life);
b) external speech is encoded with its own codes available to other people - acoustic, graphic, codes of body movements, intonations; the code of internal speech is used along with the same language as in external speech (for example, Russian), but its external manifestation is hidden, not amenable to perception by other people. At different levels of the depth of inner speech, images, representations, concepts, schemes, etc. are used; usually this whole complex is called the code of thinking, the mental code.

Inner speech is verbalized thinking. In essence, a person’s thought could “work” without verbal elements, but in fact, verbal elements connect thinking with the outside world, with society, with the solution of external problems of a personal and social plan. Inner speech, as it were, serves the outer and all the actions of a person.

It is presented in the following situations: when solving various problems in the mind, often at great speed (on the streets of a large city, a car driver solves four mental tasks per second, and each task costs a lifetime); when listening carefully to the interlocutor, the listener not only repeats the speech he is listening to to himself, but also analyzes and even evaluates both from the point of view of truth and by the mastery of the language, the same - when reading to himself; when mentally planning their activities; when purposefully remembering something and when recalling. Through inner speech, the process of cognition is carried out: internal, conscious construction of generalizations, verbalization of emerging concepts; definitions are built, logical operations are performed. At the mental level, self-regulation, self-control and self-esteem are carried out.

One of the main roles of inner speech is the preparation of outer speech, oral and written statements. In this role, it is the initial stage of the forthcoming utterance, its internal programming.
Let us note that in a person's ordinary life, external speech takes no more than two or three hours; only some professions require a significant excess of this norm: teaching, information service, etc. Inner speech serves a person almost around the clock. But the degree of its “verbality” is not the same.

The question of the origin of inner speech is ambiguously resolved: it arises in a person either as a result of internalization (going deeper) of the child’s external, especially egocentric, speech - talking with himself during the game (L.S. Vygotsky’s hypothesis), or simultaneously with external speech, with speaking and listening as a result of the silent repetition by the child, in the first and second years of life and later, of the words of adults addressed to him (the hypothesis of P.P. Blonsky). The second hypothesis still has more grounds, since it allows for the almost simultaneous speech and mental acts. Without such unity, the assimilation of speech would be difficult.

It is extremely difficult to draw a line between inner speech and thinking: many psychologists even identified inner speech and thinking, as L.S. Vygotsky (Vygotsky L.S. Thinking and speech // Collected works: In 6 volumes - Vol. 2. - M., 1982. - P. 105). He also notes that thinking and speech in their development converge and diverge, merge in their separate parts, then branch out again (Ibid. - P. 89).

Due to its “hiddenness”, inner speech is difficult to study in comparison with external speech. Therefore, it is necessary to describe the methods used to study inner speech.

method of self-observation. It is available to everyone, but scientific accuracy of observation requires special knowledge in the field of language and speech, clearly set goals, self-observation tasks, for example: how do I choose the right word? Do I reject words in the selection process? How does this happen? How satisfied are you with your choice? How do I understand the content of the text being read? Do I perceive the meaning of the sentences in whole or in parts? If in parts, what are their sizes? What is the scope of my proactive synthesis when mentally compiling a text and writing it down? Etc. All the results of self-observations are recorded, compared and, with a significant number of attempts, allow us to draw conclusions, the reliability of which is determined by the formulas of probability theory.

The study of speech errors. Errors in the use of words, in the construction of a phrase, various substitutions of phonetic units, morphemes, etc., accumulate, they are classified, their number is brought to statistically significant values. The causes of errors are analyzed. Often such an analysis allows us to understand how a particular mechanism of speech works.

The typical mistakes of representatives of such professions as secretary-typist, typesetter-linotyper, computer typist, proofreader, graphic designer, journalist are studied; mistakes of students, pupils of schools are studied.

Comparison of internal and external speech. The following tasks and questions for self-observation are proposed: are spelling, punctuation, grammatical marking observed in inner speech? Are mental intonations possible? What syntactic constructions are preferable in inner speech? What will be revealed when comparing the speeds of internal and external speech? Is self-control possible in inner speech?

Building hypotheses, modeling based on hypotheses with subsequent verification. An example of the Depth Step of Inner Speech is given below.

There is also such a method for studying inner speech - electromyographic reactions. With the repetition of the same mental actions, speech-motor impulsation decreases, and with the transition to others, it again intensifies. Micromovements of the pronunciation organs accompanying inner speech can be recorded. Fortunately, little progress has been made along this path. "Fortunately" because any attempt to read minds is beyond the scope of scientific ethics.

Let us now consider the situations of inner speech, the conditions for its flow.
Preparation for an oral statement, as a rule, is not provided with a margin of time, the lead here is insignificant. The search for optimal language means is reduced to a minimum; a huge role belongs to linguistic instinct - intuition, speech experience.

The preparation of a written text, as a rule, is provided with the necessary time, and sometimes with aids: dictionaries, reference books; there is the possibility of editing, improving, critical self-examination, etc.

Inner speech, like outer speech, is not devoid of emotions. Positive emotions and moods contribute to success up to inspiration, help in achieving good results, raise ordinary activities to the level of creativity. But the semiotics of the world of emotions only to a small extent uses language codes.

Situations of inner speech-reading: quiet reading at the pace of colloquial speech allows re-reading, thinking, weighing two or more options for reading comprehension, referring to other sources of information, summarizing (mental), generalization, highlighting the main thing - all this constitutes the content of reading.

Any reading - aloud, to oneself, dynamic reading - involves the active work of the imagination, visual representations, etc. Reading generates a whole imaginary world that is controlled by the experience of the subject's life, and read texts, and logic, common sense.

Inner speech prepares and composition is mental creativity: the accumulation of material, its selection and evaluation, highlighting the main thing, designing the text, working on the composition, predicting the perception of future readers, choosing words, creating images, allegories, building rhetorical figures, selecting and considering means of expression . Much of what has been listed will not be made public.

Next - the performance of mental operations of analysis and synthesis, abstraction and concretization, comparison and opposition, construction of judgments and conclusions, generalizations, proofs, modeling, construction and testing of hypotheses, problem solving ... All these operations are usually performed at the internal level, only results, conclusions, decisions are voiced or recorded.

The most free, individual are reflections, memories, dreams.

Naturally, in such a variety of situations and conditions of inner speech, its verbal component may lose, at least partially, its position, its role. Language units are being replaced by signs from other code systems: these are images - visual, auditory, olfactory, schemes of various types, moral feelings, moods - from major and minor to remorse, to reverence for the beautiful. The variety of means of the spiritual world of man is inexhaustible.

One of the topics of psycholinguistic research is the so-called deep structures of inner speech and thinking.

The tasks of this course allow us to limit ourselves in this matter to just a few steps “in depth”. Let's start counting from the dividing line between the materialized, recorded speech, all the preparation of which proceeded at the internal level. Imagine that the film frames of this film ran backwards.
Step one into the "depth" of inner speech.

Let's imagine the following situation: the subject "x" writes a business letter: mentally composes the text, checks and rechecks each word, rebuilds the construction of the phrase. He brings the text to perfection: are there any repetitions, are all grammatical connections correct. Checks if the text does not allow for ambiguous interpretation - after all, this is a business letter, perhaps a monetary one. All this is done in the mind - in whole or in parts.

This is the first step in depth. This is, in essence, inner speech only insofar as it is not translated into a sound, acoustic code or is not recorded in a graphic code. Otherwise, all the details of inner speech in this situation do not differ in the degree of completeness and correctness from the attributes of external speech. But even at this first stage, inner speech retains its main property: it is inaccessible to other people, not materialized, its code is internal, it is accessible only to the subject himself.

At this stage, the code of inner speech, although mental, is at the same time verbal, because its units are linguistic; other, non-verbal units (for example, visual images), if they flicker, do not play a significant role.

Life gives us examples of creative activity at this level of inner speech. Thus, the poet Boris Ruchiev created his book of poems "Red Sun" for many years in the camps of the Gulag, he kept the texts in his memory for about twenty years, polished and processed them. This fact is exceptional and tragic; but doesn’t each of us keep in mind and repeat to himself individual phrases, and proverbs, and entire poems, theatrical roles, repeats many times, so as not to forget, not to distort.

So the first stage of inner speech performs functions very close to those of external speech, except for communication, the transmission of one's thoughts to others.

The second step in depth.
Situation: I am preparing for an oral presentation on an important topic: it may be a report, or a lecture, or something less significant.

It happens that in such situations the text is compiled in advance, recorded, memorized. But this is not the case in our version: there is a mental preparation. There is not always time for writing, but the one whose speech is sufficiently developed deliberately refuses to pre-record the text: it prevents him from improvising.

However, even such improvisers prepare a detailed plan, individual formulations, names, dates, numbers.

And yet, compared with the first stage, there are many differences: there is no concern for spelling, punctuation, and even more so for calligraphy, grammatical marking means are not verified, the choice of words is less strict in advance, far from all sentences are drawn up, especially paragraphs are not observed. True, there is concern about the pace of speech, volume, timbre, intonation. But these characteristics are relevant only for oral speech.

In general, inner speech at the second level of depth is mainly verbal.
The third stage of the depth of inner speech is inner preparation in the process of speech itself, sometimes in fast, monologue or dialogue. Unlike the first two stages, self-observation is difficult here.

In this variant of inner speech, the automatic choice of words and the construction of sentences and text are especially important. All language facilities should be highly activated; it is necessary that the anticipatory synthesis of mental speech be sufficient.

At this stage, inner speech overcomes its discreteness, it must unfold as a single sequence, continuity must be observed not only within the sentence, but also in the text. Starting a phrase, the speaker does not yet know how he will finish it, with what words. But in general terms, he already has a scheme for the upcoming speech.

The accuracy of the transmission of the idea, the correctness of the construction of speech in such conditions is achieved by many years of training. For successful internal, mental preparation of quick speech, organization of the material is also required - what you are talking about, a clear plan, as well as self-control and willpower, the ability not to get lost in case of failure, for example, when it is difficult to choose a word. A quick rebuild is needed: the fix should not be noticeable. The pause should be natural. However, pauses in improvisation are rarely blamed on the speaker, they interfere more with him than with the listeners.

It is easy to see that at this stage of inner speech it also has a verbal character, thought and speech are closely merged.

At the same level of depth is the inner, mental speech at the time of reading, aloud or to oneself (we are talking about conscious reading, of course).

Reading is the translation of graphic complexes (words, their combinations) into mental, inner speech, which becomes the understanding of the text being read. This mechanism will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 14, Modeling the Speech Perception Process.

If the internal preparation of the upcoming speech consists in the transition to the sound, acoustic code of speech, then in reading (as well as in the perception of oral speech) we see the reverse process. Moreover, the process itself is not discrete, perception is both holistic and differentiated, word by word. Synthesis and analysis are merged.

The next, fourth, step deeper.
I solve a problem: mathematical, chess, spelling, engineering - it doesn't matter. Everything - mentally: motivational stage - awareness of the goal, conditions; indicative stage - attraction of rules, formulas, choice of strategy for solving the problem; operational stage - the implementation of a number of rule-like actions using formulas, drawings and other auxiliary means; finally, the control and evaluation stage, checking the correctness of the solution of the problem, conclusions. Here, the linguistic, verbal basis coexists with other, non-verbal signs: digital designations, symbols, drawings, names of chess pieces and board cells, etc. are used. In some cases, visual images, integral pictures are required, images and schemes are used. N.I. Zhinkin highly appreciates the role of the speech-motor code in inner speech (kinesthesia, sensations of moving organs of speech).

In other words, as inner speech deepens, its verbal part decreases, and images, schemes, non-verbal sign units play an increasing role.

Fifth step deep.
I am resting in the forest, around - amazing beauty, the scent of pine trees, the voices of birds. Half-forgotten pictures of youth emerge from the recesses of memory, the smoke of a fire, friends and girlfriends in a clearing, a guitar, an unforgettable voice... At this level of depth, words lose their leading role in mental speech. The main role here is played by images - visual, auditory, olfactory. This internal speech-thought loses its structure adopted in the language, but a considerable place belongs to emotions.

At this depth, the function of consciousness control, volitional and regulatory principles are weakened to the limit.
Meanwhile, this level of mental speech occupies a very significant place in a person’s life and has many options: this is empathy with the heroes of the movie, and complete immersion in the world of music, and mental reading of favorite poems to oneself, and a passion for creativity - painting, for example, and “quiet » hunting - picking mushrooms in a clearing, in the shade of birches.

The extremely deep level was called the “functional basis of speech” by I.N. Gorelov is a psycholinguist, researcher of deep structures. This, according to his hypothesis, is the level of concepts that have not yet been formalized by the words of any of the languages: this level is international.

Such is the world of inner speech, unusually rich, but also mysterious in many ways.

In linguistics and psycholinguistics, the phenomena of external and internal speech are distinguished.

External speech - ego speech, materially designed in sounds or graphically, addressed to the interlocutor or audience.

Therefore, it is often characterized as speech "for others". It has a distinct linguistic structure, being carried out in the form of words and sentences, although in different communication situations the degree of its syntactic formalization may be different. So, in a lively dialogue (in spontaneous speech), disconnections, incompleteness and incompleteness of sentences, logical "jumps" are possible.

Inner speech is a special, not materially expressed form of verbal and mental activity, speech “for oneself” and “to oneself”.

It is constantly present in our minds when we just think, or listen to someone, or read. The transition from inner to outer speech (i.e. from thought to speech on the same topic) is often felt as a difficulty in the speech formulation of a seemingly clear thought. This alone suggests that there are serious differences between external and internal speech.

Let's ask ourselves two questions first:

• 1. Do we think with language?
• 2. Do we think with words?

The answer to the first question will undoubtedly be positive. The linguistic form of thinking is quite obvious, if only because a person who speaks two or more languages ​​can usually say in which language he always thinks or in a certain situation. Case in point: speaking at the Oscars, Polish director Andrzej Wajda began his speech in English, and then apologized and switched to Polish. The apology was: “I will speak Polish because I want to express exactly what I think and feel. And I always think in Polish.” This is also evidenced by the need for “internal translation” into the native language when reading to oneself a text in a foreign language that one does not speak fluently enough, and the well-known evaluative formula: “O// knows English (German, etc.) so well that he even thinks in English (German, etc.).”

However, the second question (do we think with words?) can raise legitimate doubts and thus give rise to a new question: how do we think? Since inner speech does not have a tangible material form, flowing in our minds in the psychophysical mechanisms of neurons, hidden from direct perception, it is much more difficult to study than external speech. Even if it were nevertheless possible to record it, as we record a sounding speech on a tape recorder, it would remain absolutely incomprehensible to us.

One way to study inner speech is self-observation, or introspection(from lat. introspecto- I look inside), but this does not give the necessary results, since only the last phase of thinking can be observed on oneself - the expanded phase of internal pronunciation, which really differs from external speech only in the absence of voicing (phonation) - i.e. it is "speech minus sound". Try to check what has been said: you will definitely begin to reason about yourself. However, it is clear that more often than not we think differently. By how?

It can be argued that when we start thinking about how we think, we start thinking differently (not exactly the same) as we normally think. Therefore, to study inner speech, special experimental methods are needed, which modern psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics have at their disposal and which really made it possible to learn a lot about the place of language in our thinking. In particular, the study of the formation of a child's speech skills, as well as various speech disorders associated with damage to the cerebral cortex (a subject of neurophysiology and neuropsychology), gives a lot. As a result, it was possible to experimentally confirm and clarify those qualities of inner speech, which, long before the advent of modern psycholinguistic methods, were written in the book Thinking and Speech (1934) by the famous Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky, who drew his conclusions based on observations of the early stage of the speech of the child - the so-called egocentric children's speech (speech "for oneself").

The main features of inner speech are:

• a) phase;
• b) reduction;
• c) predictability.

The phase nature of inner speech as a thought process is manifested in its heterogeneity at different stages of the work of consciousness. There are usually two phases: reduced and expanded (internal pronunciation). The phase of internal pronunciation, which, as already mentioned, differs from external speech only in the absence of sound and is accessible to self-observation, can immediately precede external speech (for example, pre-thinking the answer to an exam or thinking through some serious conversation). The reduced phase is more typical of the thinking process and at the same time more complex. Further we will talk about this phase.

The reduction of inner speech is felt by a person already at the level of everyday consciousness. Let's think about the comparative "thought capacity" and "speech capacity" of some period of time, for example, a second. It is quite obvious that the “thinking capacity” of time is many orders of magnitude higher, which is captured in the expressions “a thought flashed” (but not “speech flashed”!), “I instantly remembered, imagined, etc. Experimentally, this is proved for all levels of the language structure: phonetic, lexical, syntactic.

On the phonetic level, articulation is replaced only by impulses coming from the cerebral cortex to the corresponding organs of speech. It is significant that it is easier for a child to think aloud, and he first learns to read aloud, and only then - to himself, but at the same time continues to move his lips for a long time. The presence of articulatory impulses is the more obvious, the more complex the mental task being solved. This is proved by a special experiment, during which electrokymograms of movements of the muscles of the tongue and lower lip are recorded in the process of thinking, and the length and density of the recorded wave is directly proportional to the complexity of mental work.

In an experiment conducted by A. N. Sokolov, the same subject, student K., was asked to first extract the square root of 190, and then the square root of 225. In the nervous case, the electrokymogram is three densely filled lines: the subject is long and tense thought, trying to calculate the root of 190. In the second case, this is a short and almost even line: the subject quickly remembered the familiar number "15" (see Fig. 10.1).

Rice. 10.1.

On electrograms I, II and III, the potentials of the muscles of the tongue (a) and lower lip (b) were recorded at the moment of extracting the square root of 190 in the mind (with an approximation of 0.1); on the IV electrogram - when extracting the square root of 225 in the mind. Subject K., student. He calculated the square root of 190, and the square root of 225 "just remembered."

At the lexical level the degree of reduction - and the saving of time - is incomparably greater. We do not think in words in the full sense of the term "word". In inner speech there are only hints of a few generalizing words related to this topic: being semantic complexes, they can be expanded if desired. It is due to the fact that we think not in words, but in “clumps of thought”, “quanta” that suddenness and speed of thought is possible => [Chr.: p. 433, Sokolov]. At the same time, such “inner words” are completely devoid of grammatical structure and in external speech can be realized by different parts of speech.

It is extremely important that in inner speech a significant place is occupied by images, representations that replace words and make the thought very capacious. Indicative in this regard is Albert Einstein's answer to the questionnaire “How your scientific thinking is carried out” common among the world's leading scientists: “Words, how they are written and pronounced, apparently do not have any role in my thinking. More or less clear signs and images of physical realities act as elements of thinking.<...>I diligently look for words and other symbols and find them at the second stage, when the described game of associations has already been established ... ".

Let us also pay attention to the phrase "game of associations". For inner speech in the phase under consideration, not so much logical as associative connections are important. That is why, when thinking, we so easily “jump” from one thought, one topic to another, not always catching this “Brownian movement” (B. M. Gasparov’s metaphor) of our thought.

At the syntactic level the reduction of inner speech is manifested in the absence of complete sentences. At the same time, the subject is omitted from the thought, which denotes the already known in the sentence, but the semantic predicate (not necessarily the verb!), Which contains the grain of thought, the new one, to which we, thinking, are moving, is preserved. The semantic predicate is otherwise called a predicate, therefore the described property of inner speech, following L. S. Vygotsky, is called predicativeness => [Chr.: p. 430, Vygotsky].

Situation Example

An approximate idea of ​​​​inner speech, in particular about its associativity and predicativity, can be obtained from the texts of the "stream of consciousness" literature. Let us use as an example a fragment of the reflections of the hero of the novel "Thoughts and Heart", written by the famous cardiologist surgeon Nikolai Amosov, who also dealt a lot with the problem of the brain and consciousness:

“A note of thoughts... The colors of autumn are carmine, cinnabar. Yellow. What are yellow? I used to draw and buy paints. Forgot. Yes, ochre. End of September. [Associative transition]. And I have autumn. Sixty years later. It's probably already October. [Second - reverse - associative transition]. The leaves are yellow and even green, but already inanimate. Dry. And rare - you can see the sky through them. The lively flow of thought will be transmitted by short, including one-part and incomplete sentences, associative switches.

• Sokolov LN Inner speech and thinking. M., 1968. S. 27.

human inner speech is a complex, completely unexplored phenomenon studied by psychology, general linguistics, and philosophy. Inner speech in psychology is a hidden verbalization that accompanies the process of thinking. This manifestation represents the ratio of mental operations, language components, communication interaction, as well as consciousness. Simply put, it is verbal mental functioning. In fact, human thoughts are able to "work" without verbal elements. However, in fact, verbal structures combine mental operation with the external environment, society, and the solution of personal issues and social problems. Mental speech is often presented as a "servicing" mechanism for external communication and all active operations of the subject. Consequently, inner speech reveals itself as a silent instrument, a hidden verbalization that arises from mental functioning. It represents a derivative form of sound speech, consciously adapted to the performance of mental functions in the mind.

Inner and outer speech

There are 3 types of forms of communicative interaction through language structures, namely external, written and internal.

How is external speech different from internal speech? The first is turned outward, to the people around. Thanks to it, thoughts are broadcast, while the inner one is silent speech, reflects what the subject thinks. Both of these types of communication are interconnected. Simply put, external speech is for the environment, and internal speech is for oneself.

The features of inner speech lie in its exclusivity, that is, it does not reflect into inner speech, does not precede it. It begins at the age of seven and comes from the egocentric, outward-looking speech of toddlers. Egocentric communication through the language component in a child is speech directed inward in terms of mental functioning and directed outward in terms of construction. With the beginning of the school period, the transformation of egocentric communication into internal occurs. In addition, there is a distinction between two speech operations: egocentric communication and the delimitation of speech for the environment and for oneself, from a single speech operation.

The characteristic of inner speech is represented by the following features: brevity, fragmentation, fragmentation. If it were possible to record an internal conversation, then it would turn out to be incomprehensible, incoherent, fragmentary, unrecognizable in comparison with the external one.

Outwardly directed communication is predominantly carried out in the form of a dialogue, which always involves visual acceptance of the interlocutor, his sign language and acoustic understanding of the intonational aspect of the conversation. Taken together, these two features of external communication allow interaction through hints, understanding understatement.

The inner speech of a person is not exclusively a conversation about oneself. Performing the function of regulation and planning, it is characterized by a reduced structure other than external communication. In terms of semantic meaning, communication “to oneself” never means an object and does not carry a purely nominative character. In a word, it does not include the "subject". It shows exactly what needs to be done, where the action should be directed. Structurally, while remaining concise and amorphous, it retains its predicative orientation, defining only a plan for a further proposal, a judgment, or a scheme for a further operation.

Features of inner speech are represented by the following characteristics: soundlessness, fragmentation, generalization, secondary (education from external communication), greater speed (in relation to external), no need for strict grammatical design.

Often, directly speech structures in the course of communication “to oneself” are replaced by auditory, visual ones. There are interdependencies and manifestations of external communication and communication “to oneself”. First, before the sound presentation of a thought, a person in an internal conversation draws up a scheme or plan for a future statement. Secondly, the written presentation is mainly preceded by the pronunciation of words, phrases mentally, during which there is a selection of the most suitable structures and the placement of pauses in the ensuing written statement. Thirdly, with the help of an electrophysiological study, the presence of hidden articulation in the process of internal communication was revealed.

Therefore, communication "to oneself" for the implementation of an external conversation performs the necessary preparatory function.

External communicative interaction can be oral or written. The first is a sounding speech, characterized by relatively free norms in relation to the requirements of exemplary language means. It covers: speaking (broadcasting acoustic speech signals that carry some information) and listening (understanding acoustic speech signals, as well as receiving them).

Oral speech is embodied in two directions: everyday (colloquial) and public. In order to differentiate them, the term “speech situation” is used, which means a lot of circumstances that affect the implementation, its structure and content. This leads to the existence of the following definitions of public communication. First of all, public communication refers to the type of oral interaction, which is characterized by such elements of speech conditions: a large audience, the formality of the event (concert, meeting, lesson, lecture, meeting, etc.).

Everyday communication is a kind of oral interaction, the speech conditions of which are formed by: a small number of listeners and everyday environment (that is, not official).

Inner speech according to Vygotsky

Many “gurus” of psychology have been working on the problem of the relationship between mental activity and verbal communication, and to this day many “gurus” of psychology are working.

L. Vygotsky established that words play a significant role in the formation of mental operations and mental processes of human subjects.

Thanks to the experiments conducted by L. Vygotsky, it was possible to detect in younger preschoolers the presence of a form of communication incomprehensible to the adult environment, which later became known as egocentric speech or “communication for oneself”. According to L. Vygotsky, egocentric communication is the carrier of the emerging thinking processes of babies. In this period, the mental activity of the crumbs only enters the path. He proved that egocentric communication is not just a sound accompaniment to the internal thought process that accompanies the movement of thoughts.

Egocentric thinking, according to Vygotsky, is a single form of existence (formation) of children's thoughts, and there is simply no other, parallel, mental reflection in children at this stage. Only after passing the stage of egocentric communication, mental processes in the course of internalization and subsequent restructuring will gradually transform into mental operations, transforming into internal communication. Therefore, egocentric inner speech in psychology is a communication tool necessary for regulating and controlling the practical activities of children. That is, it is a communication addressed to oneself.

It is possible to determine such features of inner speech, in addition to the above: reduction of phonetic aspects (the phonetic side of communication is reduced, words are guessed by the intention of the speaker to pronounce them) and the prevalence of the semantic load of words over their designation. Verbal meanings are much broader and more dynamic than their meanings. They reveal other rules of association and integration than verbal meanings. This can explain the difficulty of shaping thoughts in speech for the environment, in sound communication.

Consequently, in children, the external manifestation of speech is formed from a word to several, from a phrase to a combination of phrases, then to a coherent communication consisting of a series of sentences. Internal communication is formed in a different course. The kid begins to “pronounce” a whole sentence, and then proceeds to comprehend individual semantic elements, dividing the whole thought into several verbal meanings.

The problem of inner speech

To this day, the problem of inner speech is one of the rather complex and completely unexplored issues. Initially, scientists believed that internal communication is similar in structure to external communication, the difference lies solely in the absence of sound accompaniment, since this speech is silent, “to oneself”. However, modern research has proved the fallacy of the described statement.

Inner speech cannot be perceived as a silent analogue of external communication. It differs in essential features of its own structure, first of all, fragmentation and curtailment. An individual who uses internal communication to solve a problem understands what problem is set before him, which allows him to exclude everything that names the problem. In the net result, only what needs to be done remains. Simply put, a prescription for what the next action should be. This characteristic of inner speech is often referred to as predicativity. She emphasizes that it is important not to define the subject of communication, but to tell something about it.

Inner speech is often elliptical, so in it the individual skips those elements that seem understandable to him. In addition to verbal formulas, images, plans and schemes are used in internal communication. To put it simply, within itself the subject may not name the object, but present it. Often it is built in the form of a synopsis or table of contents, that is, a person outlines a topic for reflection and omits what needs to be said, due to fame.

Inner speech and the latent articulation caused by it should be considered as a tool for purposeful selection, generalization and fixation of information obtained through sensations. Hence, internal communication plays a huge role in the process of visual and verbal-conceptual mental activity. In addition, it is also involved in the development and functioning of the individual's voluntary actions.