The varieties of Inner Speech worth pursuing. Foundations for a phenomenal taxonomy

Giacomo Ettore Tullio Romano

Abstract


AbstractInner Speech (IS) falls within the purview of various fields of inquiry, including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and, more recently, neuroscience. Due to the diverse aims, methodologies, and scopes across these disciplines, there exist inherent ambiguities that could impede the development of a unified research program or hinder the convergence of disparate disciplinary investigations into a cohesive whole. Therefore, in this article, my aim is to clarify the terminology, concepts, and expressions employed by scholars from different fields. I will achieve this by compiling and synthesizing appropriate theoretical and analytical proposals from contemporary IS scholars, while also subjecting a select few of these proposals to critical examination. Ultimately, I will present a fundamental taxonomy, which, nonetheless, relies on two essential postulates: (1) IS must be characterized based on its intrinsic nature of attentive conscious experience; (2) IS must be unequivocally considered as an intrinsically linguistic phenomenon.

Keywords: Inner Speech; Introspection; Psychology; Linguistics

 

Le varietà di discorso interiore su cui vale la pena riflettere. Fondamenti per una tassonomia fenomenica

Riassunto: Il discorso interiore è oggetto d’indagine in diversi ambiti disciplinari, tra cui la filosofia, la psicologia, la linguistica e, più recentemente, le neuroscienze. A causa delle diverse finalità, metodologie e specificità di queste discipline, emergono ambiguità intrinseche che possono ostacolare lo sviluppo di un programma di ricerca unitario o impedire il convergere di indagini disciplinari differenti in una prospettiva coerente. In questo lavoro voglio quindi chiarire terminologia, concetti fondamentali ed espressioni utilizzate dagli studiosi nei diversi campi di ricerca. Il mio obiettivo è raccogliere e sintetizzare le specifiche proposte teoriche e analitiche avanzate da coloro che, in tempi recenti, si sono occupati di questo tema, sottoponendo al contempo alcune di queste proposte a un esame critico. Presenterò infine una tassonomia di base che poggia su due postulati essenziali: (1) il discorso interiore deve essere caratterizzato in base alla sua natura intrinseca di esperienza cosciente e attenta; (2) il discorso interiore deve essere inequivocabilmente considerato come un fenomeno intrinsecamente linguistico.

Parole chiave: Discorso interiore; Introspezione; Psicologia; Linguistica


Parole chiave


Inner Speech; Introspection; Psychology; Linguistics

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Riferimenti bibliografici


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.4453/rifp.2024.0010

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