Volume 51, Issue 3-4 - The grammar of self-talk. What different modes of talking reveal about language

Self-talk has played an important role in theorizing about the function of language in the psychological and philosophical literature. Linguistic investigations of self-talk, however, are scarce. It is shown that there are several modes of self-talk including (i) thinking out loud, which is characterized by the absence of an addressee and (ii) having a conversation with oneself, which is characterized by the presence of a grammatically represented addressee role. In the latter, the person engaged in self-talk may hold the role of the speaker or the addressee. Thus, the grammatical restrictions on self-talk serve as a hitherto underexplored window into the grammatical representation of speaker and addressee roles. Different models for the syntax at the top are compared and an argument is made for Wiltschko’s Grammar of Interactional Language.

This commentary examines the claims of Wiltschko’s target article about the differences between I -centered and you -centered self-talk. Her paper represents an important exploration of the differential use of personal pronouns in self-talk. I include suggestions, questions, and examples that provide potential challenges to her interaction-based analysis of self-talk.

Having sounded a cautionary note on the precarious empirical basis that all theories of self-talk have to build on, I suggest that self-talk often involves some sort of pretence and that pragmatics may have a bigger role to play in accounting for Wiltschko’s data than she allows for.

This review provides comments on the attempts made in the literature to capture the way in which elements of conversational pragmatics impact the syntax of clauses. The focus is on the neo-performative and the interaction-based models, such as presented in Martina Wiltschko's target paper. Briefly, the observation is that the differences noticed in the technical implementation and the type of empirical data that support these models are quite superficial, while none of these models is yet comprehensive when it comes to the formalization of the pragmatic field from a cross-linguistic perspective.

Three issues are taken up: (a) Why do some people never use self-talk? (b) Self-talk is not describing but expressing one's feelings, a distinct type of speech act, which is part of the explanation why use of “you” is restricted in self-talk. (c) The use of “we” in self-talk.

This is a plea for viewing the phenomenon of self-talk in a broader perspective of the relation between the speaker’s thought and its externalisation through speech. I -centered versus you -centered self-talk are argued to provide end points of a spectrum rather than constitute a binary categorial distinction. It is argued that Wiltschko’s ‘structure on top’ can be reconceptualised to accommodate this gradation when it is viewed as conceptual structure that is sufficiently flexible. The argument is strengthened by associating properties of self-talk with properties of indexical thought, especially broadly understood de se thought, pointing out bidirectional explanatory benefits for theory of meaning on the one hand, and philosophy of mind, notably theories of self-ascription of beliefs, on the other.

In this commentary, I compare inner speech and self-talk. First, I argue that the question of whether we can perform speech acts in inner speech can also be raised with regard to self-talk. Second, I hypothesize that different cognitive mechanisms are employed (to different degrees) in I-centered self-talk and you-centered self-talk. Third, I argue that certain functions of self-directed speech may be better served by I-centered self-talk and others by you-centered self-talk.

This commentary addresses syntactic aspects of self-talk, as well as the relevance of literary sources and theories of the self.