Posted: 12/23/2007 1:15:46 PM EDT
| If a person is deaf from birth, what does their inner dialogue sound like? |
Well yeah, I know. But if a person is deaf and dumb, has never spoken or heard a word in their life, how do they carry on an inner dialogue? I guess we all did it as infants, but we've since forgotten how we did it. |
Yes, but wasn't this possible because she had some memory of speech and vision from when she was a baby? |
Dono, but I do know that deaf children do not learn language normally (and can be detrimental if the deafness is not detected early) and thus never "think" the same way normal people do. It is similar to ferral children. Blind children do not really have this issue, though it is harder because the can't see the objects being referred to. |
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You don't need linguistics for communications, it's just that we're so prejudiced towards it since we (that can hear) have lived our whole lives with it. You can still desire to do things; not being able to put a sound to them doesn't really mean anything I don't believe. To make it less deep (and maybe easier) imagine a baby before they learn language, or an animal without language. They still manage to formulate ideas and then execute them without benefit of a verbal language. Also, something to keep in mind; there's no evidence the not being able to hear means you have no auditory sensation/hallucination. It's possible they're just thinking in a foreign internal language. Lastly consider how you normally go about your day when you're performing a more mundane task that doesn't require a lot of forethought, or when you're using muscles to perform some kind of action. You don't consciously will yourself to move each individual muscle when doing something like writing your name, or turning the steering wheel, you 'just do it.' It's an abstraction that may be more pervasive in the people you're wondering about. :) |
I dunno. As a general rule, mine isn't, so it's hard for me to identify with the notion of thinking "in words" because I'm not really sure what it means, or precisely what people are referring to when they talk about it (I've had conversations with people about this in the past). To me, it seems like having to think about things using language would be horrifyingly restrictive, and would slow down thinking enormously. For me, it only involves words when I'm about to open my mouth and articulate a sentence, or preparing a presentation or something like that - that involves the specific use of language. Otherwise, words aren't involved. |
I've always defined an inner dialogue as talking to yourself in your head. "ok, gotta leave in 10 minutes, lemme make sure I have everything I need, ammo, yep, targets, yep, range bag, yep..ok, let's head out the door, don't forget the keys, hmm looks like decent weather today, oh Bob's son's truck is in their driveway, I guess he's home on christmas break" |
Well, I'm not talking about thinking about something in words before you do it. I don't do that either. I'm talking about when you're thinking about... "stuff". Like when you plan out your day, or remember things that you have to do, or you're using your imagination to plan your next project, etc. Inner Dialogue has more to do with talking to yourself, mentally, than with performing tasks. |
When I do that kind of stuff, words aren't involved. When I think about how to write this sentence, words are obviously invovled. |
It's defnitely tough to even figure out exactly WHAT we are talking about, beause "thinking" and cognition are such hard concepts to specifically define and talk about. But as far as I can tell, words are definitely not invovled when I am using my imagination to plan a project, or remember things that have to be done, or planning my day, etc. |
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Unrelated question to you DK-Prof. When speaking a language that is not your native tongue, are you thinking in your own language? When I speak Arabic, I'm thinking in English, translating into Arabic, then speaking Arabic. Will this go away when you attain fluency, or does the transition just become smoother? |
So if you're sitting there, imagining that you're building an AR15, at no point do you refer to the parts as "bolt carrier group" or "handguard" in your head, you just visualize the parts with no reference to the name? |
No. I KNOW what a bolt carrier IS. Why would I need to spend mental time thinking the word "bolt carrier"? It's just a label for when I need to communicate with OTHERS - I don't need it in my head. I'm not even sure how to explain it - it's not necessarily just a substitution of a visual image for a linguistic label or word - but it's a matter or just fitting the mental concepts together, not spending time with words or pictures. I'm honestly not trying to sound either arrogant or flip  . It's clearly a hard thing to "put into words" (haha - that's funny  ). But to me, what you are describing just seems very odd, and I'm not even sure how I would do that.
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Well, I don't NEED to do it. It's just something that happens unintentionally. Basically, when I visualize an item, I tend to put a name to it involuntarily. You're right, explaining one's thought process to another isn't easy. 
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Neither Danish nor English. Although if I have to do something like count - that obviously does require "words" (if I'm lifting weights, or something where counting is required), I sometimes find myself doing it in Danish, and sometimes in English - so there doesn't seem to be a pattern.
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When I was learning German, I eventually did get to where I would think in German instead of English. I distinctly remember walking across campus after German class one day, still thinking about what we had just been discussing, when someone called "good afternoon" out to me. I very nearly blurted out "Guten Tag" without thinking at all. But anyway, yes, you'll probably eventually be able to start thinking in the other language. The real key to fluency, though, is when you're listening to someone speak and can tell where the words start and end even when you are unfamiliar with the specific word(s) being used. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think it has something to do with learning enough words as well as gaining a feel for the cadence of the language so you don't get lost in a jumble of syllables when you hit an unknown word or phrase. Back to the OP's point, I suspect that the person will have their own 'tags' for stuff that they'll use in an internal monologue. As a stupid example: I never paid any attention to the actual names of the Greek letters used in Physics equations when I first learned them in high-school, so I made up my own names for the letters. This was a problem when I took Greek some years later and had to first unlearn my own made-up names and then learn the real names of the letters. But I also agree with DK-Prof that I don't always think in language. Sometimes I do, but other times I tend to think in pictures, or something else. Another example: a few weeks ago, I was talking about history with someone and he asked how I 'saw' history. He described imagining a vertical timeline, with more recent events towards the top. I described seeing history in three ways: as a horizontal timeline, with more recent events to the right, and as a map (especially European, north African, and Near Eastern history; I don't know the maps associated with other parts of world history as well). |
I bet it's some weird shit. However, if they've never visually SEEN anything, do they see anything at all when they dream? Perhaps it's just blackness. I guess they could see the images they have formed in their head of what things look like. |
I grew up speaking two languages, and later on learned a third. When dealing with my native languages, there was no translation process; thoughts formulated themselves in which ever language i was speaking at the time. For my "learned" language, I would translate first from one of my native languages. From what I've read, the likelyhood of you being able to "think" in a language is dependent on how young you learn it; if you're past your late teens, chances are you will never be able to "think" in a learned language, but will always go through the translation process inside your head. |