Talk Out Loud is a podcast where the LGBTQ+ Community has center stage to tell their stories. Through sharing our experiences we celebrate accomplishments and learn from one another. Together we become empowered and reminded that anything is possible.
Introduction:
Talking to oneself out loud, often referred to as 'talk out loud', is a technology for thinking that allows us to clarify and sharpen our approach to a problem. This week, a woman was strolling in my street, walking in circles and speaking out loud to herself. People were looking at her awkwardly, but she didn't particularly mind, and continued walking vigorously and speaking.
Yes, that woman was me. Like many of us, I talk to myself out loud, though I'm a little unusual in that I often do it in public spaces. Whenever I want to figure out an issue, develop an idea or memorise a text, I turn to this odd work routine. While it's definitely earned me a reputation in my neighbourhood, it's also improved my thinking and speaking skills immensely. Speaking out loud is not only a medium of communication, but a technology of thinking: it encourages the formation and processing of thoughts.
The idea that speaking out loud and thinking are closely related isn't new. It emerged in Ancient Greece and Rome, in the work of such great orators as Marcus Tullius Cicero. But perhaps the most intriguing modern development of the idea appeared in the essay 'On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts During Speech' (1805) by the German writer Heinrich von Kleist. Here, Kleist describes his habit of using speech as a thinking method, and speculates that if we can't discover something just by thinking about it, we might discover it in the process of free speech. He writes that we usually hold an abstract beginning of a thought, but active speech helps to turn the obscure thought into a whole idea. It's not thought that produces speech but, rather, speech is a creative process that in turn generates thought. Just as 'appetite comes with eating', Kleist argues, 'ideas come with speaking'.
A lot of attention has been given to the power of spoken self-affirmation as a means of self-empowerment, in the spirit of positive psychology. However, as Kleist says, talking to oneself is also a cognitive and intellectual tool that allows for a wider array of possible use cases. Contemporary theories in cognition and the science of learning reaffirm Kleist's speculations, and show how self-talk contributes not only to motivation and emotional regulation, but also to some higher cognitive functions such as developing metacognition and reasoning.
If self-talk is so beneficial, why aren't we talking to ourselves all the time? The dynamic between self-talk and inner speech might explain the tricky social status of the former. Self-talk is often seen as the premature equivalent of inner speech – the silent inner voice in our mind, which has prominent cognitive functions in itself. The tendency to express our inner thoughts in actual self-talk, typical of children, is internalized, and transforms to voiceless inner speech in adulthood, as the developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky already speculated in the 1920s.
Self-talk is deemed legitimate only when done in private, by children, by people with intellectual disabilities, or in Shakespearean soliloquies. Vygotsky’s view stood in opposition to a competing one from the psychological school known as behaviourism, which saw children’s self-talk as a byproduct of (supposedly) less competent minds. But Vygotsky claimed that self-talk has an active mental role. He observed children performing tasks while speaking to themselves out loud, and reached thethat their 'private-talk' is a crucial stage in their mental development. Gradually, a child's interaction with others turns into an uttered conversation with the self – self-talk – until it becomes muted inner speech in adulthood.
Vygotsky's successors, such as the psychologist Charles Fernyhough, have demonstrated that inner speech goes on to facilitate an array of cognitive functions including problem solving, activating working memory and preparation for social encounters. It is inner speech rather than self-talk, then, that has been the focus of research in adults. However, the internalisation of self-talk isn't necessarily evidence of cognitive maturity: rather, it could represent the degeneration of an essential cognitive skill in the face of social pressure. The sociologist Erving Goffman noted that self-talk is taboo because it is a 'threat to intersubjectivity' and violates the social assumption that speech is communicative. As he wrote in his book Forms of Talk (1981): 'There are no circumstances in which we can say: "I'm sorry, I can't come right now, I'm busy talking to myself".’
So, the next time you see someone strolling and speaking to herself in your street, wait before judging her – she might just be in the middle of intensive work. She might be wishing she could say: 'I'm sorry, I can't chat right now, I'm busy talking to myself.' And maybe, just maybe, you might find yourself doing the same one day.