INNER SPEECH

The impression of a ‘voice in the head’ while one is reading or writing. In discussing the impact of phonology upon reading, it is important to distinguish two types of speech code: the post-lexical inner voice, which encodes into phonological form the words that the reader has just read; and the pre-lexical phonological route, which, in an alphabetic system, enables the reader to work out the pronunciation of unfamiliar words.

Readers whose languages do not employ an alphabetic system still appear to employ an inner voice. Chinese readers sometimes confuse words which are phonologically similar as well as words which are similar in shape, suggesting that, during reading, logogram characters are encoded phonologically.

 Inner speech should be distinguished from subvocalisation evidence of activity in the speech tract while reading or writing is taking place. Subvocalisation may well assist the ‘voice in the head’ but it is not essential to it, since occupying the articulators by uttering nonsense noises during reading does not seem to impede inner speech.

Three important issues have been discussed:

Does inner speech contribute to adult reading or is it a relic of the way in which children acquire reading skills by reference to the spoken word? Adult silent readers read tongue twister sentences more slowly than sentences which are easier to pronounce. They also take longer to process sentences composed of words which rhyme but vary in spelling; and they make more errors in interpreting sentences which are homophonically misspelt (tie the not) than those which are anomalous (I am kill). These findings suggest that phonological coding does indeed contribute to the reading skill and affects speed of processing.

 How does inner speech contribute to reading? Early experiments suppressed inner speech, so as to see how reading was affected. They asked readers to engage in concurrent articulation, repeating meaningless spoken words while reading. This had a small slowing effect on the readers’ ability to judge whether two words on the page were similar in form (LEMON/DEMON) and similar in meaning (MOURN/ GRIEVE). It interfered much more with their ability to decide whether two words rhymed (HEARD/BEARD); and importantly, much more when they were required to process meaning at sentence level. From this, it was concluded that the inner voice does not support the process of matching words on the page to representations in the mind; but that its principal role is to support working memory. Working memory favours the storage of information in phonological form. By encoding a reading text phonologically, one ensures that it can be stored for longer and is thus available for higher level comprehension processes.

What form does inner speech take? Silent reading (average: around 300 words a minute) is much faster than reading aloud (average: around 150–200 wpm). However, the ‘voice in the head’ appears to follow closely behind the reader’s eye. So inner speech cannot involve an exact replication of the articulatory processes of spoken language. It may be that certain sounds are shortened or that certain words are omitted– or it may be that inner speech involves a code which is speech-like but much more condensed. When readers attempt to analyse what the inner voice says, they receive the impression that it encodes in full everything they have read. However, in focusing full attention upon inner speech, they may have resorted to a slower, more controlled and less efficient process than is involved in normal silent reading.

See also: Dual route, Phonological representation, Reading: decoding, Rehearsal, Subvocalisation

Further reading: Just and Carpenter (1987); Perfetti (1985); Rayner and Pollatsek (1989: Chap. 6)

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مواضيع ذات صلة

Problems with the dictionary view

The dictionary view

Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias

The encyclopaedic view of meaning

Embodiment and conceptual structure summary

Schematic systems

Semantic structure

Conceptual structure

Image schemas and abstract thought

Properties of image schemas

What is an image schema?

Image schemas