Think

Inner speech theory

Inner speech theories hold that thinking is a form of inner speech. This position, sometimes called psychological nominalism, maintains that thinking consists of silently evoking words and connecting them to form mental sentences. A person's awareness of their own thoughts is explained as a kind of overhearing of one's silent monologue. Three central features are often associated with inner speech: it is in some sense similar to hearing sounds, it involves the use of language, and it constitutes a motor plan that could be used for actual speech. The link between thinking and language is supported by evidence that thinking is often accompanied by muscle activity in the speech organs. Such activity may facilitate thought in certain cases but is not required for thinking in general. Some versions of the theory propose that thinking does not occur in ordinary languages like English or French but in a specialized symbolic system with its own syntax. This is known as the language of thought hypothesis.