Who are Thoughts Speaking To?

We often talk about thoughts as if they were an outpouring of words, with word after word reeling off like widgets coming off an assembly line. When I hear my thoughts they are more like participants in a conversation. As social animals, our behaviors are often communicative acts. And that includes cognitive behavior. Seen in this way, thoughts that involve words could be considered a type of communicative behavior: silent speech acts. When I become aware of thoughts, they are almost always talking thoughts. By “talking”, I mean they are prosodic, with conversational inflections – not just reflecting semantic content but also employing rhetorical devices, as if trying to have an effect on an audience. And they seem to be talking to someone. Who’s the audience? Sometimes oneself – like when we try to persuade, remind or convince ourselves of something: “You idiot! Why did you do that?” “God, you’re good!”, “Remember to buy cheese”. Sometimes the audience is someone we know, like when we replay a difficult conversation but fix our part to produce a better outcome (in our heads). Sometimes the audience has no specific identity; we’re simply engaging in a silent monologue. Even though monologists are speaking to no one in particular, they are still speaking to be heard.