What does an entirely deaf person's internal monologue "sound" like?

GQ!

GQ!! And I wonder if they can hear voices with mental illness?

I used to think about this when I was a kid, random shit I know but there you go. It’s the same as blindness from birth, how do blind people visualise colours? Simple everyday stuff sighted folks take for granted. Sky being blue, grass green etc.

Visual. Many deaf people dream “in Sign” instead of hearing things in their dreams.

I have had perfectly good hearing my entire life, and I do not “hear” my internal dialogue. I sense it in words and in concepts. And the deaf are equally capable of learning words and their definitions; and of forming concepts. I suspect their internal dialogue is very much like that of us who have normal hearing—except when it comes to things that are exclusively aural. They probably do not conceive Beethoven’s 5th Symphony the same way I do, for instance.

@ETpro When you sense a word, how do you experience it. Using the word ‘sense’ suggests you relate it some how to one of the senses.

People dream in whatever sensory receptors they have available. If you have hearing loss, you dream in the other sensory receptors.

Of course the internal monologue would be in sign language. Those would be the symbols a deaf person manipulates in order to think. Since sign language is kinetic, not auditory, the thinking would have more of a physical component. Sort of dancing inside their heads.

But think about people with hearing. We are also used to seeing the symbols. So part of our imagination is aural and part visual. A deaf person would have the visual component, too.

Think a sentence. I’m thinking “what does it feel like to think/” Try to “watch” it internally to see how it takes place. Do you hear it? See it? Feel it?

For me, it’s really none of those things. The words kind of leap up into some place from which I can type them. My ears are ringing at the moment, for some reason, which is unusual and annoying. But I think the process of typing the words is crucial for them to become fully formed. Just as I need to speak the words in aural communication in order to know what I’m thinking. I suspect the thoughts I can think are different depending on the mode of expression of those thoughts.

When I am thinking inside my head (as opposed to expressing thoughts outside), the thoughts come quickly and can be lost quickly. Many times I’ll be thinking along and talking or writing, and then the thoughts will go faster than I can get them out. When that happens, many thoughts are lost.

I’ll think of two points at once, and then I’ll remind myself that this is when I lose thoughts, so I try to keep a hold of them both, but inevitably, one comes out first and when I go looking for the other, it isn’t there any more. Sometimes if I replicate the chain of thought I can recover it. Other times, not.

I’m tempted to say that a thought doesn’t exist until expressed. But that’s not really true. There is definitely this line of patter—words—going on inside me. Where they come from is a mystery to me, and that’s a mystery I’d love to solve. I think they come from the mind that has no words. But if so, how do they get to the word mind? I’m imagining a soft, spongy floor surrounding a dark pool from which a geyser erupts from time to time, spewing thoughts into the air. The minions grab the words, and rush them into the main office, where “I” decode them and decide which ones to express to the outside world.

I find this interesting, because there isn’t actually a voice in my head. I think more like.. text, almost. It is almost like reading, not like listening.

My wife is deaf, and she describes her inner monologue no differently than I experience.

@filmfann was she born with hearing loss or did it occur later in life?

She was born profoundly deaf

@filmfann were you born profoundly deaf too?

@filmfann Thanks for some very cogent testimony. That was my point. I grok the words, but I don;t hear them.

@bkcunningham I am hearing.

@stump No, I don’t relate words to any particular sense. I just think about what they mean. I don’t see them, or hear them, or taste them or any such. I just contemplate meaning. I thought that’s how everyont’s internal dialogue worked. Is it not?

@ETpro No, it isn’t. For many people, myself included, we imagine ourselves speaking our thoughts in our head. When I meditate, and am able to stop the inner monologue, I become aware of a deeper level of mind at which ideas flow without taking word form. I have never considered this level thinking, but intuiting. In order for my mind to use words, I must imagine I hear them, imagine I see them, or actually say or hear them.

@stump Thanks for that info. Fascinating. I never realized I was in the least bit unique in that. I knew I was a kook on hunmdreds of other counts, but here’;s one more. :-)