International Journal of Language and Culture - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2025

Solitude speech has been viewed as dialogic, especially by Western scholars (Bakhtin [1929] 1984; Vygotsky [1934] 1986). This study investigates the prevailing belief by focusing on a ‘self-regulatory’ type of Japanese solitude speech, based on data collected in a sequential multiple-task experiment. It was revealed that Japanese self-regulatory solitude speech shows dialogic traits in terms of lexico-grammatical features and sequential structures. The results contrasted with those of our earlier research on an ‘expressive’ type of solitude speech (Izutsu et al. 2022), which were found to be monologic for Japanese response cries but comparatively more dialogic in the case of their American English counterparts. This shows that expressive solitude speech is conceived as either monologic or dialogic, depending on cultural beliefs of the speakers, while self-regulatory solitude speech prefers a dialogic conception with less cultural diversity. It is also suggested that such a dialogic perspective is likely to arise from “the demands of thinking” (Nishida [1911] 1990).

This study examines speakers’ self-reference as part of genuine vocalized self-addressed solitude speech, with particular focus on different distribution patterns for second-person self-reference in English and Japanese in two types of self-addressed solitude speech (self-blame and self-encouragement). English displays a strong preference for solitude speakers’ second-person self-reference. By contrast, Japanese exhibits a persistent adherence to first-person for solitude speakers’ self-reference, which is also affirmed in another type of solitude speech termed ‘self-command.’ The notable preference for second-person self-reference in English can be ascribed to the socio-cultural value of speaker responsibility that necessarily presupposes the presence of an addressee. The adherence to first-person self-reference in Japanese, on the other hand, can be attributed to socio-cultural values in Japan, where interpersonal events are inevitably construed in terms of on and giri (‘benefit from others’ and ‘responsibilities one owes to others,’ respectively). Based on the examination of nine additional languages (Amdo Tibetan, Chinese, French, Korean, Malay, Marathi, Mongolian, Spanish, and Thai), we also demonstrate that the distribution patterns of second-person self-reference in self-blame and self-encouragement are captured in an implicational hierarchy.

This paper investigates the occurrence of solitude speech in self-quotations of speech and thought by looking at non-standard written communication online in three Uralic languages: Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian. Four different realizations of solitude speech are found in self-quotations of three languages: (i) evaluations of verbal information, (ii) evaluations of the reporter’s action, (iii) self-guiding solitude speech, and (iv) Goffmanian ‘response cries.’ The last type is typical for situations the speaker finds problematic and may occur in the presence of other speakers, while the other types occur when interlocutors are absent. Although evaluations of written verbal material are specific to mostly cultures with a written tradition, similar evaluations, though targeted at the surrounding environment, occur among speakers from cultures with predominantly oral traditions, illustrated with material from traditional narratives of the Northern Siberian Uralic language Nganasan.

Self-referential solitude speech invokes diverse conceptions of its speakers in different languages. In unvocalized solitude speech, the speakers are conceptualized as hearing their other selves in Ainu, as directing the speech to their other selves in English, and as holding the speech content in mind rather than directing the speech to themselves in Japanese and Korean. These four languages further differ in the range of pronominal reference to the thinking and speaking self in solitude speech. Ainu prefers second-person self-reference in unvocalized speech, not in vocalized speech, English and Korean encourage or tolerate second-person self-reference in both vocalized and unvocalized speech, and Japanese disfavors second-person self-reference in both types of speech. These cross-linguistic similarities and differences can reflect socio-cultural assumptions and worldviews of the relevant linguistic communities. We explore some relations between each language’s (dis)preference for solitude speakers’ split-self conception and assumptions/worldviews that encourage or discourage that conception.

We analyze the theater performance of a dilemma enacted as dialogic solitude speech, involving fictive interaction (Pascual 2002, 2006, 2014). The scene, from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, represents the conflicting thoughts of character Lancelet as clashing advice from two invisible interlocutors, i.e., Conscience and Fiend. The actor swiftly and constantly shifts viewpoint between the three, employing linguistic, vocal, gestural, spatial, and artifactual signs. We find that: (i) the scene involves intricate conceptual mappings between the theater script, the character’s mental world, and the Here-and-Now of the on-stage performance; (ii) such an imaginary dialogue is particularly suited for theater expression, rendering characters’ thoughts accessible to the audience, who are turned fictive bystanders (see Xiang 2016); and (iii) this fictional solitude-speech performance is deeply rooted in the societal norms and values of Shakespeare’s age. We suggest that the interactional structure of inner speech may be as varied as the outer speech that it mimics and emerges from.

Many of the ancestral languages of Australia’s 250+ Aboriginal cultures employ extensive avoidance registers used in speech situations involving community members with whom one is prohibited from interacting under customary law, so-called ‘avoidance relatives’. Marking in avoidance languages signals that the speaker is talking as if not in the presence of the avoidance relative, which recalls Hasegawa’s (2011) category of formal, intentional soliloquy, or solitude speech. Because avoidance language equally serves to show to others that the speaker engages in an intentional soliloquy, I refer to this phenomenon as ‘displayed monologue’. The present study provides a first detailed description of Yalan, an avoidance language traditionally spoken by the Ngarinyin Aboriginal people of Western Australia. It reports on the pragmatics of Yalan as told by Ngarinyin Elders and highlights linguistic aspects of Yalan that are not commonly given much prominence in the wider literature on Aboriginal avoidance speech. I argue that the Ngarinyin practice of Yalan both shows the deep connection between language and social organisation, a fundamental metapragmatic understanding of the inherent dialogicity of language on the part of Yalan speakers, and a remarkable sensitivity for selecting those linguistic elements that mark an utterance as if it were solitude speech.