Brief Notes on Intrapersonal Communication

_{artwork: Cihan Hasan}

Brief Notes on Intrapersonal Communication by Zişan Ada Çayır

When people think about language, they usually focus on either literary works including (but not limited to) poetry, newspaper articles, or communication. As for communication, people lean towards the type of communication between two people which is called interpersonal communication. This focus on interpersonal communication is especially seen in discussions about the origins of language. People naturally gravitate towards the assumption that language was born out of the need for informing and having discussions with others et cetera. However, there is more to language than these. In this article, I would like to focus on an often neglected type of language use instead: Intrapersonal Communication.

Throughout last semester, my personal studies were mostly about how people perform actions with language. In terms of forming major categories for doing something by saying something, the most used modes are thinking and communicating. There are also minor categories/modes for each mode to show different ways of realization. Communication can be divided into two: interpersonal and intrapersonal.  (It is worth mentioning that a given utterance can perform more than one mode at the same time. If you want to learn more on how modes and their models work, you can take a look at the further readings section below this article.)

Mode of communication’s widely acclaimed models such as Roman Jakobson’s Six Functions of Language and Speech Act Theory developed by Austin and later on Searle focus on interpersonal communication. Therefore, I asked myself “What do we do with language when we are alone?”. It is not so rare to verbalize our thoughts to ourselves when we are by ourselves. Furthermore, many people may engage in intrapersonal communication in public while they are having interpersonal communication. Let’s be honest here, I think we all had some mean stuff we articulated inside our minds, but we chose to stay silent because of social codes. It is also true that some people, especially neurodivergent people, do not have an inner voice/ inner monologue. However, that does not mean that those people do not engage in intrapersonal communication. Example given in this paragraph is not the only way of engaging in it.

In fact, intrapersonal communication has more than one way of realization. As mentioned in the article “Types of Inner Dialogues and Function of Self Talk: Comparisons and Implications” written by (Oleś et al., 2020) one of the many modes of intrapersonal communication is “internal dialogue”, which suggests that the sender and receiver are different persons. To give an example, scenarios you form in your head about your last argument: what you could have said, and how you could reply with a better response to your friend is considered internal dialogue. In this mode, intrapersonal communication functions as a way of thinking as well. There are other functions mentioned in (Oleś et al., 2020) if you want to learn more.

I would love to talk more on this topic, but I can only do so much. If you want to discuss and share additional articles, I would be more than willing to talk in the comments section below.

Sources and Further Reading

Besides the modes of communication and thinking, Alessandro Duranti proposes a third way of studying language in his book Linguistic Anthropology: Cultural Practice

Oleś, P. K., Brinthaupt, T. M., Dier, R., & Polak, D. (2020). Types of Inner Dialogues and Functions of Self-Talk: Comparisons and Implications. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00227

Cite this article as:

Çayır Z. A. (2025 March 12). Brief Notes on Intrapersonal Communication. The Hacettepe University Linguistics Community. https://hulinguistics.com/brief-notes-on-intrapersonal-communication/