Chapter 7: Reflective and Pre-Reflective Inner Speech

Talking about the phenomenon of inner speech is talking about the functioning of consciousness. Vygotsky made a detailed description of the microgenetic development of inner speech, which takes place from the deepest zones of thought to vocalized speech. He refers to forms of inner speech in which thought is not mediated by the word, and advanced forms of inner speech when thought is mediated by the word. Edmund Husserl, on his part, in his attempt to develop a transcendental phenomenology, proposes a complete theory of reflective and pre-reflective consciousness in human experience. In this chapter, an integration between the Vygotskian theory of inner speech and the Husserlian theory of consciousness is made, to reach a phenomenological description of what we have called reflective and pre-reflective inner speech.