Assuming a performative notion of language, this contribution addresses how language functions as a symbolic means and asks for its function for the dialogical self. In accordance with a nonindividualistic notion, individuals are related to each other within and by virtue of an in-between. This in-between is called "spacetime of language": a dynamic evolving across time, perceived as linguistic forms with their chronotopology and the positionings of the performers (self as-whom to other as-whom). With respect to the linguistic forms, the specificity of language functioning is described by Bühler's term of displacement. The effect of displacement is to generate sharedness by inducing a movement the partners follow, going beyond their actual, sensitive contact. Symbolic displacement, expanding Bühler's notion, is particularly interesting with regard to the dialogical self: it permits the social construction of several perspectives on self, other, and reality-positions and voices informing the self's performances.

My starting point is a dialogical notion of language that puts forth language activity as a dynamic process performed by subjects conceived as dialogical selves. Obviously, the language performance taking place at a specific moment is not pure momentaneity, not only unique but also well-known, it can be identified and recognized. What, then, grants the performance order and makes it non-arbitrary? To preserve the priority of the performance of language activity one has to conceive of a structuring moment other than some supra-individual system that is upstream to performance. This leads to the "in-between": the principal assumption is that relata are constituted by an in-between, understood as a medium-generating relatedness, and thus the relata as such. Seeing language as that medium, I look at the way it functions, how it supplies forms as possibilities of generating a communicable and understandable subjectivity. Time is a key notion to this questioning.

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Starting from a dialogical view of human communicative and cognitive processes, the notion and the phenomenon of voice by different authors is explored. Assuming its concreteness as perceivable event, a description of the phenomenon is then given in five key concepts: indexicality, intonation, body, imitation, and internalization. With regard to the transformation of the phenomenon to an interior experience, as suggested by the notion of voice as psychological position and by the term of inner voice, the concept of internalization is paid special attention to. The experienced voice of a significant other is understood as mechanism of internalization, allowing for the movement from other to self: a meaningful and embodied social form tied to another person. The course of reflection finally leads to considering consciousness in the perspective of voice. The voice of a communicating person is thought to be a powerful means for the emergence of an interior experience of self and other. And this experience is, in turn, linked to consciousness in its complex states.