Voice: A Pathway to Consciousness as “Social Contact to Oneself”

Abstract

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.

On displacement

“…This is achieved by involving Vygotsky's contemporary dialogic linguistics and language philosophy as given in Jakubinskij, Vološinov, and Bakhtin (Bertau, in press-b). Vygotsky's contemporaries build not only a dialogic notion of language but also a dialogic notion of consciousness, working with concepts like "inner speech" and "inner audience" (Bakhtin, Vološinov) where "voice" appears to have a clear psychological function for the psycho-social organization and functioning of the socialized individual (e.g., Bertau, 2008). Continuing this Russian-Soviet dialogic vein and involving the framework of dialogical self theory (e.g., Hermans & Gieser, 2012), I further understand the subject as a dialogical self.…”

In the Beginning Was the Familiar Voice: Personally Familiar Voices in the Evolutionary and Contemporary Biology of Communication

“…This article provides biological foundations to the characterization of voice as embodied social form representing a person and tied to the mutual sharing of self and consciousness (e.g., Bertau, 2007, 2008; Osatuke et al, 2004; Linell, 2007; Hermans, 1996, 1998; Shotter, 1996). Related to this view is the elaboration of the multilayered, polyphonic nature of the personal voice pattern (Stiles, 1999; Stiles, Osatuke, Glick & Mackay, 2004) which has its finest flowering, in interspeaker dialogue, when the familiarity aspect is present.…”

“…Modern perspectives describe how vocal signals reflect the listener's assumptions, expectations, experiences with the speaker, and cognitive perspectives (Pollermann, 2010). In this conceptualization, it is largely through use of the voice that the self of each co-participant is mutually shared in communicative interaction (Berteau, 2008); the embodied voice arises from the whole person. All dimensions of the voice enter into this process for the listener, but little neuroscientific research has focused on the manner in which voice arises from such complex social and psychological processes, so that much of the communication that passes between interlocutors via the voice remains undescribed and unexplained.…”

Cultural Psychology Today: Innovations and Oversights

“…At the same time we see continuous interest in the cultural nature of subjectivity (Boesch, 2005(Boesch, , 2008Cornejo, 2007;Sullivan, 2007) and the unpredictability of environments (Abbey, 2007;Golden & Mayseless, 2008). The topic of multi-voicedness of the self as it relates with the world has emerged as a productive theme (Bertau, 2008;Joerchel, 2007;Salgado & Gonçalves, 2007;Sullivan, 2007), including the move to consider the opposites of polyphony ('intensified nothingness '-Mladenov, 1997). This is embedded in the multiplicity of discourse strategies (Castro & Batel, 2008) in instititutional contexts (Phillips, 2007).…”