Fri 1 Feb 2008
I’m not talking about muttered questions like, “Now, where did I put my keys?”, grading, such as “Good job, me!” or knee-jerk curses, such as “Fucking weather!”
I’m talking about the sort of statements you’d normally make to another person, such as “Damn, this elevator is really slow!” or “When are people going to understand?” I realize these could knee-jerk ejaculations, but they could also be person-to-person communications.
I got in trouble once, on Metafilter, because I mentioned that I mostly hear African Americans talking to themselves like this. So let me make a few disclaimers: first, I don’t think talking-to-yourself is bad or stupid. In fact, I strongly suspect it’s natural. I never talk to myself, which is why I’m asking this question. But I bet I don’t do it because I’ve been trained to be self-conscious. I’d be mentally healthier if I could let that go.
About the race comment: it’s simply true IN MY EXPERIENCE. I live in a “mixed” neighborhood in Brooklyn. When I walk around the area, I almost never hear white people talking to themselves. On the other hand, I’m continually passing black people who make comments. I’m not judging; I’m just noticing. I’m guessing that there’s some (good and natural) component of black, urban culture that doesn’t repress this natural urge.
I also hear self-talking much more from black men than from black women; but in general, I hear it much more from blacks than from whites — regardless of gender.
My main reason for even bringing up race is a hope that “someone from the inside” — someone who grew up in (or around) black, urban culture will comment.
Here’s my question: is there a social component to this sort of talking-to-yourself?
Many times, I’ve felt that, when I pass someone who is talking to himself, he’s partly talking to me. I get this feeling, because I can see, when I’m some distance from the person, that he’s quiet. Or, possibly, he’s quietly mumbling. Then, when he passes me, he suddenly makes a loud comment. Once he’s past me, he goes quiet again.
These comments aren’t generally about me. They’re the kind of thing I listed above: “If people keep on littering, this neighborhood is going to be a mess!” or “I bet the grocery store is going to be closed!”
The guys don’t make eye-contact with me. They don’t seem to notice me at all. The only clue that they MIGHT be, on some level, talking to me is the sudden raised voice when passing.
Since this is totally alien to me (I don’t even have an urge to talk to myself), I don’t get it. But I have a few theories:
1. The commenter consciously and intentionally intends me to hear. As-far-as he’s concerned, he’s talking to me. He and I have different cultural expectations for a conversation (e.g. I expect eye contact). If this is true, am I being rude by not responding? (Should I shout back, “Yup, the grocery store is closed!”) Or is he talking to me, but not expecting a response? When he’s around the people he grew up with, do they have conversations without looking at each other, with a pretense (for lack of a better word) of talking to themselves?
2. The commenter is genuinely talking to himself and may not even notice me, but some sort of unconscious social impulse prods him to open up when he’s near another person. (I, unfortunately, have the opposite impulse: I close up around strangers, sometimes without even being very aware that I’m doing so or that there’s a stranger near me. So I understand how, as social animals, we often instinctually change our behavior when other people are around.)
3. I’m imagining things. I THINK the person is louder when I’m around, but that’s because I can’t hear him when I’m NOT around.
Has anyone (a psychologist?) studied “talking to yourself”? Do any of you do it (somewhat in the way I’m talking about) and have enough self-insight to understand what’s going on when you do it? What social forces lead to this kind of self-talking?
Posted by grumblebee
Hmm. This isn’t an experience I really have. The talking-to-oneself that I witness, and that I engage in, is talking that is not intended for anybody else to hear. I engage in talking to myself ALL THE TIME, but never when anybody is around. (I most likely talk to myself because, indeed, nobody is around.) Sometimes if I’m working in an office, or if I’m somewhere like a bookstore, and I’m suddenly confused or excited in some way, I might say something, but I think those are the types of things you’re talking about at the beginning of your question. And they certainly aren’t for anybody else’s listening pleasure, and I’m slightly embarrassed when others overhear. (But not really. Not much embarrasses me anymore.)
I do know one individual who is a big time attention-seeker. She usually feels like nobody is paying attention to her so she goes out of her way to draw attention to herself, so sometimes she’ll talk, say, when she’s in a room adjacent to other people so that the other people will have to engage in conversation with her in order to find out what she’s saying. But are your street passers-by looking for attention? Certainly not in the same way I’m talking about.
The only other talking-to-oneself that I witness is by mentally unstable people. (I grew up near a, um, I have no idea what the PC name for it is but it’s a big apartment building for mentally unstable people, and they were free to come and go.) Lots of talking going on in that neighborhood, not many people listening.
So basically, I’m not really familiar with the particular talking-to-oneself behavior of which you speak. When I think of examples, they come from movies.
I’ve encountered a spectrum of “talking to yourself” behaviors from people out and about in Portland over the years. I could code what I’ve encountered into a few general categories along a general continuum of self-absorption vs. engaging others:
1. Unconscious, wholly self-absorbed self-talk — no reaction to passersby, no explicit sign that they know or at least care that they’re speaking out loud.
2. Self-conscious but self-absorbed — cues in eye contact, vocal modulation suggest they’re aware that they’re speaking and that others can hear them, but not sign that they’re choosing their words or targeting their speech based on that awareness.
3. Self-conscious and reactive — aware they’re talking to themselves, aware that passersby can hear them, some degree of acknowledgement in tone and topic that they’re watching and being watched.
4. Social prompting — ostensibly self-directed speech that seems to be intended largely to provoke some sort of conversational response or interjection from others.
Case (4) seems like what what iguana is referencing with the “big time attention-seeker”; I’ve seen it from people I know in just such a case, but also from strangers on the street who clearly want to draw someone into conversation regardless of an exisiting familiarity.
Case (1) I mostly associate with mentally ill people; in downtown Portland, that usually corresponds to apparently homeless folks, though in other parts of town where convalescent/halfway houses are more common, or on the bus system, there are folks who seem to be in less dire straits but still not in control of their speech.
It feels like the core of grumblebee’s question — is this paranoia, or are they actually reacting to me? — is straddling the line between (2) and (3), and that’s hazy territory.
I’d say my experiences mostly involve white homeless and/or drunk folks, a few black and hispanic — Portland doesn’t have, proportionally, that big of a black population compared to a lot of bigger cities — and I run into (1), (2) and (3) on a regular basis and have a hard time sometimes telling one from the other. Part of that is that I’ve seen people switch modes, “upgrading” if you will from (1) to (2) or from (2) to (3) after an interval of time. Whether and how much that’s intentional, it’s hard to say.
For my part, I don’t really talk to myself in public. I do it when I’m home alone all day, though. It’s something I’ve actually started to think of as the Stir Crazy threshold—if I have the day off and my wife doesn’t, by early afternoon I’ll usually be talking (or singing) descriptive nonsense to myself (repeating phrases I’m reading, creating miniature songs about some thought or some bit of stimulus, etc) without thinking about it. It’s such a consistent phenomenon at this point that I can’t help but wonder if it relates to some innate neurological instinct to create verbal stimulus, or some kind of human stimulus, when in relative isolation.
Josh, I’m curious: when you talk to yourself, are you just speaking your thoughts aloud, or does it feel like a conversation? In other words, is one part of you talking to another part of you? Or does it feel more like you’re alone, and you just happen to be speaking on the outside instead of on the inside?
No conversational element, as far as I can tell. I’ll sometimes react to my realization that I’m Doing That Again by ironically addressing, to myself, the fact that I’m talking/singing to myself, but that’s so hopelessly meta that I don’t think it counts.
But it’s not like I’m thinking out loud, either. Not in some expository/narrative sense, anyway; more like bits of half-baked cognition are leaking out unfiltered. A musical sentence here, a snatch of observation there, a vocal rendering of some bit of something I’m reading. In that latter case, I sometimes catch myself, when reading a book with a lot of human physical/emotive description, miming or “trying out” some bit of stage direction (so to speak) going on with a character. Shrugging when they shrug; trying to ape some complicated juxtaposition of facial tics; etc.
One of the things that I hate when I read fiction is when characters utter well-formed, self-directed expository “thoughts”. It strikes me as ridiculous, as just plain bad writing. And while in some cases it definitely is bad writing, I’m willing to accept that I have some personal bias because I can’t fathom expounding, out loud, factual observations to myself. Folks who do do that no doubt find such passages a lot more plausible, and would probably find my objection to be the weird thing.
I also talk to myself incessantly, and also only when I don’t think anyone else can hear me. Generally if I do it while out and about, it’s because I’ve been startled or have kind of zoned out and forgot that other people are present. Basically, what iguana described also applies to me. I generally make little ironic jokes at my own expense, I guess because I can’t feel truly comfortable unless somebody somewhere is mocking me. I’ll occasionally weigh the pros and cons of a thought out loud, too, if I’m trying to decide about something. I don’t necessarily let fly with whole paragraphs of exposition, but usually they are complete sentences.
In my own personal experience I’ve never noticed any correlation between race and talking to oneself in public. Josh’s taxonomy makes sense to me, although it tends to lump me into group 1, along with the mentally ill, since if I do talk to myself in public I’m generally oblivious to doing it until I catch myself (at which time I clam up).
I’m thinking what Grumblebee is experiencing may be more of a New York City thing; one thing I’ve noticed the few times I’ve been there is that people are far more likely to make random comments to strangers in their proximity; although in my experience it was generally older, white people.
I talk to myself all the time, usually as imagined dialogue for fictional situations. Sometimes if I anticipate an argument I’ll try to work it out beforehand this way. I really am kind of a nutter, I think.
Somewhere along this continuum we verge into “vocalization” instead of actual talking. I do this ALL THE TIME at home. I’ve always felt vaguely guilty about doing this, as I think it’s really an expression of anxiety. I make up words, go into strange voices, repeat unusual words as a mantra, receptively syllabicate, etc. Often quite loudly, though understandably when no one else is present.
I absolutely do not do this at work or in front of other people.
Some time back I read an essay by A.J Ayer in which he claimed he did much the same thing, which lowered my guilt level in engaging in a similar behavior. Ayer described it as “gabble”, which is something of an uncommon word.