On ‘ the Inner Alter ’ in Dialogue

Although internal dialogue and inner speech form essential part of communication, it has not been given much attention in studies of interaction and language. This article suggests that the basic unit of dialogical epistemology, the triad Ego-AlterObject/representation could be conceptually relevant to dialogical subjectivity. It proposes that internal dialogue involves different kinds of symbolically and socially represented inner Alter. Giving examples of internal dialogue and its features, this article argues for the study of dialogical phenomena in their complexity and multiplicity, whether these are involved in language, communication, subjectivity or in social representations. Concepts like dialogicality and dialogical subjectivity can be conceived in various ways but usually, their definitions presuppose some kinds of interdependencies between the Ego and Alter and a multiplicity of positions that they can take with respect to one another. Two further characteristics of these interdependencies should be noted. First, dialogicality and dialogical subjectivity are not concerned with the Ego and Alter as abstract or schematic notions but with their concrete manifestations, for example, with the self versus another self, the self versus group, the group versus another group, the self versus culture and so on. In each case, one component of the dyad is interdependent with the other one. And second, dialogical subjectivity is not reducible to the Ego versus Alter in the sense of the Ego’s ‘taking the role of the other’ or the Ego being solely an actor in that interdependent relation. Instead, it is conceived in terms of multiple symbolic social representations that the Ego takes in relation to the Alter and vice versa (Moscovici, 2005). Hermans (2001) analyses this phenomenon in terms of ‘collective voices in the self’. Salgado and Ferreira (2004) and Salgado et al (in press) speak about dialogical subjectivity as involving intersubjectivity, which these authors coin as ‘the other-in-the-self’. Bearing on this, potentially, the concept of dialogicality provides a forceful alternative to more traditional approaches studying dialogue primarily in terms of interactions as exchanges of gestures and symbols or as the participants’ speech actions. AUTHOR NOTE. Please address all correspondence regarding this article to Prof. Ivana Marková, Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA Scotland, UK. Email: [email protected] 1 I define dialogicality as the capacity of the human mind to conceive, create and communicate about social reality in terms of the ‘Alter’ (Marková, 2003).