Integrating self, voice, experience: Some thoughts on Harris’s idea of self communication and its relevance to a dialogical account of languaging

The experience of hearing one’s own voice during the act of speaking is a form of self-awareness and self-reflection that occurs in relation to and in interaction with the flow of experience, including the experience of other selves and their voices. Self-communication is deeply implicated in and necessary for interpersonal communication ( Harris 1996 ). And yet, it is the latter which is generally taken to be the paradigm case of human languaging. The fundamental role of self-communication is neglected in the language sciences. Starting with the important fact that we hear our own voice when we speak ( Harris 1996 , chap. 11), this paper examines the central role of self-communication in the emergence of the self and the self’s role in languaging.