Dream Language

The idea that inner speech and dreams ‘speak their own language’ is something I can understand. There are things that happen in dreams or daydreams that we do not have the linguistic structures to describe. I do not, however, agree that because dreams are private and not meant for communication that they do not include language. A lot of my personal dreams are about conversations and their consequences. Scientific studies have also shown that multiple regions of the brain are active during REM sleep, including the linguistic region of the brain. (Bear, 2007 p.600) Dreams might have a language of their own but the linguistic region of the brain is very involved which means we do dream language.

Bear, M. F., Connors, B. W., & Paradiso, M. A. (2007). Neuroscience: Exploring the brain (3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer.