An Exploration of Multilinguals’ Voice-Hearing Experiences

Summary

Multilingual people who hear voices often experience voices in languages they do not fully understand, challenging the idea that voice-hearing stems from misattributed inner speech. Ten UK-resident multilingual voice-hearers described a spectrum of such experiences, with complex emotions and subtle distinctions. Voices could reflect, distort, or shift the contexts, domains, and feelings tied to their languages. These findings inform therapeutic and peer support for distressed voice-hearers and open new directions in voice-hearing phenomenology.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Research on multilinguals’ voice-hearing, sometimes termed auditory-verbal hallucinations, is dominated by psychiatrists’ reports, skewing toward etic over emic approaches. Most also pre-dates developments in both voice-hearing and multilingualism research which highlight the complexity and dynamic nature of both phenomena and shows little cross-fertilisation between the two fields. This paper sits within this gap, presenting results from an in-depth interview study with ten UK-resident multilingual voice-hearers analysed via constructionist reflexive thematic analysis. A high proportion of participants described hearing voices they did not (fully) understand, challenging the dominance of the hypothesis that voice-hearing originates from misattributed inner speech. This set of experiences is presented along a spectrum with a complex array of associated emotions and subtle experiential distinctions. The relationship between language experiences, voices’ languages, and associated emotions was similarly complex and individual: participants described voices both reflecting and distorting or shifting the contexts, domains, interlocutors and feelings associated with their various languages. This has implications for therapeutic and peer support for those who are distressed by their voices, as well as opening up new avenues in voice-hearing phenomenology and aetiology.

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