An Exploration of Multilinguals’ Voice-Hearing Experiences

Multilingual people who hear voices often experience voices in languages they do not fully understand, challenging the dominant theory that voice-hearing arises from misattributed inner speech. In-depth interviews with ten multilingual voice-hearers in the UK, analyzed using constructionist reflexive thematic analysis, reveal a spectrum of such experiences with complex emotions and subtle distinctions. The relationship between language experiences, voices' languages, and associated emotions is intricate and individual: voices can both reflect and distort or shift the contexts, domains, interlocutors, and feelings linked to each language. These findings have implications for therapeutic and peer support for distressed voice-hearers and open new avenues in voice-hearing phenomenology and aetiology.

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.