The Phenomenology of Silent Expertise: From Inner Speech to Embodied Knowing

This study contributes to the theoretical integration of phenomenology and behavioral science by examining how expertise reorganizes conscious experience. From a developmental and communicative perspective, skilled performance represents an epigenetic reconfiguration of awareness—from linguistically mediated control to embodied intuition. We develop an empirical phenomenology of this transformation by combining Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of expressive embodiment, Vygotsky’s model of inner-speech condensation, Michel Henry’s affective auto-affection, and the minimal-self framework. Sixty participants (n = 20 per group) imagined a baseball pitch, rated vividness on the Motor Imagery Vividness Scale (MIVS), and described their inner speech. Imagery vividness increased and verbalization declined with expertise (r = –.70, p < .001). Phenomenologically, this pattern reveals a developmental condensation of reflective awareness into pre-reflective, affective attunement. The study thus articulates how cultural-symbolic regulation becomes embodied self-regulation, bridging phenomenology, communication theory, and behavioral science within an integrative framework of embodied knowing.