Note: Can thoughts occur without language?  It makes you think about how everyone thinks. The deaf, who have never heard words or language, are obviously fully aware and conscious and can function exceedingly well in society, communicating with sign language in various forms. When people, who can hear think, many say they hear the words in their heads, silently. Perhaps images are universal for thought, and words are a means to create pictures, hieroglyphs or symbols. Do the deaf think in sign language? Do they think in pictures? Do they think in mime or meme? It appears that all three of these may be the case. They may even develop their own language, based on 'signs' and 'gestures', and 'think' in these terms. Language is the tool for thought, but it comes in many forms.

Thinking about thought and language makes poets aware of the power of words to create images. For more on this topic see this article https://hubpages.com/education/thoughts-without-language including the references.