Coleridge was firmly convinced that dreams have a unique language: a language primarily expressed in ‘Images and Sensations’ (CN III 4409, CM III 376). He argued that the linguistic and psychological structure of language undergoes a transformation, or translation, in dreams. This language is one that ensures that the dream has a visual and somatic stress: to dream is to allow the eyes to ‘make pictures when they are shut’ (‘A Day-dream’, PW i 385), or to have the sense of ‘such feelings’ as both delight and ‘perplex the soul’ (‘Sonnet; Composed on a Journey Homeward’, PW I 153). Not only is a dream language one of images and sensations, it is also antithetical to the language used in waking life.

Coleridge believed that the dream language has ‘various dialects’, which are ‘far less different from each other, than the various <day> Languages of Nations’ (CN III 4409). One special day language was the one that he used to describe his dreams, particularly in his notebooks. His notebook writings, often set down in haste and confusion, attempt to be an accurate record of the dream experience. They are also selective accounts and analyses of particular dream experiences. This hermeneutic day-time dream language can be seen as another manifestation of a somnial language, complete with its own syntax, vocabulary and connotations.

Coleridge's belief that dream languages comprise primarily images and sensations, and that this feature of dreams is readily validated by his own experiences as well as by the ‘Dream Books of different Countries & ages’, implies that he was thinking of some kind of universal and symbolic dream language, across many different societies and centuries.