If you look up 'mentalese' you can find a bunch written about it. There's an in-depth article by Daniel Gregory and Peter Langland-Hassan, in the incredible Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on Inner Speech (admittedly, I'm taking a leap to think they mean precisely the same thing). [2]
[0] Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002)
[1] Oxford English Dictionary