Experiencing Ways Through Words: On Our Relationships with Language (and so Literature)

By: Emily Abdeni-Holman

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Synopsis: We tend to think of ourselves using language. What if we thought instead about language working on us, or about language as something we experience rather than make use of? This book explores the generative capacities of language, suggesting that we need to pay much greater attention to the meaning-making capabilities, and political and moral implications, of more intangible aspects of language: atmosphere, mood, texture, the mode-of-being a use of language carries — and not only carries, but gives off, sends into both its reader and writer. Advancing an interpretation of language as fundamentally attitudinal and creative, Experiencing Ways Through Words explores literature in the light of such thinking, claiming that properties we tend to sideline as ‘aesthetic’ are profoundly constitutive of a text’s capacity for significance.