article 2 - The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world.

 article 2

In Abrams' book he talks a lot about how written language has distanced us from perceiving the world around us and that it creates a separation from the real natural world around us. In most ways I could agree with this but I was confused at some points reading it because in life a lot of things are written and even if you want to learn things more verbally, in today's society it's hard to. Take school for example - we can learn verbally (ish) from our teacher but usually our teacher is just reading off of written words on slides that they got from a book or journal. I think in some ways it can definitely distance us but at the same time we can learn something from written words and then experience it ourselves by explaining it further. However, I do think oral language is better because you are really able to experience what the person is saying and the world around you through listening as well as observation. I think his biggest thing is that things expressed written instead of orally could lose meaning because people don't experience it in the same way. When I ask myself if this is true or not, I really can't come up with a set answer.  I think that's both false and true.

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