Experiencing Ways Through Words

We tend to think of ourselvesusinglanguage. What if we thought instead about languageworking on us,or about language as something weexperiencerather thanmake 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 Wordsexploresliteraturein the light of such thinking, claiming thatproperties we tend to sideline as 'aesthetic' are profoundly constitutive of a text's capacity for significance.