Language and expereinces

Blog post topic: Can language capture the enormity of experience?

Language can bring us different experiences for sure. Through out this semester, we have experienced many fun things that language can bring us. However, to what extent can language capture the enormity of experience is debatable. I think this topic should be analyzed from two different angels: language it self and the audience's experience.

From the stand point of the language itself, I believe that literature can normally capture an author's experience if he or she is a good author. There are for sure books that can make us cry and laugh, change our emotions. However, think about the movies that are adopted from books, like Harry Potter. Movies are much closer to an experience in traditional terms and when we watch such movies, we are probably brought through a more realistic and clear experience. Another things about books is that, readers may get very different experiences from reading the same book. Therefore, the enormity of experience that language can capture may or may not be the one that the author wanted to deliver.

From the audiences' stand point, whether he or she can experiences closely what the author is telling also depends on his or her own life experience. For example, when we are younger, it would be difficult for us to be moved by books that are deeper with experiences that doesn't relate with what we have seen so far in our lives. Whether a reader can get the same feeling or can resonate with what the author is saying depends a lot on whether the reader itself have experienced similar things. Every book or advertisement have a targeted audience, whose experiences made them most easily to connect with them.

Language has its power and its magical sometimes because of the unexpected result that may come out of a reading experience because of different readers.