ABSTRACT
Language may be described as a medium by which one person can direct another person's attention through a series of conceptualizations, imagined scenes, and mental worlds. Using words, a speaker can give a hearer directions for constructing an imagined scene and mentally placing his or herself as viewer within it Slight changes in wording may signal that one must mentally “zoom in” or “zoom out,” see a scene through the eyes of a character, or imagine that the character is some distance away. Most of these effects are accomplished with little, if any, conscious preplanning on the part of the speaker; aside from trained fiction writers, the majority of speakers seem to use the tools of language without conscious awareness of the effects they are creating or the means by which they are doing it. 1
