Sensory Language - Examples and Definition of Sensory Language - Literary Devices

Sensory Language Definition
Sensory Language is a word(s) used to invoke mental photos and visualize the tale or poem. While Imagery is a literary device that appeals to the reader’s senses, Sensory Language is a writing fashion and how the writers use the words to create images for the readers. The writers gift their emotions, thoughts, and ideas in a manner that they tempt the reader’s imagination. Although it is frequently inserted to uplift the reader’s imagination, it and plays a important function in advancing the story or enhancing a poem.

Literally, sensory language is a word of two phrases; sensory and language. It means using language to create mental images that appeal to the experience of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

Examples of Sensory Language from Literature
Example #1
I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings by Maya Angelou

“But a fowl that stalks
Down his slender cage
Can seldom see thru
His bars of rage
His wings are clipped and
His toes are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged hen sings
With a apprehensive trill
Of things unknown
But longed for still
And his song is heard
On the remote hill
For the caged fowl
Sings of freedom.”

The poem is ready the racial segregation and social discrimination accepted in American society against black people. Using the metaphor of loose birds, she has placed forth the ideas of freedom, liberty, and justice. As sensory language pertains to the 5 senses, this poem is loaded with different snap shots. The pictures for example, “unfastened bird” and “returned of wind” enchantment to the feel of sight and feeling. Similarly, pictures such as, “orange sun rays” and “throat to sing” appeals to the experience of sight and hearing.

Example #2
Kubla Khan by way of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“A damsel with a dulcimer
In a imaginative and prescient once I saw:
It changed into an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive inside me
Her symphony and song,
To this type of deep delight ’twould win me,
That with song loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! the ones caves of ice!
And all who heard ought to see them there,
And all have to cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And under the influence of alcohol the milk of Paradise.”

In Kubla Khan, the poet has artistically captured the alluring splendor of the extravagant palace approximately which he has read. He has skillfully painted a energetic and complete photograph of the palace, Xanadu. However, with using sensory language, Coleridge has added more to the splendor and grandeur of this majestic palace. This poem is wealthy with classical words and vivid images such as, “incense-bearing tree” appeals to the sense of smell. “The shadow of the doom of pleasure” that “floated midway on the waves” makes the reader visualize the spell binding scene. Also, the damsel with the dulcimer playing her song “loud and long” appeals to the sense of hearing.

Example #3
Library of Babel with the aid of Jorge Luis Borges

“The universe (which others call the Library) consists of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of every gallery is a air flow shaft, bounded with the aid of a low railing. From any hexagon you can actually see the flooring above and below-one after another, endlessly. The association of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon’s six sides; the peak of the bookshelves, ground to ceiling, is hardly more than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon’s unfastened facets opens onto a slender kind of vestibule, which in turn opens onto some other gallery, identical to the first-identical in fact to all.”

Luis Borges has superbly offered a metaphorical reproduction of the universe in this excellent piece of literature. His library isn't the same as the libraries people come upon in the world. A reader can find thousands and thousands of books no matter they are completed or not. On the one hand, some extracts make feel whilst on the other hand, it incorporates texts that are completely absurd. However, using sensory language has delivered more to the rich description of this countless library. For example, “flooring above and below-one after any other,”, “Twenty bookshelves,” and “in flip opens onto any other gallery” are the powerful pictures pertain to the sense of sight.

Example #4
Macbeth through William Shakespeare, Act-I, Scene-I, Lines 1- 13

First Witch: When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s misplaced and won.
Third Witch: That could be ere the set of sun.
First Witch: Where the area?
Second Witch: Upon the heath.
Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch: I come, grimalkin!
Second Witch: Paddock calls.
Third Witch: Anon!
ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover via the fog and filthy air.

This is the outlet scene of the play, Macbeth, where 3 witches appear to discuss their next assembly point. They decide to meet Macbeth in an open area where numerous battles have taken region. Shakespeare has used a cascade of pics to set this dramatic scene. For example, “thunder” is used to make the readers conjure up an auditory experience in their thoughts and phrases like, “lightening” and “ere the set of sun” enchantment to the feel of sight.

Sensory Language Meaning and Function
Sensory language is used to offer a image presentation of an concept or thought. It provides readers with an opportunity to get absorbed within the text and revel in as a man or woman or an action collection is described using Sensory Language. Also, the usage of sensory details assist writers to caricature a vivid enjoy for the audience.