Celine Wang – EAD II 2021 Spring

Language and Thought – Susanne K. Langer

Close Reading Exercise - Project 1 Text
EAD II
Below is an excerpt from the Langer reading
Instructions:

1) Read the questions on page 2 first, then read the passage.

2) Answer the questions below the passage - answer fully!
and Submit as an MS-WORD document to Canvas.
3) Be prepared to discuss your answers (or questions!) with your partner(s)

8 The process of transforming all direct experience into imagery or into that
supreme mode of symbolic expression, language, has so completely taken possession
of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need.
All our sense impressions leave their traces in our memory not only as signs representing our
ideas of things; and the tendency to manipulate ideas, to combine and abstract, mix and extend
them by playing with symbols, is man's outstanding characteristic. It seems to be what his
brain most naturally and spontaneously does. Therefore, his primitive mental function is not
judging reality, but dreaming his desires.
9 Dreaming is apparently a basic function of human brains, for it is free and
unexhausting like our metabolism, heartbeat, and breath. It is easier to dream than
not to dream, as it is easier to breathe than to refrain from breathing. The symbolic
character of dreams is fairly well established.

10 Symbol mongering, on this ineffectual, uncritical level, seems to be instinctive, the

fulfillment of an elementary need rather than the purposeful exercise of a high
and difficult talent.

11 The special power of man's mind rests on the evolution of this special activity, not
on any transcendently high development of animal intelligence. We are not
immeasurably higher than other animals; we are different. We have a biological need
and with it a biological gift that they do not share.

12 Because man has not only the ability but the constant need of conceiving what has
happened to him, what surrounds him, what is demanded of him – in short, of
symbolizing nature, himself, and his hopes and fears – he has a constant and crying
need of expression. What he cannot express, he cannot conceive; what he cannot
conceive is chaos and fills him with terror.

13 If we bear in mind this all-important craving for expression, we get a new picture
of man's behavior; for from this trait spring his powers and his weaknesses. The
process of symbolic transformation that all our experiences undergo is nothing more
nor less than the process of conception, underlying the human faculties of abstraction and
imagination.

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Celine Wang – EAD II 2021 Spring

Questions /Tasks- Submit to Canvas Assignment After completion

1) Circle any words or phrases whose meaning you are unfamiliar with. Look a few of them up
and write the words and definitions below:

Possession: having or owning something. Predominant.

Manipulate: control or influence something.
Spontaneously: in spontaneous manner/without advance preparation.
Metabolism: the chemical processes in living things that change food, etc. into energy and
materials for growth.
Transcendently: beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding.
Terror: a feeling of extreme fear.

2) An effective tool to help understand a passage’s main ideas can include noticing repetition in
word choice. As an example, circle/note each reference to the word “need” in the above
passage. Reread each sentence using that word and the prior and following sentences.
What can you claim is one theme of this portion of the Langer reading?

The theme of this portion is the needs of human special power in thinking and dreaming makes
human create symbol. Possessing and spreading it is an instinctive human desire to express a
need.

Follow up: Read through the passage again and underline any words that are repeated or
synonyms that are used.

3) In paragraph 10 Langer states “The special power of man's mind rests on the evolution of this
special activity “
What “special activity” is she referring to? Explain briefly.

Special activity refers to “Symbol mongering.” From author’s purpose, this is an activity that
the instinct that human born with is, like a God-given treasure that keeps human out of the way
of thinking of the animals’ creature.

4) Notice the terms Langer chooses to put in italics form such as “dreaming his desire” .
What is the purpose of doing this?
List all those words in italics below. Are they related in some way? Explain

From my perspective, the purpose of Langer to doing this is he wants to expressing a opposite
meaning of “judging reality,” it is also related to the difference between sign and symbol. Sign
makes human primitive mental function judging reality, but symbol makes human primitive
mental function to present people's desires and thoughts into reality, which is “dreaming his

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Celine Wang – EAD II 2021 Spring
desire.”

5) Briefly, summarize this passage below using a quote and your interpretation:

The special talent of human beings makes people have a dominant need to use symbol to
understand and express human thoughts. This need makes human beings detached from the
functions of other creatures and gives them a special power of thought: they can imagine and
think without chaos.