Imagery

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Definitions

Imagery (as the term is used in literary discourse) is descriptive language that evokes sensory experience (in any or all sense modes), and is intended to make the reader feel more interested and more emotionally involved in the work by creating a mental image of the subject.

Imagery, in this sense, is any series of words used to create a mental image, a quasi-sensory experience. Such images can be created by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification, and assonance. Imagery can also involve the use of relatable action words or onomatopoeias that trigger images in the reader’s mind. Imagery helps the reader imagine the sensations described as they are related through the language of the author.

Other Uses

The term imagery is also used (in psychology, and everyday discourse) to refer to mental images, i.e., the making (or re-creation) of any experience in the mind — auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, organic. This is a cognitive process employed by most, if not all, humans. When thinking about a previous or upcoming event, people commonly use imagery. For example, one may ask, "What do you smell when you walk outside?" The answer to this question is commonly retrieved by using imagery (i.e., by a person mentally "smelling" one's backyard or the park or anywhere).

Guided imagery is a psychotherapeutic technique in which a facilitator uses descriptive language intended to evoke psychologically beneficial mental imagery, often involving several or all sense modes, in the mind of the listener.