The Reader’s Body: Reflections on the Embodiment of Digital Reading

The transformation of reading tools and text medium —from printed paper books to e-readers and digital screens— is not merely a technological shift; it brings about a profound change in the perceptual and cognitive experience of the human reader. This article, drawing on contemporary phenomenological approaches in cognitive science, introduces and analyzes the concept of “embodied reading.” This concept highlights how the act of reading, depending on its material substrate, engages the reader’s mind and body in different ways and shapes their semantic experience. In traditional reading, not only vision but all human senses are activated in encountering the book, serving as material anchors for memorizing and decoding information. This sensory engagement creates a spatial and temporal sense of presence for the text, functioning as a scaffold for imagination and mental imagery. Language, too, is saturated with orientational and embedded metaphors. We learn and understand language through our bodily interaction with the world, and we recall our perceptual and emotional experience through recollection of our bodily situation in the environment. In contrast, digital texts, by reducing materiality and physicality, diminish this sensory involvement and challenge the cognitive and memory structures associated with it. Moreover, the weakening of the book’s integrity and coherence as a unified entity affects the reader’s sense of familiarity and control. Thus, different reading technologies and media are not mere carriers of information; they have specific affordances for the practice of reading and lead to different user experiences.