Another aspect of ecolinguistics is linguistic diversity and the embedding of traditional ecological knowledge in local languages. In 1996, David Abram's book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, described how the wider ecology (or 'the more than human world') shapes language in oral cultures (Abram, 1996), helping people attune to their environment and live sustainably within it. On the other hand, writing has gradually alienated people in literate cultures from the natural world, to the extent that 'our organic atonement to the local earth is thwarted by our ever-increasing intercourse with our own signs' (1996:267).