There is some evidence that reading or hearing a word evokes some of the same sensorimotor responses as encountering that to which the word refers. This might not be visual - it could be to do with any of the senses, or with the motor program for interacting with the referent. And it doesn't necessarily need to be conscious - in fact it usually isn't. A guy called Rolf Zwaan has done a lot of interesting work on the topic - you can get access to a lot of his papers
here.