Stylistics and text world theory

Text world theory is a cognitive linguistic theory of discourse processing proposed in its initial form by Paul Werth. The monograph, posthumously published in 1999 under the title Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse, contains Werth&s;s fullest explication of his text world theory. While there are a great many similarities between Ryan&s;s possible worlds approach and TWT, Ryan&s;s approach differs from text world theory primarily in that the former is not explicitly cognitive-experientialist. Within stylistics, the move toward usage-based analytical approaches is just the most recent in a continued democratisation of literary study already evident in the discipline&s;s valuing of popular texts on a level with canonical literature. Attempts to integrate the feedback of real readers into the TWT framework reveal the extent to which the boundaries and uses of TWT are currently being reinterpreted in light of current trends in the field of cognitive stylistics/poetics.