Text World Theory [TWT]

Text World Theory is a theory in cognitive linguistics that explains and analyses how we create images in our minds when we read, listen to or watch texts. It was developed to explain the processes that happen in our minds when we process the language of a text. By exploring these mental processes, we can learn about how we imagine characters, settings, scenes and events.

This theory was originally created by a man called Paul Werth in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, Joanna Gavins expanded on and adapted it in her influential book, Text World Theory: An Introduction, which was published in 2007.

Since then, the framework has become essential for many cognitive linguists and stylisticians. It explains how we create meaning from texts – and even helps us to understand why people can interpret the same text in so many different ways!

If you have a good understanding of this theory, it can change the way you think and write about texts. It will make you a much better English student because you won’t just be thinking about what interpretation you have. You’ll also start to consider why you have that interpretation and how our thoughts about a text might change depending on context-based factors like place and time.

Naturally, that is going to make so many different parts of your English essays much richer and more academic. When you talk about context, it will be much more grounded in the text. Plus, you’ll be able to identify the similarities and differences between you and a text’s implied reader! So, you can make much more interesting points.

When can you talk about Text World Theory?

In this glossary entry, I usually refer to the worlds we imagine when reading books. That’s because 2/3 of the texts that people study in English literature are texts that you read (poetry and prose), while only 1/3 includes something you would watch on stage (drama).

However, you can apply this theory to any kind of text! As I said at the beginning of this article, it applies any time you read, watch or listen to a text! That includes things like conversations where two or more people are listening and contributing – each interlocutor is a text producer and a text receiver at the same time.

Any time there is a text that prompts you to imagine things in your head, you can use this very useful theory to analyse what your imagination has created and why. It is a tool for texts of all kinds and mediums, and you can use it to talk about many daily experiences, such as:

• Having conversations.
• Watching interviews and documentaries on TV.
• Listening to a podcast.

Because I am mostly talking about written texts, I will use the terms ‘writer’ and ‘reader’ quite regularly throughout the glossary entry. For the sake of simplicity, I will also often talk about ‘reading’ or ‘consuming’ texts. I am not trying to exclude texts that you watch or listen to! It just makes life a lot easier. But know that unless I specifically say so, you can apply what I’m saying to texts that you watch or listen to, too.

The same is true for text producers, as well. I might say that they ‘make’ or ‘write’ texts, but I am not trying to exclude times when they say the texts out loud or perform them.

Making meaning in texts

When you read a text, the writer isn’t the only one working hard to make meaning. They don’t pour meaning into our brains! No! Meaning is a collaborative process. It comes from both the reader and the writer.

What do I mean by that? Well, when you read a text, you an the writer work together to make meaning. The text producer gives you words (and possibly images) for you to use. Then, you fill in the gaps with your pre-existing knowledge. This comes in plenty of forms! For example:

• Knowledge of the language: what words mean, how the grammar works, etc. After all, if you don’t understand the language, the text has no meaning to you!
• Knowledge about genres and text types.
• Cultural knowledge.
• Knowledge of texts that writers often mention, such as the Bible and Greek mythology.
• Any knowledge about the text producer: other texts they’ve created, their political views, etc.
• Personal experiences.
• Biases and expectations.
• Knowledge of social norms.
• The subtle connotations behind certain words and phrases.

You use these to help you make judgements about the information you get.

When you comprehend and interpret the literal words on the page, linguists call it ‘bottom-up processing’. When you use your knowledge to fill in the gaps with information that wasn’t explicitly mentioned we call it ‘top-down processing’.

It’s kind of like the old philosophical thought experiment, ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ But for texts, English academics have an answer: if someone writes a text but no one is around to read it, it doesn’t have meaning.

Understanding this is a great first step to grasping Text World Theory.

Examples from Percy Jackson

Here’s a short example from Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief:

‘He raised his hand, and my mother flinched.’

The words make us do some simple bottom-up professing here. When Percy’s stepfather, Gabe, raises his hand, his mother has a negative reaction. So, the bottom-up processing tells us that she is afraid in that moment. We can start to picture the scene in front of Percy, which is where we can think about Text World Theory.

However, thanks to top-down processing, we can make a very educated guess that there is more to this than an immediate sense of fear.

We use our knowledge of books, films, TV shows and other texts that we’ve consumed, as well as our own lived experiences, to fill in the gaps. When a character (or any person) flinches when someone raises their hand, it’s probably because they’re used to that person hitting them. They expect to be hurt by that hand.

That gives us a deeper understanding of the relationship between Gabe and Sally Jackson. Suddenly, we can imagine what their life looks like when Percy isn’t around. We’ve used our top-down processing to figure out that it’s an abusive relationship. As people with lots of knowledge, we didn’t need Rick Riordan to be explicit! We used our knowledge to interpret his language cues.

However, he does explain it further because he is writing for children. His implied reader might not have the knowledge to do the necessary top-down processing.

The same is true with this example from the same book:

‘a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties.’

Here, our top-down processing allows us to fill in the gaps of what the clearing looked like. Our knowledge of outdoor teenage parties means we can imagine reusable cups and empty bottles of alcohol lying about.

The main ideas of Text World Theory

So, now we have a better understanding of top-down and bottom-up processing, we can move on to explore Text World Theory a little more. You will be able to analyse how the collaborative meaning-making process happens and what impact this has on the images we create in our brains. That’s pretty cool, if you ask me!

Top-down and bottom-up processing are essential in understanding the most fundamental ideas behind the theory: discourse-worlds, text-worlds and world-switches.

So, let’s go through them one by one!

Discourse-World

Discourse-worlds are settings in which a text is made and read. This includes both the text producer’s and text receiver’s context, which impacts how they make meaning and interpret language, including:

• Linguistic Knowledge: understanding the language of the text.
• Perceptual Knowledge: being aware of and understanding your immediate surroundings.
• Cultural Knowledge: knowing the cultural norms and expectations of the place, time and social group where the text is being created and received.
• Experiential Knowledge: your personal experiences that you’ve had in your life.

When you break it down into those four bullet points, it can seem quite narrow. However, it includes all of the things I mentioned earlier, such as your knowledge of different genres and types of characters, emotions in the moment, reasons for reading the text, etc.

As I said before, discourse-worlds include both the text producer and text receiver. It’s the world between a writer and a reader when the meaning is being made. For a text type like a conversation, that is pretty simple and makes a lot of sense. You’re right there next to each other, experiencing the same surroundings and living in the same place and time! So it makes sense that you share a discourse-world.

But how does that work when you’re not in the same place and time as the text producer – for example, when you’re reading a book, listening to a podcast or watching a film?

Well, in that case, we’d say that you have a split discourse-world. That’s when you’re managing to communicate with each other and make meaning even when you aren’t in the same place or time. Your knowledge will be different because the worlds around you are different. But you still manage to create meaning together, so you’re still part of the same discourse-world.

Examples of different discourse-worlds

Let’s say that you sit down and read a book for the first time. Then, the next day, you return to read the same text again. Everything else is the same: same room, same chair, same temperature, same time of day. You even feel the same emotion as you did yesterday! You are still reading the book in a different discourse-world.

Why? Well, because your knowledge has changed.

The first time you were reading the book, you didn’t know what was going to happen. Now, you can add ‘what happens in the plot’ to your knowledge, changing the way that you read it.

The same is also true when you read the same text for two different purposes.

Let’s say you read it once for English class and once for history class. Even if you were able to go back in time and forget everything that happened, it would still be a completely different discourse-world because the purpose and context is different. The environment will be different and you will draw on different knowledge in your readings.

In other words, we don’t read a text the same way in history and English because we’re looking for different things and we have different knowledge at the front of our minds (in our working memories). So the discourse-world can’t be the same.

Text-World

Whenever you imagine a scene, character, setting, event or whole world, you are creating a text-world in your head. This text-world is influenced by what the writer says (bottom-up processing) as well as all of the knowledge that you bring to the text from your own discourse-world (top-down processing).

In its simplest form, a text-world is the thing that you imagine in your head when you process language. We call this a ‘mental representation’.

Of course, the writer’s bottom-up processing plays a huge role in establishing this text world. They use many different things to help trigger images in our minds:

• World-building elements that give us details about the location, space, time, people and objects that make up the world in our minds.
• Function-advancing propositions that include what is happening in the world. These allow us to imagine how the world is progressing and moving forward through time.

Then, we come and use our knowledge to ‘colour in’ the picture. Some of this knowledge is going to be shared between you and the text producer. Others will be shared between you and other people who share your identity (e.g. they grew up in the same place, speak the same language, are part of the same social groups, and/or have similar experiences).

Then, there are the ones that are unique to you and your personal combination of experiences.

If you would like a full overview of the important things in the text-world with some extra terminology, check out the dedicated glossary entry on text-worlds.

How knowledge can impact our text-worlds

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air has a really useful example of how different knowledge and experiences can impact the text-worlds we imagine. It’s the one where Carlton and Will get pulled over by the police.

Carlton and Will obviously imagine very different scenarios (text-worlds) of how this encounter with the police officer will go.

The reason is because of their difference in experiential knowledge – lived experiences. Carlton grew up in a very rich neighbourhood where, thanks to his upper-class status, he never had to experience racial profiling at the hands of the police. So, according to his knowledge, the police are helpful and will always take his side if he’s not doing anything wrong. That caused him to imagine a text-world where the police would simply check their details and then let them go.

On the other hand, Will grew up poorer and in a rougher area where it was common for him to have negative experiences with the police. So, in his text world, he imagined that the officer would be much more suspicious and antagonistic to them.

Will’s text-world matched reality much more. Carlton’s text-world was so far off the truth that it was funny to us as an audience. The implied reader’s knowledge of the police and racial profiling is closer to Will’s, meaning they create a similar text-world in their head. So, they can laugh at Carlton for being so naive.

World-Switches

The next important term in Text World Theory is world-switches.

When you’re reading a longer narrative, the chances are that you won’t be expected to focus on one single text-world. As the story unfolds, you’ll imagine different worlds and situations. So, we can’t say that a story stays in the same text-world the whole time. The writer uses language to prompt us to imagine new text-worlds so they can keep the plot going!

When we change the text-world that we are thinking about, we call this a ‘world-switch’.

Some things that cause a world-switch include:

• Making us imagine a different place.
• A shift in time to a different moment, day, year, etc.
• Switching the narration to a different character’s perspective.
• Going to a different reality – like when the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe go to Narnia.

When this happens, the deixis of the text-world changes.

Deixis includes words that only make sense when you know who, what, where or when they’re talking about. For example, the words ‘yesterday’ and ‘today’ have no meaning if you don’t know what day the text producer is talking about. The same goes for words like:

• Me
• Here
• There
• Him
• Here
• Them
• Now
• Then
• Underneath

You’ve got to know the context to understand who or what these words are referring to!

Any time there is a world-switch in a book, most of these deixis words will mean different things. For example, changing the point-of-view character will mean that the word ‘I’ means someone completely different. If the world-switch comes from changing what day the narrative is happening, the words ‘today’ and ‘yesterday’ will refer to completely different days.

Text World Theory and characterisation

Characters are a big part of the worlds we make in our heads. In our minds, the characters in our heads are real! They’re just as real when someone describes a real person we’ve never met. So, Percy Jackson and Annabeth feel as real to you as if I described my little Indian grandma who likes milky teas and watching comedy shows.

What do I mean by that? Well, my grandma might be real, sure. However, the parts of your brain that you use to imagine her are the same parts of your brain that you use to imagine the characters in your favourite book. You haven’t met either of them! So, you create text-worlds around them with the linguistic cues you have.

Of course, this is slightly different when we’ve met someone in real life. Once we know someone, our brains separate them more from fictional characters – although this is blurred when you’re lonely!

More interesting to me, though, is the fact that a well-developed character has their own discourse world and mental models that they create. Good writers consider what their character’s mental models would be like. They have their own rich inner worlds, which are influenced by their own discourse-worlds.

So, you can actually say loads about a character based on the text-worlds they are creating! It can help you to work out who they are as a person and how they might act towards other people. That will help us to identify with certain characters. Plus, it will make it easier to analyse and say interesting things them!

An example from Wide Sargasso Sea

In Wide Sargasso Sea, the character of Antoinette (based on Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre) is the point-of-view character for most of the text. So, we get to see the text-worlds that she creates regularly.

Let’s look at an example of a text-world that she creates while in Christophine’s room. Christophine used to be a slave owned by Antoinette’s family, but she chose to stay after Emancipation. Now, she’s like a mother figure to Antoinette, as her own mother is very distant and depressed. Antoinette also suspects that she does obeah, which is the Jamaican version of voodoo.

‘I was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?) there was a dead man’s dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly. Drop by drop the blood was falling into a red basin and I imagined I could hear it. No one had ever spoken to me about obeah – but I knew what I would find if I dared to look.’

Rhys, J. (1997). Wide Sargasso Sea. ed. A. Smith. London: Penguin Books, pp. 14-15.

In this section of the book, Antoinette has revealed a whole text-world to us: one of fear, supernatural threat and secrecy. Even though Christophine is a mother figure to her, Antoinette hasn’t used any input from her to form this text-world (‘No one had ever spoken to me about obeah’). Yet, even though she hasn’t taken any input from Christophine about her own room and spiritual practices, she’s still sure she has a full picture (‘I knew what I would find’).

That tells us a lot about the relationship between Antoinette and Christophine! Even though Christophine raised her, she is still weary of spiritual practices she sees as associated with the black people who used to be slaves. She makes assumptions about black people without stopping to listen to their point of view. That’s something that is true of many of the other characters in the text, too!

This helps us to get a better sense of Antoinette’s character and prejudices, which means we can say some very interesting things in our English classes.

Not everyone imagines things in their minds

Text World Theory is a great way to think about how we imagine things in our heads when we read, watch or hear a text. However, it isn’t perfect!

There are some people who don’t visualise things in their heads. We call this aphantasia. When that happens, that will affect the text-worlds they create! They don’t see the text worlds from stories in vivid detail, which means that stories with lots of detailed imagery can be boring or frustrating to some people.

For me as someone with ADHD, I know that my imagination is quite fragmented. I do see images in my mind, so I don’t have aphantasia. But, if you ask me to imagine something, my mind can only stick on it for a second or two before I picture something else – or just think about the idea of imagining things in general. Of course, that means that my text-worlds are going to be more bitty and confusing.

So, it isn’t as simple as everyone having a perfect image in their heads. Just like our discourse-worlds, text-worlds are subjective. We don’t all picture things in our heads the same way, and that will naturally impact the worlds we make in our minds.

If you’re worried that you don’t have clear text-worlds in your mind, don’t worry. You could be thinking too hard about it, which could stop your imagine from working as it should. Or, maybe you have aphantasia or ADHD! Whatever it is, there are people out there who share the same experiences.

How Text World Theory helps you as an English student

There are plenty of ways that understanding Text World Theory can help you as an English student – particularly if you’re studying for an A-level in English Language and Literature or if you’d like to take a course in literary linguistics and stylistics at uni.

First of all, it can help you to understand why people have different interpretations of a text. The more you understand about the different text-worlds that people create in their heads and the ways that their discourse-worlds influence that, the more you can compare yourself to the writer’s implied reader.

You’ll be able to think, ‘What big events have happened in the reader’s time to shape the text-worlds they create? How is my discourse-world different?’ That’s going to make your points about context much more interesting and useful because you won’t just be switching to a history essay. You’ll be challenging yourself to consider why the context matters.

But it doesn’t just help you to understand the texts and readers, either! You can also use it to say some very interesting things about characters in texts. What mental models do we see characters create in texts? How does that shape our understanding of who they are and what they stand for? Why has the writer chosen to make their text-worlds like this?

After all, ‘Text World Theory’ is a piece of terminology! You can talk about it just like you would the genre of a text. The text-worlds writers make for characters are purposeful and can reveal loads of interesting things. Plus, you’ll sound like an expert while you’re at it.

Where can you learn more?

Of course, when it comes to Text World Theory, don’t just take my word for it. There are plenty of other texts you can pick up which explain the theory in detail. Here are the ones I used to help me make this article:

• The Nottingham Stylistics Toolkit
• Joanna Gavins’s Book: Text World Theory: An Introduction (2007)
• Cognitive Poetics by Peter Stockwell (2020)
• The Language of Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics by Marcello Giovanelli and Jessica Mason (2018)

And then there’s right here on the site. I’ll be working on some online courses in the future which include more info about Text World Theory. Stay tuned for more and I’ll get them out as soon as I can!

As always, if you have a question or you’d like to add an example, please comment below! Plus, feel free to reach out if you’ve noticed a mistake or typo I’ve made. I’m always happy to hear from you. And any engagement is a huge help for the website!