Thursday March 21 6pm - Joanna Gavins speaking about Text World Theory

From 6 pm tonight Joanna Gavins, Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Sheffield University, will talk about her work with Text World Theory.

Text World Theory is a cognitive-linguistic model of human discourse processing.  Its theoretical origins can be traced to a number of diverse academic disciplines, including cognitive psychology, possible worlds theory, cognitive linguistics and literary theory. 

The basic premise of Text World Theory is that human beings process and understand all discourse by constructing mental representations of it in their minds.  Text World Theory aims to provide the analytical tools necessary for the systematic examination and discussion of these mental representations, or text-worlds. 

The text-world approach to discourse was originally developed by Professor Paul Werth during the 1980s and 90s.  Werth provided a detailed account of the fundamental workings of the text-world framework in his monograph Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse, which was published posthumously in 1999. 

Werth claimed to have devised a methodological framework capable of accounting for the cognitive processes behind the production and interpretation of all forms of human communication; from telephone conversation to dramatic performance, from church sermons to newspaper reports. These ambitious objectives, coupled with Werth’s infectious enthusiasm and inspiring prose, have continued to generate great interest in Text World Theory beyond their author’s lifetime. 

In recent years, Text World Theory has been tested, enhanced and expanded by a growing number of text-world researchers and students. Their work and that of Paul Werth is collected together in the Text World Theory Special Collection at the University of Sheffield.  http://www.textworldtheory.net/