DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-8845.2010.01074.x English in Education Vol.44 No.

3 2010

Pedagogical stylistics: A text

world theory approach to
the teaching of poetry
Marcello Giovanelli
Consultant teacher, The Duston School, Northampton and doctoral researcher
in the School of English Studies, University of Nottingham

Abstract
This article explores how the stylistic framework of Text World Theory (Werth
1999, Gavins 2007) can be used in the classroom to generate critical insights
and analyses of the ways in which texts operate. This approach falls within the
scope of the discipline of pedagogical stylistics and as such it will examine and
consider its usefulness as a teaching model to encourage both student
awareness of language and wider consideration and understanding of the
interaction between readers and texts, including intertextuality and the
positioning of the text in its socio-historical context.

Keywords
Stylistics, Text World Theory, intertextuality, readers, poetry, A Level English,
literature

Introduction
stylisticians are really the only people equipped to teach literature
itself
Stockwell (2007:23)

As a teacher of reading, the classroom practitioner, at whatever level, aims to

provide his or her student with the skills to ensure independence and an
awareness of the reader’s role in negotiating meaning in a literary text. As
schools and English departments are under pressure, however, through the
publication of examination results, to demonstrate that their students are
showing evidence of both attainment in terminal examinations and progress

Corresponding author: aexmg4@nottingham.ac.uk

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from one key stage to another, the question of what will encourage this
desired independence is crucial. In an age when students are saturated with
study guides that offer a range of received opinions on texts and promises of
‘quick-fix’ tutorials and model answers, the temptation to cut corners is greater
than ever. Much of this rests with the pressure that students feel in needing to
know what a text is about, as though the desired outcome of examination
questions is in testing their ability to reproduce existing ideas, albeit in their
own words. Not surprisingly, this sits uneasily with the teacher’s concern in
developing independent self-aware readers. This article addresses this by
proposing a sustainable teaching methodology using Text World Theory
(Werth 1999) to teach literature to students following the first year of an
Advanced Level course in English Literature on literature written during or
about the First World War. I propose that this model, a sub-discipline of
stylistics and more commonly associated with undergraduate English studies, is
an equally powerful tool for encouraging a language-based approach to
literary texts for younger students. 1

The aims of stylistics

The merits of stylistics as an academic discipline have been debated at length
(see for example Carter and Long 1991, Carter and Stockwell 2008). Stylistics
as a discipline aims to provide analyses of texts that are in Simpson’s (2004:2).
terms, rigorous, retrievable and replicable. Indeed a detailed stylistic
description and analysis of the reading process that is centred on the ‘precision
of reference’ rather than the ‘precision of interpretation’ (Widdowson 1992: xii)
provides, for the reader and subsequent followers of that reader’s analysis, as
Hamilton (2002:3) suggests, an escape from ‘the prison house of intuition’ and
a method of providing a clear presentation of a reading, using an appropriate
and contemporary linguistic framework.

Despite a clear focus on formalism, however, stylistics does not claim to be

value-free. It has aligned itself with issues of power and gender under the banner
of Critical Discourse Analysis (for example Fairclough 1989, Mills 1995) and has a
real interest in intersubjectivity as part of a model of language as a public and
social phenomenon. In addition, and in line with movements in reader response
theories, stylistics has placed great emphasis on the role of the reader and his or
her contextual background as a way of theorising the ‘readingandwriting’ that
occurs as a reader constructs textual meaning (Oatley 2003:161).

Various attempts to move away from authorial authority if not institutional

force have also led to the discipline’s emphasis on the reader’s wider socio-
cultural position. So, Fish’s (1980) ‘interpretative communities’, Stockwell’s
(2002) ‘discourse communities’ and Birch’s (1989) ‘intertextual reader’, all
highlight the vast array of previous textual and discourse knowledge that a
reader brings to the reading process. The field of cognitive stylistics or poetics
has sought to explore reading as part of a series of actions in conceptual
construction arising from the processing of textual detail such as deixis and

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modality using mental structures such as schemata (for example Semino 1997)
and metaphorical mapping (for example Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). 2

Pedagogical stylistics
In keeping with the aims of stylistics as an academic discipline, a stylistics-
based pedagogy encourages an approach that is sensitive to language and
context and enables students to understand how a text operates rather than
just explain what it is that it does (see Clark and Zyngier 2004 for a
comprehensive overview of pedagogical stylistic practice). This results in a
pedagogy neatly captured by McRae and Vethamani as ‘the concentration on
how a text expresses what it says, to reach a fuller understanding of what it
says and why’ (original authors’ emphasis) McRae and Vethamani (1999:iv).

Although stylistics has often been concerned with literary texts, a pedagogical
model has moved beyond this to consider the teaching implications of using
other examples of creative language use. For some, this has led to a
questioning of the use of the very terms literary and Literature in a
pedagogical context. Carter (1997:18) suggests that conceptually and critically,
we are better served by the notion of ‘a cline of literariness’, which
acknowledges the degrees of creativity commonly found in non-literary and
media texts (see for example Carter 2004). To this end, one of the welcome
consequences of this re-naming has been a demystification of the literary
work for the student and an understanding of a literary text as a product of
language, open to scrutiny and careful analysis in the same way as any other
social product. Others have equally questioned the status, usefulness and
appropriateness of the term literature itself and called for more drastic action
on a label that if anything only serves to draw attention to socio-political
notions of prestige, power, repression and educational hegemony (Eagleton
1996, Hall 1999). In a more practical manner, McRae (1991) has suggested
that the phrase literature with a small ‘l’ be used so as to counter any
inhibitions felt by teacher or learner, not to ignore the status of non-
canonical texts and to develop fully the teacher and student’s exposure to a
range of texts that use, in his terms ‘representational language’ (McRae 1991).
Liberating teaching from the institution not only acknowledges that literary
texts, like all language products, are constructed from everyday language but
also anticipates a pedagogy where literary texts are not treated as mysterious
boxes of hidden secrets waiting for the skilled critic to decode them but
rather as points of interaction and further potential interaction between a
writer and a reader in real contexts. Much transformational writing work
makes use of this empowering realisation, particularly those encouraging
critical re-writing. This encourages what Carter and Nash (1990:181) call
becoming an ‘insider’ on the part of the student as a way of developing both
creativity and reflection on reading practices. To this end, the critical
commentary has also become a staple part of these types of exercise (for
example Pope 1995, Short 1996).

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The central thrust therefore of pedagogical stylistics is one that is

fundamentally ‘student-centred, activity based and process-oriented’ (Carter
1996:3). Indeed Zyngier (1999) proposes a model of the projected reader in
conjunction with a Vygotskyan pedagogy that acknowledges the movement
students make in their acquiring of skills. In Zyngier’s model, the attention is
shifted away from teaching texts to enabling students to understand the
process of interpretation as part of an integrated approach to teaching
sensitivity to linguistic features and the cultural contexts of reading, including
emphases on those schematic knowledge structures brought to the act of
reading by individual and groups of readers.

Students’ experiences of language-based analyses of literature

Much that is inherent in a pedagogical stylistics is experienced by secondary
school students during Years 7-11, preceding A Level study. The introduction of
the Key Stage 3 National Strategy to schools in 2001 placed an additional focus
on explicit grammatical knowledge and an appropriate metalanguage, as well as
maintaining an emphasis on DARTS activities that were common in the
classroom in conjunction with newer models such as Guided Reading.
Originally from the Primary Literacy Strategy, Guided Reading’s emphasis not
only on exploring aspects of style but also on readerly tracking and monitoring
a text, demands an explicit focus and evaluation on the part of the student as to
what those reading strategies are. Although beyond this, at GCSE, there is less of
an explicit focus on language, students are still required to deal with non-fiction
and media texts, showing evidence of close reading and use of an appropriate
terminology. At Advanced Level, however, for students taking English Literature
rather than English Language or the combined option, there is less emphasis on
explicit knowledge of language and linguistic terminology and as a
consequence, there is a danger that much of the conscious understanding of
how texts operate is lost in favour of a focus on what texts are about. This seems
to me a problem that a stylistic approach to the study of literature can easily
solve. For students aiming to move on to English Studies in whatever form at a
tertiary level, ‘stepping back’ at Advanced Level is not in their interests. Indeed,
the now discontinued Advanced Extension Award (AEA) introduced in 2002 for
the more able students in Year 13, had explicit references to more language-
based approaches to literature as part of its standard make-up of extracts and
questions, one of which, on the June 2006 paper, asked students to consider the
benefits of stylistic and other language-based approaches to literary texts.

Teaching apparatus and design

Teaching using stylistics has often been seen as consisting of a number of
stages (McRae 1991), including a pre-reading stimulus and a series of carefully
planned movements through an apparatus, which enable a ‘reading, subjective
reaction and objective response’ (McRae 1991:81). In the design of apparatus,
the use of a stylistic checklist or check sheet has also featured prominently
(see for example McRae 1991, Pope 1995, Short 1996). Firstly, the checklist
crucially reminds students (and teachers) of the need to concentrate on formal

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textual properties that allow for a relative and objective enterprise to take
place. Secondly, as Short (1996:49) claims, the checklist naturally follows and
consolidates learning from ‘softening up’ activities that act as a point of entry
into a text, allowing students to immediately feel that they are involved in
critical practice, by providing them with a appropriate, reasonably
sophisticated and yet not bewildering metalanguage.

This attention to the continuous enquiry that should underpin stylistic

approaches is reflected in more cognitive approaches to stylistics as a manner
of explaining the ways in which readers may, through textual negotiation,
arrive at a satisfactory, although not rigid, sense of reading. These are apparent
in Stockwell’s (2002:31) terms interpretation to describe initial responses and
reading to describe the more fully rounded sense of meaning, both being the
distinct products of a reader at different stages of the reading process. In this
way, and to combine the pedagogical and the cognitive, a teaching apparatus
should be sufficiently stimulating to enable a reading through developing
interpretation and be open enough to allow subsequent discussion and
reformulation of ideas.

Textual intervention
Pope’s work (1995, 2003) on what he calls ‘heuristic interactive learning’ (1995:
183), invites students to engage actively with meaning-making through
intervening, re-writing and re-creating. At the heart of this is the insistence on
the act of reading as significant creative play in the search for alternative and
counter representations of textual reality and dialogism. As Widdowson
(1992:79) suggests, interventionist activities are pedagogical exercises that
demand the creative yet potentially subversive view of ‘leisure as recreation’
rather than ‘leisure as distraction’, where the former represents and allows for
the ‘exercising the prerogative of self without being called to social account’
(1992:79). Both of these have a crucial pedagogical concern at heart: namely
that critically mature readers are and must be active creators of meaning, and
that understanding of how a text operates can be best achieved by de and
re-centring texts in a number of contexts, forms and with attention to a
number of potential voices, previously covert or textually denied. In line
with an insistence on an apparatus and practice being student-centred and
process-driven, textual intervention encourages critical literary awareness
(Sinclair 1996, Hall 1999, Zyngier 1999).

Text world theory

The following is offered as a brief summary of the text world theory model
(see Gavins 2007 for the most comprehensive overview of the model).

Text World Theory has a three tiered architectural structure.3 (shown in Figure 1).

The discourse world: where discourse participants (usually a writer/speaker

and reader/listener) work together to negotiate the construction of conceptual

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Figure 1: The text world theory architecture

DISCOURSE WORLD

Writer/Speaker and Reader/Listener

Background knowledge

Text
TEXT WORLD

Places
SUB-WORLD
Events
Shifts in time,
Characters space or attitude

Action/description

spaces through a combination of mutually manifest or textual detail and shared

background knowledge

The text world: the conceptual space(s) initially created by the discourse
participants, the realisation of the physical ‘text’ into rich mental constructions
through world-builders of time, place, characters and events and description

The sub-world: further remote spaces, characterised by some kind of

movement away from the originating text world temporally and/or spatially. In
addition, attitudes expressed through modalised constructions form boulomaic
modal worlds (stressing desire), deontic modal worlds (stressing obligation)
and epistemic modal worlds (stressing belief or degrees of certainty). Sub-
worlds are formed by text world triggers.

A distinction can be made between world builders (WB) and function

advancing propositions (FA). World builders are deictic reference points

Table 1: Text world types and linguistic triggers

World Type Trigger

Text World
World Switch Deictic movement in time or space
Boulomaic modal world Modal verb processes of desire or want
Deontic modal world Modal verb processes of obligation
or requirement
Epistemic modal world Modal verb processes of
knowledge belief or hypothesis

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offering important textual detail as to the composition of the originating text

world in terms of character, time and space. They act to position the reader in
the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of the original text world and provide an initial centre
from which alternate conceptual structures can be projected from the desires,
beliefs or speculations of narrators or characters or shifts in time or location.
World building elements are also prone, as suggested above, to the kinds of
subtle shifts in their conceptual organisation depending on the reader’s
background knowledge.

Function advancing propositions undertake the fleshing out in a Text World

model and can broadly be divided into two types. The model borrows from
Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday 1985) to describe verbal constructions
in terms of processes and distinguish between those descriptive elements
(relational and existential processes) and those that are plot advancing
(material and mental processes).

As Text World Theory views communication as discourse in the widest sense,

it gives equal attention to aspects of writerly style or texture and the ways in
which readers may process texts and construct conceptual structures. It
therefore fits neatly into a methodology that stresses the how just as much if
not more than the what.

The transferable nature of the model is also apparent in the ability of Text
World Theory to sit well with textual interventionist work with its focus on re-
writing activities, particularly those which look at the effects of shifts in voice,
for example to those alternative perceptual deictic centres of extra and intra-
textual participants and those which consider alternative explorations of a
particular text in time, for example the writing of preludes, interludes and
postludes as well as those that consider potentiality or ‘poetentiality’
(Widdowson 1992:78) and later realisation and contrast. In addition, as Text
World Theory is concerned with negotiated world construction, it provides
opportunities for the teacher and student to consider the reader’s role in
the construction of preferred and oppositional or resistant readings (Gavins
2007).

Finally, Text World Theory has the potential to have the needs of learners as
its chief concern. The model is sufficiently flexible to be presented as part of
an integrated approach to apparatus design and formative assessment in as
much or as little detail as the teacher judges to be necessary and as the
students demand. At a basic level, a model looking solely at text world shifts
along a perceptual, spatial or temporal dimension could yield precise analyses
of style and exact descriptions of reader monitoring of a text and conceptual
construction, while more complex phenomena can be included or excluded
from teaching models as and when appropriate. In a similar way, the model
provides a crucial metalanguage of critical literary study through a terminology
that can be gradually introduced and learnt through the practice of analysis. It

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is important to see this not as ‘watering down’ but rather developing a

sensitive and sympathetic approach to the needs of learners, empowering the
student analyst rather than further mystifying the reading process.

Teaching apparatus
This apparatus focuses on the poem ‘Lamplight’ by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
from Catherine Reilly’s (1981) collection Scars Upon My Heart: Women’s Poetry
and Verse of the First World War. The tasks offered to students here could be
following more a substantial study of First World War poetry or at the
beginning of a unit of work.

Learning objectives
l To explore how the poems present female voices as experiencers of loss
l To examine how text world and deictic shifts operate in the poems and how
an analysis using these models might explain the processes that readers
undertake when interpreting these texts
l To present analyses of reading objectively and with due consideration
fortextual and contextual causes and effects

Teaching objectives
l To provide readers with a usable model for analysing deictic movements
within a text
l To develop and encourage critical literacy awareness
l To explore intertextuality within the context of students’ own experiences in
the situational act of reading
l To allow opportunities for, evaluation of and reflection on learning
processes and skills learnt

Pre-reading activity
2225 British individuals wrote poetry during the First World War,
of whom 532 were women.

Why do you think that women’s poetry during or about the First
World War is so under-represented in anthologies and
classrooms? What crucial differences might you imagine there to
be between men and women’s writing about the First World War?
What different concerns might each have? Why?

Focus questions
A1 What does the title ‘Lamplight’ suggest? What do you think
that this poem might be about?

A2 Look carefully at the first stanza. Identify any shifts that you
think are important in: tense; place and any aspect of modality
(obligation, desire, possibility). For each example, highlight the
words or phrases that help you come to your decision

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A3 What kinds of attitudes are expressed in the first stanza?

How are these realised lexically?

A4 What relationship do you think exists between the speaker

and the assumed listener (addresser and addressee)?

A5 Now complete the previous three questions for the remainder

of the poem. Summarise your ideas under each of the following
three headings: text shifts; attitudes; relationships

A model for examining world switches

Developing text worlds
For each of the shifts that you have discovered, design a text
world to show both the information at the core of that world
(the who, where, when and what) and the subsequent action
that takes place in that world that marks it as distinct from the
originating world of the poem. Use the model below to help
you do this. The first possible switch has been provided for
you, although you may want to develop its detail and
comments.

Figure 2: A model for examining world switches

I, HERE, NOW
TIME
PLACE

LAMPLIGHT

ATTITUDE
PERCEPTION
(NEGATION)

Figure 3: Initial text worlds

ORIGINATING WORLD

WHO? The speaker SWITCH - TIME

WHERE? Unspecified place?
WHEN? The present WHO? ???
WHERE? ???
WHAT? Surroundings? Objects? WHEN? ???
WHAT? ???

We planned to shake the

world together……

Being young…
(being) very wise….

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For each text world that you suggest, take what for you are the
key words and comment on their significance as you see it

For example

‘planned’ suggests………………

‘young’ and ‘wise’ suggests………………….

You should also substitute different words for those that you have
identified. What would be the result of these changes? What
impact does this have on your initial understanding of the effect
of these choices on you as a reader?

You should also aim to complete the WHO, WHERE, WHEN and
WHAT in the top section of the text world box using the
information in the first stanza.

Thinking about processes

For each example of detail within your worlds, look carefully at
the verbal processes you have identified. Mark each verb phrase
in the following way

l As an action process (i.e. with a dynamic verb showing movement and

intention)
l As a relational process (i.e. describing a state of being)
l As a mental process (i.e. describing thinking, seeing or believing)

What patterns do you notice in your identification? Are there

contrasts between types of process? What do you think are the
effects of these contrasts? How does this rest with your initial
ideas on the poem?

Developing worlds
Now that you have completed a short analysis of switches in the
poem, considered how these may be presented visually and in
doing so, developed your ideas on how this poem operates, you
should consider the final two stanzas of the poem.

Use your checklist and focus questions to guide your reading.

When you reach stanza 3, you may notice that there are three
negative constructions. These are detailed below:

‘We shall never shake the world together’

‘You took the road we never spoke of’

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‘And have no need of fame’

For each negative construction, complete the table below to

consider how for you, negative constructions may initiate
alternative worlds in the form of world switches.

Table 2: Negation in ‘Lamplight’

Departure
from expectation,
Line Meaning belief or desire

‘‘We shall never shake

the world together,
you and I’’ (21)
‘‘You took the
road we never spoke of’’ 25)
‘‘And have
no need of fame’’ (28)

At this stage you should now complete a full set of visual

representations of the world switches as you see them in
‘Lamplight’ together with a labelling of each process.

Using your work on all of this section, comment on how

Wedderburn Cannan explores the idea of loss in her poem. In
particular, you should consider:

l The construction of text worlds and world switches

l The types of processes she uses
l Particular lexical choices and their effect
l The relationship that exists between addresser and addressee
l How this poem is similar or different to other poems you have read as part
of this course

How did I get there?

Think back to your construction of text worlds in relation to those
elements of textual detail apparent in the poem. Apart from
particular word choices, what else do you think was responsible
for the construction of those worlds? Think about what you bring
to the text as an individual and as a reader? Discuss your
thoughts with someone else. Can you account for any differences
in your construction of text worlds and therefore your
interpretation of aspects of the poem?

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Textual de- and re-centring

Your next task is to explore the use of voice in the poem by
considering other possible (and potential) voices. Use the model
below to identify other potential participants both intra and extra
textual and including both the actual writer and actual reader
(you). Some spaces have been completed as examples

Figure 4: Intra and extra textual participants (from Pope 1995:19)

INTRA-TEXTUAL
PARTICIPANTS

the lover

ACTUAL WRITER> <ACTUAL READER

other soldiers

the government

EXTRA-TEXTUAL
PARTICIPANTS

For each of your chosen participants, consider how they are

represented using the interpersonal triangle below. Map each
participant according to the current perceptual centre of the
speaker that the poem presents. For most extra-textual
participants, this will need to be an assumed representation
based on the attitudes expressed in the poem.

Figure 5: The interpersonal triangle (from Pope 1995:50)

I/We

You S/he/they/it

Now re-centre ‘Lamplight’ from the perspective of one of your

intra or extra textual participants. In re-creating, you should
think carefully about:

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l Your re-centring and its effect on the interpersonal triangle – a shift in

perception will generate shifts in pronoun reference as well as lexical and
attitudinal differences
l The textual mode you think best suits your new participant

What alternative ways of looking at the situation described in

‘Lamplight’ have you highlighted?

What tensions has this exercise raised?

For each decision that you make, you should note your reasons for doing so
and for any ideas that you have about the textual effect of that decision.
Include this as part of your on-going critical commentary.

Rationale for teaching apparatus

The pre-reading stimulus is designed to encourage students to think about
the fact that female writing about the First World War has been very much
in the shadow of that by males, both in probably their own classroom
experience and reading of critical coverage. It should be noted that this
exercise is designed to encourage students to consider possible causes of
that misrepresentation and in doing so lead them to consider exactly what
a female voice of loss and resentment might be. In doing so responses
might suggest not only those which focus on socio-historical context and
the position of women in Edwardian society but also those that consider
theme and content. Students might assume, for example, that literature
written during or about the First World War might be more concerned with
soldiers and fighting rather than domestic issues and relationships. Equally,
students might argue that later readers might be more interested in
descriptions of warfare as part of school or college courses. It could be the
case that the male poets such as Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred
Owen and Isaac Rosenberg have dominated anthologies to the extent that
war poetry as a genre has now become synonymous with their names. All
of this depends of course on the response of real readers and these are
only some suggestions as to how students might respond. What is crucial is
that the pre-reading stimulus activity does not present or indeed cause a
contextual overload and therefore impact on the students’ interaction with
the text itself, a danger when approaching texts in a contextual way
(McRae 1991).

The focus questions act as a kind of ‘softening up’ (Short 1996:43) and as a
way of initiating students’ first interpretations, which hopefully by the end of
the unit will become fully fledged readings. In this way, the focus questions on
‘Lamplight’ point students towards key formal properties in the first stanza and
begin to anticipate some of the linguistic knowledge that students will need to
undertake an analysis in Text World Theory terms. They also ‘open up the

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text, rather then close or limit it’ (McRae 1991:46) as a way of securing interest
and anticipating critical enquiry.

The questions once completed begin to encourage students to see some

basic world building elements and function advancing propositions in the
poem and encourage a text specific but individual response. At this stage, it
is now possible to introduce some more concrete terminology and
encourage students to complete a rudimentary Text World analysis to
explore their ideas.

Figure 2 is introduced as a way of visually representing departure points of

projection from the initial text world evident in the here and now of the poetic
speaker. Representing these points in this way could facilitate further
discussion and ideas as well as preparing students for a more sophisticated
account using conventional Text World Theory diagrammatic notation.

Figure 3 does this by presenting students with an incomplete Text World

diagram. Work is initially concentrated solely on the first stanza to allow a
clear focus and to prevent students having to deal with new terminology with
too much text. The final two short tasks on this initial world consider language
choices in more detail. In view of the importance of choosing one lexical item
over another, students first are asked to choose alternatives and comment on
the effect of those changes. This consolidates some of the work begun on
attitudes, as for example students may well comment on the ironic tone
suggested by ‘wise’ and its adjacency to ‘young’; and the substitution of
alternative verb phrases for ‘planned’, ‘dreamed’ and ‘setting’ could generate
some constructive discussion following the completion of text world diagrams.
Finally, the section on processes introduces students to a crucial part of text
world theory: the distinction between descriptive and action function
advancing propositions and introduces some basic ideas on processes from
systemic functional linguistics. The terminology is simplified to include only
three types of process at this stage. Crucially, mental processes that often
trigger boulomaic or epistemic modal worlds are also introduced and set up
for students to discuss.

The three negative modal constructions in ‘Lamplight’ are a significant stylistic

device, functioning as an example of ‘negative accommodation’ (Werth 1999:
253; Hidalgo-Downing 2000: 233). a kind of foregrounding by introducing
components (‘shaking’ the world, talking about death ‘the road’ and having
‘fame’) into an existing organised conceptual structure in order to deny
their having taken place. In the context of the poem, they also present to
varying degrees, a departure from a previously held expectation, belief or
desire.

As these negative modal constructions offer an important way of further

discussing how loss is presented in this poem, they form an important part of

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a text world analysis. Table 2 is designed to allow students to explore these

constructions, firstly by allowing them to explore what they think the lines
mean in the context of the poem as a whole and then asking them to consider
the lines as part of a series of denied expectations or desires. In this way,
students will see that negation can be handled and diagrammatically presented
by Text World Theory in a similar way to the setting up of world switches
based on deictic movement or boulomaic modal constructions. It represents a
simplified yet sound model for introducing the term and theory in a practical
way and encouraging students to consider how the text is structured to
produce a particular effect.

The final set of activities on ‘Lamplight’ are designed to complement the initial
work on using a Text World Theory approach through some more explicit
textual intervention based on textual de- and re-centring exercises. These
include considering alternative potential voices of intra and extra textual
participants as a way of exploring other viewpoints on the same textual detail
(see Figure 4). The interpersonal triangle in Figure 5 adapted from Pope
(1995), is used to allow students to see the linguistic shifts demanded by a
different point of view. The objective of these exercises is to highlight the
possible differences in text world construction based on shifts in subjectivity
and agency. Students will be encouraged to explore how the death of the
loved one would be represented differently if presented by for example,
another soldier, a government official or perhaps another member of the
family. The strength of such an approach is that it allows creative thinking not
only as to who the observers of actions and expressers of opinion might be
but also as to how their positions in relation to the events described
necessarily alters the way these events are portrayed and how a reader might
respond to them. In essence, it asks them to consider the effect of a particular
female voice and position themselves as an interested party in the events and
actions that the poem describes.

Conclusion
The methodology outlined in this article offers a proposal for beginning to
establish a more systematic and sustained stylistic model to account for reader
tracking and the explanation of literary effects in the English classroom.
Although ideas such as spatial and temporal shifts and shifts in viewpoint will
no doubt have been addressed by teachers and encountered by students
before, this approach presents a more coherent and both cognitively and
pedagogically plausible model for analysis. The strength of text world theory is
that its ability to account for all kinds of discourse means that it can be
introduced through more straightforward and non-literary examples if need be
(see for example Gavins 2007: 1-17). Equally, although the poem used clearly
lends itself to the kinds of textural effects that can be easily explained using
text world theory, more extensive work could be undertaken looking at more
subtle and complex phenomena such as irony, empathy and speech
representation in a range of literary texts. In summary, as a methodology using

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a text-worlds approach for beginners using a short extract from a literary text,
the apparatus achieves the following:

l It begins with a ‘literary problem’ (Short 1996:44) from which linguistic

information can be slowly introduced in a strictly process-driven and
student-centred methodology.
l It has introduced a version of the diagrammatic notation used in a text
world approach as a way of encouraging systematic, clear analyses as well
as a consideration of the reader’s role in meaning-making.
l A combination of focus questions and further developmental stages has
now made the creation of a stylistic checklist possible for future reference
and work.
l The focus is as much on the how as on the what. Although interpretations
are discussed (and this discussion is encouraged), students are constantly
guided, through close attention to textual detail, to consider the causes of
literary effects rather then just the effects themselves. The emphasis then is
on the ‘process of negotiation between student and text’ (McRae 1991:51).
l Students are encouraged to collaborate and to discuss, reflect on and
evaluate working practices and ideas.
l Each stage allows the teacher the opportunity to develop and apply
formative assessment strategies as well as opportunities for students to
reflect on and evaluate their learning.
l It clearly begins to bridge the problematic ‘gap’ between Advanced Level
and undergraduate study (see for example Snapper 2009) and could be
further developed to allow students to explore both their personal
responses and those constructed as part of specific reading communities to
a range of literary texts.4

Notes
1
Although the teaching apparatus was designed for an A Level group, I would
argue that the process and methodology could be used across the age range
with some adaptation of terminology.
2
As much work in cognitive poetics is centred on the cognitive processes of
readers, it is essentially pedagogical in orientation. See Stockwell (2002) for a
summary of approaches.
3
This represents a simplified version of the model but one that is suitable for
the purpose.
4
Since Text World Theory specifically aims to account for the role of reader
background knowledge in the negotiation and construction of meaning, it
provides a usable model for students to consider why they might have
selected or interpreted textual detail in a particular way.

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