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Text World Theory and situation-model research: enhancing validity and tracking world-retrievals

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Published/Copyright: March 29, 2023
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Abstract

When Paul Werth invented the concept of ‘text-worlds’ (1999), he drew on existing psychological accounts of how the mind processes stimuli, such as the idea of the ‘situation model’ (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). Yet despite the important advancements to Werth’s approach that have been made in stylistics over the years, situation-model research is rarely, if ever, referenced in what is now called Text World Theory (Gavins 2007). In this article, I consult empirical research on situation models, consequently making two significant contributions: I show how empirical situation-model research bolsters the validity of Text World Theory; I propose a new concept for Text World Theory—‘world-retrieval’—to account for how readers trace the interconnections between text-worlds and attempt to resolve processing difficulties. An analysis of the opening to Ray Loriga’s (2003) novel Tokyo Doesn’t Love Us Anymore demonstrates the value of the ‘world-retrieval’ concept.


Corresponding author: Alison Gibbons, Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. I would also like to thank Joanna Gavins for her constructive feedback on an earlier draft of this article as well as the anonymous reviewers for their insights.

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Published Online: 2023-03-29
Published in Print: 2023-04-25

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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