(Re)thinking modality: A text-world perspective
Abstract
The late Paul Werth’s model of human discourse processing, Text World Theory (Werth 1994, 1995a, 1995b, and 1999), has been subject to some dramatic evolutionary changes over the last decade. Here I examine in particular the text-worlds created by the presence of modalized propositions in literary fiction and suggest a number of modifications to Werth’s (1999) handling of this area of discourse. I question Werth’s explanation of modality and use Simpson’s (1993) modal grammar of narrative fiction to formulate a refined text-world account of the conceptual structure of modalized propositions. As a consequence of this investigation, however, I also suggest that a text-world perspective on modality may have much to offer both to Simpson’s modal grammar and to our understanding of modality as a whole.
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
Articles in the same Issue
- (Re)thinking modality: A text-world perspective
- Embodying “you”: Levinas and a question of the second person
- Interpreting marked order narration: The case of James Joyce’s “Eveline”
- “As reading as if”: Harryette Mullen’s ‘cognitive similes’
- An analysis of Elizabeth Jennings’s “One Flesh”: Poem as product and process
- Joke shop names
- Invitation and call for papers: IALS IV, 2006
- Index of articles in Volume 34 (2005)
Articles in the same Issue
- (Re)thinking modality: A text-world perspective
- Embodying “you”: Levinas and a question of the second person
- Interpreting marked order narration: The case of James Joyce’s “Eveline”
- “As reading as if”: Harryette Mullen’s ‘cognitive similes’
- An analysis of Elizabeth Jennings’s “One Flesh”: Poem as product and process
- Joke shop names
- Invitation and call for papers: IALS IV, 2006
- Index of articles in Volume 34 (2005)
