Text-World Theory in Nicole Disney’s “Beneath the Cracks”: A Stylistic/Cognitive Analysis

This paper is a stylistic/cognitive analysis of a narrative based on Text World Theory (TWT) in an attempt to identify the text worlds, the discourse worlds and the sub-worlds in the text under analysis. Cognitive Linguistics is an interdisciplinary approach incorporating language and cognitive abilities. Emphasis is on the manner by which humans process language and build mental representations, text-worlds, to reach a thorough comprehension of meaning structures. The short story analyzed is “Beneath the Cracks”, by Nicole Disney. This research tries to prove that context-dependent text world analysis of narratives is useful in rendering participants’ senses. (TWT), in the works of Werth (1999) and Gavins (2007a, 2007b), provides an explanatory account of the way readers build mental models based on the linguistic items presented. TWT explains the process of readers’ moving from textual information towards the deep nature of text worlds. It is concluded that TWT demonstrates the cognitive processes taking place through the process of reading, the process that leads to text interpretation and accessing meaning. The short narrative is evidence that TWT is a tool that reveals human mental representations and their changing stages according to life defiance and struggles. This paper is original in its interpretation of new scopes of text meanings based on Text World Theory.