Integrating Language and Literature: A Text World Theory Approach

Abstract

In UK schools, there remains a compartmentalisation of English into ‘language’ and ‘literature’, evident in the ways that the subject is taught and examined and in the degrees to which teachers perceive themselves as being either a ‘language’ or a ‘literature’ teacher. In this paper, we suggest that an approach informed by cognitive linguistics and cognitive stylistics offers a wealth of affordances to the teacher who wishes to integrate aspects of linguistic and literary studies into their teaching. We argue that, in particular, the cognitive discourse grammar Text World Theory provides an accessible and usable set of pedagogical principles, and present two case studies of collaborative research with teachers in which they drew upon Text World Theory as a model for thinking about grammar teaching, literature teaching, lesson design, classroom talk and their own identity as a teacher of English. The data suggests that this approach may have positive benefits for students engaging in high-level linguistic analysis and the developing of responses to literature, and for teachers thinking about lesson and activity design.

A textured and sensory grammar for the experience of reading

“…This builds not just on the emerging interest in applying cognitive stylistics to schools as a pedagogy (e.g. Cushing 2018a, 2020a f.c, 2020b f.c; Cushing & Giovanelli 2019;Giovanelli 2010Giovanelli , 2017, but within a wider shift towards contextualised grammar pedagogies (e.g. Myhill 2018) and stylistics in schools more broadly (see Cushing 2018b for an overview).…”

“…In order to assess such beliefs, I conducted a classroom-based study in which I worked closely with two secondary English teachers and their Year 8 classes in a North London school. Other work from this project is reported in Cushing (2018a, 2020a f.c., 2020b f.c) and Cushing & Giovanelli (2019). The study was committed to collaborative and pragmatic principles in teacher-researcher work, adopting the guidelines from design-based research (DBR) (e.g.…”

A Cognitive Stylistic Study of Selected Skits on African Social Media/ Un Estudio Cognitivo Estilistico De Skits Seleccionados en Las Redes Sociales Africanas

“…In terms of methodology, text world analysis rests on tripodal model, with conceptual operatives that include: "discourse world," "text world" and "sub-worlds" or "world switches." In the model illustrated by Cushing and Giovanelli (2019), the discourse world comprises the writer/speaker, reader, or audience, background knowledge, conceptual resources and text. The text-world comprises time, places, events, characters, and action/ description, while the sub-world comprises shifts in time and place, or the "situational context surrounding the speech event itself" (Werth, 1999: 83).…”