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Text World Theory is a cognitive model of language processing which metaphorically describes the "world" of a text in order to explain how readers or hearers of language combine linguistic information and background knowledge to construct meaning. This model of language processing has been linked to the ways in which human beings construct meaning through mental worlds based on sensory input. Text World Theory was first developed by Paul Werth in the 1980s, and has subsequently been used as a pedagogical tool for teachers to help pupils engage with literature (particularly poetry) in a more personal way. In this regard, Text World Theory has been linked with Reader Response Theory, particularly with Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of reading.

Origin and Development
Text World Theory is a branch of Cognitive Linguistics that was first developed by Paul Werth in the 1980s and 1990s. Werth claimed to have created an approach that accounted for all aspects of human communication, but he was still in the process of developing his theory when he died in 1995. At the time of his death, although Werth had published articles on Text World Theory, his monograph Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse was unpublished until Mick Short completed and edited the text between 1995 and 1998. Text Worlds was published in 1999.

Since Werth's conception of Text World Theory, the concept has been incorporated into the study of linguistics, stylistics, cognitive poetics, narratology and literary theory. Whilst Werth's study was largely limited to short extracts, Text World Theory has been expanded and tested against many different discourse types, including personal ads, poetry, recipes and radio programmes.

Text World Theory is structured into three conceptual levels: the discourse-world, the text-worlds and world-switches.

The discourse world is the immediate environment a person is in when they are communicating. Discourse worlds can either be shared or split. A shared discourse world would include a face-to-face conversation, whereas a split discourse world would include an author and reader, where the two participants do not share a common environment. An individual's discourse world influence how they interpret language due to their background knowledge, thoughts and feelings. Rather than being an "objective set of physical surroundings", therefore, the context of a discourse world is a mental process carried out as part of a negotiation between discourse-world participants.

Within these discourse worlds, humans create "mental representations" of these discourse worlds which allow the language they are encountering to be understood. These are text worlds: they take the linguistic stimuli of the text/speech and expand upon it using the background knowledge, perspectives and emotions of the reader/hearer.

Finally, world-switches are evoked when there is a departure from the initial text world through a shift in space or time.

Use in Education
Text World Theory has been used in schools in order to encourage a personal engagement with texts from pupils and help teachers to understand the "nature of communicative interaction and literary transaction." This has been linked to the educational applications of metacognition, particularly with respect to the reading process. This emphasis on Text World Theory could be considered a response to the increasing emphasis on the cognitive importance of literary study in schools put forwards by researchers.

In a classroom setting, discourse-worlds are complicated by the fact that there are multiple participants engaging with the discourse world, namely the other pupils and the educational staff. Moreover, in a classroom setting, there is often an unequal distribution of power. Marcello Giovanelli argues that this unequal distribution of power can often lead to pupils believing that their interpretations of literature are less valuable than their teachers, which, in turn, leads to pupils failing to build an independent 'text world'. One of the solutions that Giovanelli gives to this issue is the importance of pictorial representations of texts as related to the work in education through semiotics by Charles Suhor.