Vantage theory, statistics and the mental worldview

The paper investigates Polish punk and hip hop (rap) song lyrics broken down into frequency lists. In an analysis inspired by MacLaury’s view of categorization, the construals of punk and hip hop worldviews are shown to vary in the distance of the observer from the world, the width of the viewing frame, as well as the granularity and density of the world picture. The two bodies of lyrics also reveal different tendencies in the positioning of the first-person speaker vs. other personae or the world of discourse. Evidence for differences in worldviews come from the frequency of lexemes, the use of deictic pronouns, or the pronominal and verbal references to people.