ABSTRACT
Connected bits of general cultural information based on verbal and nonverbal experience, etc. are stored as packages or schemas or schemata, which, although often stereotypical, are continually being ‘updated’ or even challenged. Schemata nonetheless are crucially important for readers to make inferences about what is going on in a text or film, to fill in gaps and to make it coherent. (See also text world.) They are also influential on our general communicative competence: so that we know how to buy a ticket for the train, and what to say or do (or not) in the presence of the Queen.
