The worldview underlying a great deal of contemporary humanities departments is postmodern through and through, both academically, and in the personal values and questions of life that are offered to students. The following thoughts follow the seven worldview questions suggested by James Sire in his helpful books. On the question of what is really real, the vogue in English is now to remove questions of fact and replace them with questions of how language communicates, if indeed it can. Increasingly the opinion is that it cannot. Instead what matters is not how a poem, novel, etc, transmits meaning, but how the reader constructs meaning and impressions around the text.
Substance is replaced by style.
The nature of reality is also a vexed question for the English department. Ultimately it is hidden forever by language games that conceal rather than reveal. Probing through the layers to actual meaning or truth is thought impossible. Much contemporary theory as a result doesn t take itself too seriously, but instead enjoys the play of language. In one notable example Giles Deleuze interrupts several paragraphs of freely flowing academic theory to point out that he had to be well tanked up before he could write stuff.