This paper concerns itself with the process of conceptualization, which is understood as on-line conceptual and linguistic formation of messages prior to verbalization. The issue is discussed in terms of Levelt’s (1989) model of speech production and von Stutterheim’s (2003) paradigm for text analysis. In particular, the paper looks into the claims advanced by von Stutterheim regarding the role of grammatical aspect in the construal of events, which may be either closed or open-ended, the perspective taken by the speaker and the resultant amount of information packaged into utterances. Even though the underlying theory constitutes a consistent framework, the incoming research data is beginning to show divergent stylistic preferences within aspectually related language types. This calls for careful examination of the existent findings, with emphasis on specific languages and/or language pairings rather than broad typological categories. The paper ends with predictions regarding event encoding patterns in Polish, as these are likely to influence L2 encoding preferences.