As Bernstein's work demonstrates, the crucial principle of what could be characterised as intelligible structure in hypertext is in fact the recognition and interpretation of autonomous segments - what Bernstein characterises as 'patterns', and Rosenberg as 'episodes'.
As Metz demonstrated in relation to cinema, shots are commonly perceived to be the minimal units of a film, but while a shot has an order of intelligibility far in excess of the word or sentence (thus discounting a strictly linguistic structure for cinematic discourse), it is when shots are formed into autonomous sequences that they form distinct narrative units, and it is the development of these segments, and their combination, that has marked the history and development of cinematic narration.
Similar conclusions apply to hypertext. While an individual node shares similar qualities to the cinematic shot (Miles, 1999, Mancini, 2000), it is the development of syntagmatic series that concerns hypertext narration, whether fiction or nonfiction. This suggests that Bernstein's patterns could be considered as primarily syntagmatic series, and while an effort to categorise or name the possible series is of significant value for hypertext research, it is probably more important to recognise that what is described is not peculiar to hypertext.
If the patterns formed by writing or reading hypertext are thought of as primarily questions of syntagmatic chains then it becomes clear that much of the discussion about link rhetorics, particularly questions of link transparency, are in fact related to formal questions of paradigmatic association.
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
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As Metz demonstrated in relation to cinema, shots are commonly perceived to be the minimal units of a film, but while a shot has an order of intelligibility far in excess of the word or sentence (thus discounting a strictly linguistic structure for cinematic discourse), it is when shots are formed into autonomous sequences that they form distinct narrative units, and it is the development of these segments, and their combination, that has marked the history and development of cinematic narration.
Similar conclusions apply to hypertext. While an individual node shares similar qualities to the cinematic shot (Miles, 1999, Mancini, 2000), it is the development of syntagmatic series that concerns hypertext narration, whether fiction or nonfiction. This suggests that Bernstein's patterns could be considered as primarily syntagmatic series, and while an effort to categorise or name the possible series is of significant value for hypertext research, it is probably more important to recognise that what is described is not peculiar to hypertext.
If the patterns formed by writing or reading hypertext are thought of as primarily questions of syntagmatic chains then it becomes clear that much of the discussion about link rhetorics, particularly questions of link transparency, are in fact related to formal questions of paradigmatic association.
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
Enter Hypertextual as a member
