Recognising contextual nature of link

The issue is not one of predetermining what links mean but of recognising the contingent and contextual nature of link use, as readers and writers.

This is common in poststructural approaches to discourse, which no longer place much store in hierarchies determined by formal categories, and is particularly the case in hypertext where it seems reasonably clear that readers find connection by virtue of the link.

It is important that we recognise that hypertextual narration is composed of syntagmatic series, and that this series is determined on the basis of some measure of narrative 'integrity' - whether episodic wholeness, readerly comprehension, temporal or thematic unity, or some other criteria (Rosenberg 1996). This is important because it suggests that the definition and decision of what constitutes a sequence lies as much outside of each constituent part as it does within the content or the connecting of its parts. Hence, if it lies outside, then any ambition to develop or define a typology or classificatory system must always be surrendered in the face of this outside.

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Sequential movement through time

It has been pointed out that the mode of language is fundamentally one of sequential movement through time.

It follows from this that each word will have a linear or 'horizontal' relationship with the words that precede and succeed it, and a good deal of its capacity to 'mean' various things derives from this pattern of positioning. In the sentence 'the boy kicked the girl', the meaning 'unrolls' as each word follows its predecessor and is not complete until the final word comes into place. This constitutes language's syntagmatic aspect, and it could also be thought of as its 'diachronic' aspect because of its commitment to the passage of time.

But each word will also have relationships with other words in the language that do not occur at this point in time, but are capable of doing so. The word, that is, has 'formulaic' assocations with those other words from among which it has, so to speak, been chosen. And these other words, 'part of the inner storehouse that makes up the language of each speaker' (p. 123) - they might be synonyms, antonyms, words of similar sound or of the same grammatical function - help, by not being chosen, to define the meaning of the word which has. (Hawkes, pp. 26-7.)

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Collection of shots

Metz makes a strong argument for recognising that the major narrative units in cinema are not shots and their immediate relations (edits) but the series that are formed through collections of shots. These series, Metz's autonomous segments, form the major narrating blocks within cinema. This would indicate that it is not the content of an individual shot, nor the relation established between two fragments, that provides what might be characterised as minimal narrative units. Hence, if there is no intrinsic order required between parts then any principle of organisation or coherence will apply at a higher level.

What constitutes a sequence

It is important that we recognise that hypertextual narration is composed of syntagmatic series, and that this series is determined on the basis of some measure of narrative 'integrity' - whether episodic wholeness, readerly comprehension, temporal or thematic unity, or some other criteria (Rosenberg 1996).

This is important because it suggests that the definition and decision of what constitutes a sequence lies as much outside of each constituent part as it does within the content or the connecting of its parts. Hence, if it lies outside, then any ambition to develop or define a typology or classificatory system must always be surrendered in the face of this outside.


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Rhetorics of links

The rhetoric of links is a reasonably common theme in the humanities hypertext literature (Burbules (1997), Ingraham (2000), Kolb (1996, 1997), Liestøl (1994), Moulthrop (1991, 1992), Landow (1994), Morgan (1999), Trigg (1983)). It is apparent, however, that much of this criticism inevitably retains a strongly literary intent - rhetoric is after all a linguistic category, and less surprisingly most who have written what the humanities would recognise as criticism come largely from the literary community.

It is reasonably easy to demonstrate very strong affinities between link node hypertext and cinema. This suggests that while a traditional rhetorical approach may be useful, it is far from adequate to account for the varieties of hypertext sequence, and indeed the model of the cinema may provide more fertile theoretical grounds for articulating link typologies.
Metz, in his semiotic analysis of the cinema, has demonstrated the authority of the syntagmatic in relation to the paradigmatic, and Bernstein's work in hypertext can be appropriated in terms of its relevance to syntagmatic series.

Such an understanding suggests that the role of rhetoric in relation to link typologies is not grounded in the individual relations established between a single link (or even a multiheaded link) between two nodes, but is in fact determined much more substantially by the context provided by an autonomous segment developed across several nodes, and more specfically several links. (A distinction needs to be recognised between the quantity of nodes versus the quantity of links simply because a small number of nodes can produce a significant number of autonomous segments by virtue of a high incidence of linking.)

This is also supported by the example of cinema, where it is clear that there is no significant meaning that adheres to the formal nature of a connection between two shots. Most of the meaning of the connection, of the edit in itself, is determined by the larger contexts provided by the content of the shots, and the narrative itself. In other words, there is no intrinsic 'meaning' to a dissolve, its particular meaning is always determined by the contexts of its particular instantiation (and these contexts are internal - provided by a set of diegetic markers, and external - what is ordinarily the stuff of fields like reader response theory, or even hermeneutics).

In addition, once the role of the syntagmatic series is recognised as a potentially richer notion of minimal narrative unit in hypertext, it becomes clear that the paradigmatic aspect of hypertext, at least in terms of linking practice, allows us to recast how we consider link rhetoric and grammar.

What is extremely important in this claim, however, is not only the relevance of cinema to hypertext as a narrative system, but equally the erosion of an artificial division between genres of discourse that strives to emphasis the distance between the literary and the technical. Ironically, though formal semiotics has been instrumental in identifying qualities that inherently distinguish the literary from the non-literary, this distinction is today largely ignored as the importance of context and the reader is acknowledged.

Adrian Miles: Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links

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Linking categories

Christian Metz argued that the major mode of analysis for cinema (and by implication, hypertext) was based on syntagmatic relations, that is, meaning is principally developed and articulated through the expression of a partially autonomous temporal chain.

This is quite different to the model of natural languages, and extremely different to how we might understand poetry and other creative utterances. Based on this, Metz developed a bifurcating series of possible syntagmatic relations which can be considered to be the major combinations possible.

Metz's schema is derived from a series of simple oppositions, where each distinction revolves around what can be characterised as plot order (continuous or discontinous) and story time (continuous or discontinous). This generates a series of paired syntagmatic groups where each division is able to be further subdivided on the basis of these simple divisions.

The value of this schema for hypertext is significant. First, it offers a novel approach to considering link relations that may (or may not) prove fruitful in considering and developing a critical and creative awareness of hypertextual patterns. This clearly intersects with Bernstein's significant work on hypertext patterns, and this essay's contribution may be useful to the extent that it encourages writers and readers to rethink our assumptions about sequence.

Second, there are substantial theoretical implications embedded within Metz's approach, for the significant narrative unit identified by Metz is not the shot (the hypertext node), or the relation of one shot to another (the edit), but is in fact the larger sequential units produced by the combinations of shots.

Finally, Metz's work demonstrates the strongly contextual nature of these syntagmatic series, a context that traditional cinema narration attempts to saturate, and a context which is increasingly recognised as relevant to hypertext design.

The success of Metz's categories for hypertext lie not so much in their direct applicability but in allowing us to cast light on the role of syntagmatic segments in the production of meaning in hypertext. Metz recognises, as a result of his hierarchy, that such semantic or syntactic trees are unable to account for the varieties of possibility afforded, nor for how they are actually used by individual films, or readers.

Adrian Miles: Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
A performative hypertext presented by Journal of Digital Information

See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
Enter Hypertextual as a member