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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The consideration of hypertext structure as consisting of 'whole' syntagmatic series, which in turn become the paradigmatic sets available, has complex implications which require further research.

It would appear that the relation of one node to another, via a link, while significant, gains greater currency when considered from the point of view of a discrete syntagmatic segment (which could, in principle, consist of two nodes). However, such an approach discounts the origin of the link in a manner that is probably untenable - in cinema this is irrelevant as the point of connection is the end of one shot and this is, currently, the only point of connection. Obviously a hypertext provides a point within a node from which connection is possible, and thus for a syntagmatic series to be formed, and so the relation of the link source to its destination also forms a syntagmatic series.

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Syntagmatically oriented hypertext

Hypertext writing and systems that emphasise 'usability' (where usability seems to assume ease of use as a positive attribute for any hypertext), place an emphasis on the syntagmatic.

This emphasis on the smooth flow of links into nodes describes a highly linear reading experience. Interestingly, in Bernstein's examples most of the patterns that would probably relate to 'usability' are represented by highly linear images, the sieve for instance. However, the emphasis in the syntagmatically oriented hypertext is not, as might be thought, on simple patterns (any variety of pattern could be formed by the reader) but on linear continuity.

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Rules of combination

As Metz makes abundantly clear, there is no real paradigmatic axis in the cinema, and this is also so in hypertext - when I write hypertext I can link more or less to anywhere and there are no necessary rules of combination that exclude or promote particular destinations. This suggests that it is within the series of combinations formed by links, what Metz in the cinematic case characterises as autonomous syntagmatic units, that hypertext structure resides.

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

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.


See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
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Syntagmatics and paradigmatics

The distinction between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic has a very strong theoretical history in literature, where the syntagmatic is identified with 'realist' literature and the paradigmatic with, at an extreme, poetry. Regardless of the significance of such theory for hypertext, particularly in terms of ideological analysis, such terms provide a methodology for recognising the continuity between various hypertexts, possible, imagined, and realised. Indeed, just as Jakobson identified in regards to literature, it is clear that literary hypertexts tend to emphasise the paradigmatic, while instrumental hypertexts emphasise the syntagmatic, and that these axes are defined by the syntagmatic sequences provided and formed.

Adrian Miles: Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links A performative hypertext


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