coherence

Hypertext’s non-linearity has critical implications for scholarly discourse and argumentation, where it is commonly considered important to control the reader’s exposure to the line of reasoning in order to communicate complex ideas and maximise rhetorical impact. Hypertext’s non-linearity has been seen to threaten authors ’ control over discourse order and the coherence of their argumentative discourse. Existing hypertext paradigms offer different solutions to the problem of preserving user-defined navigation whilst maintaining coherence: pagebased hypertext relies on the expressiveness of linear associative writing; semantic hypertext relies on the expressiveness of link taxonomies; spatial hypertext relies on the expressiveness of hypertext’s visual features. This research combines elements of these with new theoretical insights, to investigate a fourth paradigm referred to as Cinematic Hypertext. The problem of maintaining coherence is framed as the problem of representing

While the significance of hypertext links for the new ways of telling stories has been widely discussed, there has been not many debates about the very elements that are being connected: hypertext nodes. Apart from few exceptions, poetics of the link overshadows poetics of the node. My goal is to re-focus on a single node, or lexia, by introducing the concept of contextual regulation as the major force that shapes hypertext narrative units. Because many lexias must be capable of occurring in different contexts and at different stages of the unfolding story, several compromises have to be made on the level of language, style, plot and discourse. Each node, depending on its position and importance, has a varying level of connectivity and autonomy, which affects the global coherence of text.

After focusing on relations between the notion of lexia (as a coherent and flexible unit) and the notion of kernel in narrative theory, an explanation of rules behind contextual regulation is presented, along with the basic typology of nodes. Then an attempt to enhance existing plot pools for hypertext fiction is undertaken. Several suggestions for the new plots, offered by the node-centered approach, are introduced.

This essay seeks to illuminate certain fundamental aspects of textual and cognitive coherence in the production and reading of hypertexts in general and hypernews in particular. A division into intranodal, internodal and hyperstructural coherence helps to clarify concepts and also seems to reflect certain distinctive features of hypertext as a concept representing a linguistic level above the text level. Likewise, van Dijk's conceptual distinction between macro- and superstructures proves to be useful for demonstrating how axial and networked hyperstructures respectively may maintain, strengthen or weaken various forms of textual coherence. (Source: journal abstract)