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Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
an end

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.

This suggests that there are two complementary syntagmatic and paradigmatic series available, one that relies on link source and destination pairs, and one on the syntagmatic units, patterns, or episodes then formed. Such a schema would indicate that a work could be highly syntagmatic - a more or less linear pathway with more or less transparent links ("next," "back," "home", for instance), or highly paradigmatic with link text terms being highly abstract and their destinations being highly disjunctive.

However, it also suggests that a hypertext could have apparently syntagmatic link origins and highly disjunctive destinations (a "home" text link that expels you from the work, for instance), or that a work could have, in theory, highly paradigmatic link origins combined with highly transparent syntagmatic patterns (this is pretty much the model of navigation adopted by any new media art work).

Furthermore, since syntagmatic series are largely reader determined it is incumbent on hypertext writers, and developers, to articulate those reading practices necessary to identify and contextualise paradigms of reading. Successful reading requires the recognition of paradigmatic choices, not only at the simple grammatical level of the sentence, but also at the larger level of narrative episode and generic convention. When readers read poetry, or literature, or even the newspaper, a set of reading competencies are utilised that include an understanding of the genre in relation to other possible genres or styles, that is, that one style exists in a paradigmatic relation to others, and this is largely where the signficance of a particular work is determined. Within hypertext such readerly competencies are much less developed, resulting in a misunderstanding of hypertext pattern, reading, and writing, simply because the paradigm against which hypertext is read and interpreted consists of a normative and potentially singular notion of structure as effiency and economy.

Readers need to learn how to identify and articulate the paradigmatic dimension of hypertext structures so that new reading contexts are enabled, but if hypertext as a generic category remains a catch-all term for multilinear text based reading and writing, intended to include everything from amazon.com to McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, it remains condemned to theoretical confusion and readerly intransigence. Even as general a category as the novel only assumes to encompass most prose fiction, clearly separating itself from nonfiction, yet hypertext will remain stymied as a result of its inability to offer a critical terminology even to discriminate between such fundamental categories.

Finally, the syntagmatic and paradigmatic aspects of structure, the relation of links to the production of syntagmatic series, and the role of the reader in the determination of these series are in no way proscriptive. Hypertext, perhaps more so than most other media, makes a virtue of readerly context, and it is the fluidity of this context that precludes any normative description or classification of syntagmatic series, their meanings, and their applicability prior to any particular hypertext's singular instantiation. The comprehension of discursive structure in hypertext is volatile to the extent that it is pragmatically, not grammatically, determined, and so remains outside of normative prediction and pattern.

All of this is problematised when nodes and links become irascible and dynamic, when we return to recognising hypertextual space as not being a single window, and that a complex set of visual relations are available that is more reasonably the domain of a properly visual writing practice.

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