Web Links as Tropes or Are Hyperlinks More than Shortcuts?

2005-10-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

The world of the web is based on figuration and analogy. The “web” is not a web, and a web “page” is not a page. The software we use to create pages is called “Dreamweaver.” When we design a “page” in Dreamweaver we are, “in reality,” creating html code, but most of us don’t want to read code—we are only interested in the image (the dream?) that code creates, when it is interpreted by other code written in another language.

For Nielsen, the hyperlink, like all aspects of designing for the web, exists for “usability.” According to Nielsen,

o A hypertext link fundamentally has two ends: the departure pages and the destination page. Links should follow two principles to increase their usability relative to their two ends:

The rhetoric of departure. Clearly explain to users why they should leave their current context and what value they will get at the other end of the link.
The rhetoric of arrival. Clearly have the arrival page situate users in a new context and provide them with value relative to their point of origin.

The history of hypertext both conceptually and practically speaking is not so simple.

The term “hypertext” was coined by Ted Nelson in 1965, and a functioning hypertext editing system was created at Brown University by Nelson and others in 1968.
The WWW is a hypertext system, and like any hypertext system, it is based on links.
Interest in hypertext and links predates and extends beyond the web: technical communicators, social theorists, artificial intelligence pioneers, cognitive psychologists, literary critics, political activists and others all have a stake in the lowly hyperlink as a concept, a concept we largely take for granted now.

The explosion of the blog—the weblog—which arguably began as a way for people to share interesting links that they came across while surfing is bringing the hypertext concept back to the fore. There are now blog theorists out there—some say that blogs really shouldn’t be much more than a list of links with some short comments while others say that the blog is mutating to become a form more akin to the kind of alternative journalism related to fanzines—with the advantage of hyperlinks.

Regardless, one often sees blogs that use hyperlinks in interesting ways that don’t fit Nielsen’s prescriptions. Likewise, in academic circles, hypertext is used in ways that exceed Nielsen’s limited concept of usability

Here, I am concentrating on one small aspect of hypertext: the capacity of links to function as a type of trope: a figure of speech that consists of a play on meaning, i.e. using a word or link in a way other than what is considered its literal or normal form.

Nicholas Burbules, in his article “Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Literacy,” discusses links as “tools of rhetoric” and as tropes. In the interest of time, I will focus on metaphor, synecdoche, antistasis, and catechresis although Burbules deals with additional tropes.

Metaphor is often used broadly to mean trope, that is all figurative language. Here it is used in its narrower sense of the implied comparison that results when one thing is spoken of as it is another apparently unrelated thing. According to Burbules, a metaphorical link exists “when apparently unrelated textual points are associated.”

Synecdoche takes place when part of a thing stands in for the thing as a whole, or, occasionally, the whole stands in for the part. Burbules says that on the web, links make these associations in a way that is seemingly unproblematic, but in reality is “restricting [of] how people think about a subject.”

Antistasis is a less familiar trope that “involves the repetition of a word—the “same” word—in a different or contrasting context.” Burbules uses the common experience of a search engine as an example. You type in a word and get multiple links using the word in contrasting contexts.

Catechresis is the strict misuse of language with “the recognition that such apparent “misuses” are how many tropes originally begin.” This trope is especially relevant to web since one can, literally, link anything and “a process of semic movement begins.” In other words, the link, no matter how nonsensical, immediately becomes part of the public sphere where it has its own path of development to “normalization.”

Is this language of literary and linguistic tropes sufficient to capture the functioning of some links, which take the form of a trope but of which the experience is unique to the web?

Sources and Links

Burbules, Nicholas C. “Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Literacy.” Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era. Ed. Ilana Snyder. London, Routledge, 1998. 102-122

(Available on the web at http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/papers/rhetorics.html)

Miles, Adrian. “Realism and a General Economy of the Link.” Currents in Electronic Literacy. Fall 2001 (5).

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall01/miles/

Bernstein, Mark. “Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas. Eastgate Systems. 1998.

http:www.eastgate.com/garden/enter.html

Illustrations of Hyperlink Tropes

2005-10-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

Some jobs should not be done by the do-it-yourselfer. Electrical wiring requires a licensed contractor. (metaphor)

We need to take a stand against government corruption. (Synecdoche)

We are non-Minnesotan transplants to Minneapolis. (Antistasis)

http://www.uroulette.com/ (Catechresis)

http://mroy.web.wesleyan.edu/webliteracy/linktropics.htm

hypertrope

Web Links as Tropes or Are Hyperlinks More than Shortcuts?

Illustrations of Hyperlink Tropes