Making sense of digital textuality

Abstract

One of the fundamental developments brought about by interactive and multilinear digital technology is the greater structural fragmentation of texts and the consequent reevaluation of textual coherence. While the concept of text is contingent on some internal coherence, the new text type of electronic hypertext places new challenges on this paradigm by allowing ways of reading texts which would appear to disturb rather than build coherence. In relying on the flexible negotiation of readerly expectations with actual continuities experienced as the reading progresses, hypertextual coherence both encourages us to re-evaluate the rules of textual coherence from a more pragmatically oriented point of view and echoes some of the most recent theoretical views of how we interpret words in their surrounding co-text. This article presents an outline for a linguistic analysis of hypertextual coherence and points out the new dimensions of coherence left unaccounted for by conventional models. What happens when multilinearity makes texts unstable? How do we discuss a text -or meaningfully refer to one -if each reading has the power of transforming the potential narrative lines of a hypertext into a new literary object which may have never existed prior to that reading? Digital media rely on a new understanding of texts not as definitive objects, but as networks of relationships and meanings which by their very nature are relative, transitory, and subject to change at any moment. The potentially disturbing effects of such textual characteristics are counter-acted by the new, more fluid concept of digital coherence.

Toward A Model of Meme Diffusion (M3D)

“…Imitation is, in essence, a process of communication, in which one social organism, group, or system engages in activity that represents an informational duplicate or derivative version of another act or meaning. Thus, a meme is a version of what semiotics refers to as a sign , and what rhetorical scholars consider a text or an ideograph (Johnson, ; Tyrkkö, ) and could take on more macrofunctional forms such as a rhetorical trope (Hoeken, Swanepoel, Saal, & Jansen, ) or speech act. Memes are replicable forms of signs that are any objects, actions, texts, or symbols manipulated to create an intended mental representation or meaning (Kilpinen, ).…”

Prácticas de textualidad digital de bachilleres al tomar notas sobre diccionarios en línea en la mediateca de lenguas

“…La información, proveniente de múltiples fuentes multimedia, puede producir dificultades en la coherencia. Tyrkkö (2007) considera que en la lectura y la escritura digital, el predominio de la fragmentación de la información y la ambigüedad referencial afecta la coherencia. -Cohesión: En la tradición clásica (Halliday y Hassan, 1976 (Hyland, 2005), la posibilidad dialógica de retroalimentación (Sarena, 2006), la comunicación interpersonal (Serrano-Puche, 2013) y la sensación dialógica en el diseño de materiales digitales (Hernández y Reyes, 2015a).…”

“…Esta situación corresponde a la problemática observada por Tyrkkö (2007) en la comunicación digital, sobre la tendencia a la descontextualización y la fragmentación de la información, y, por ende, la ambigüedad referencial y las dificultades en la lectura y la escritura.…”

IText Reconfigured: The Rise of the Podcast

“…The human voice lends an aura of authenticity to the communication. Confirming the unpolished character of the audio text, Tyrkkö (2007) noted that ''with the exception of the (well rehearsed) monologue, spoken discourse is characterised by the dynamic production of text, resulting in halting, doubling back and false starts'' (p. 151). Although technology software now allows users to edit out many of these features with ease, for example, to remove long pauses by cutting them from the track, other interruptions such as rapid pitch changes remain challenging to edit.…”