Text/Hypertext: Critical Thoughts towards a non-objectvistic non-subjectivistic Conceiving of Communication

Paolo Teobaldelli
(May 1997: this is the english (slightly) revised and updated version of an article in press within a next number of the Journal "Quaderni di Ricerca e Didattica/Sistemi segnici e loro uso" dealing with Hypertext, publication of the Philosophy and Human Sciences Dpt. at the University of Macerata; see Teobaldelli:1996)


0. Introduction.

In the last years semiotic discussion has started to take account of this new way of textual organization defined hypertext. The term was coined by Ted Nelson (1987) and indicated in the author's intention, a non-sequential way of writing able to go further from the traditional book sequentially linearly organized, then in pages, paragraphs and chapters, this going further being possible thanks to the informatic revolution, thanks to the capacity of the electronical medium to build new forms of 'textualization' able to free, to spread new association forms, new logic-conceptual connections, and overall to free readers of such hyper-texts from the organization given by the author, then to construct and de-construct text at their own sweet will. The technological overcoming is surely a fact, but what to say about its supposed logic overcoming? Hypertext is only a fruit of a new technology or it is, as someone upholds, a new kind of logos that realizes itself in the (linear-sequential?) continuos changing of human knowledge?
David Kolb (1994) quotes at this regard the article of Vannevar Bush of 1945 where he primer conceived a hypertextual type of organization which should solve all problems due to the huge and fast increasing of scientific acquisition. Such organization could bind discovers as well as scientific and engineeristic learning in a non-sequential and non-hierarchical way. It was then a new conception of universal dictionary, seen no more as a list of items but as dynamic associations, a hypertext.
Kolb believes that hypertext should not be conceived as a interconnecetd whole of great systems, but as an open text. He opposes himself against the radical idea, expressed for example by Landow (1992), according to which such a dynamic connection between texts (which constitutes hypertext) could be totally free from coherence; he rather believes that it is a new way of linking knowledge in a way surely neither sequential, nor static or traditional, but not even a simply random juxtaposition of texts.
Certainly the thesis that this new kind of textual associations represents a new development of cognitive level of knowledge appears difficult to be proved, as well as it is difficult to prove that textual associative freedom would be entirely positive, i.e. would have only vantages, and on the contrary a closed fixed text would be only negative, i.e. would have no vantages. The matter is surely more complex. But, apart from this, it seems to me anyway difficult to ascertain the communicative expressive potentialities of hypertextuality only through the analysis of effects, as well as difficult I consider the same analysis of any other form of communication, since the basic model of such analysis, that I call linguistic-informational model, seems to offer few heuristic possibilities of the global phenomenon of Communication, i.e. of Communication as a not only logic-conceptual phenomenon but also expressive, aesthetic, psycho-sociological one. The problem of the linguistic-informational model within textual analysis is that it presupposes a static concept of text (or of information) as pure object, i.e. an object existing in itself, in a way and form autonomous from human beings. On the other side there are those who view text as totally constructed from human beings, i.e. text exists not as an object, it is totally subjective. These opposite views represents then a continuation sub specie testuale of the cartesian dichotomy.

The present paper aims to be a brief analysis of hypertextuality (as text and thus excluding any reference to the net systems) in the domain of semiotic textology, as a new approach towards a semiotic modelization able to go further on such a dichotomy in textual analysis, as well as in the wider context of Semiotics and Communication Studies.

1. Hypertext and Semiotics: a revitalizing discussion to go further on informational associationistic view of communication.

Semiotic discussing on Hypertext, apart from the limits of the informational view (limits which are yet also more evident in such particular analysis), opens up, in my humble opinion, a fruitful outlet for semiotics science. As a matter of fact the attention on the physical-semiotical organization of hypertext leads, I would say in a natural way, semiotics to take in serious consideration the concept of text, conceivable in generic terms as a complex whole of elements; such attention can offer to semiotics a possibility to go out of the impasse (1) of the traditional setting centered on the atomistic concept of sign and on the mechanic association sign-signified in all its possible variants; such association is as a matter of fact supposed to be the hinge (foundation) of signification which is as a consequence reduced to an associational mechanism. That has many theoretical consequences: first of all the fact that through such view only the message is important and no attention is directed to the subject of communication, being the message a monistic self sufficient entity.
Before to go on the specific analysis of hypertextuality is necessary to explain some basic concepts of my theoretical setting.

2. The concept of 'text'.

The notion of 'text' I'm referring arises from that worked out from Petöfi (1988) in the domain of semiotic Textology. With the term text Petöfi conceives a semiotic-relational object, i.e. a physic relational object whose relation explicitates itself, in the terms of semiotics, as a relation significans/significatum, then a physic semiotic object. This semiotic object is to be considered as an element of the linguistic use instead of the linguistic system:
Mit anderen Worten bedeutet dies, daß der Terminus 'Text', wie er im Rahmen der semiotischen Textologie verwendet wird, auf die Relation zweier (auf interpretativem Wege zu bestimmender) Entitäten, und nicht auf ein (statisches) Objekt hinweist. Wenn wir es noch genauer ausdrücken wollen: die semiotische Textologie betrachtet di Zeichenkomplexe als Resultate von Interaktionen zwischen gegebenen Vehikula und deren jeweiligen Empfängern/Interpreten, wobei in der Interaktion auch das zum Resultat der Interpretation gehört, wer, in welcher Kommunikationssituation, welches Objekt als das Vehikulum eines angenommenen Zeichenkomplexes akzeptiert (Petöfi: 1994-95)"
Yet, in my view, that concept of text is still problematic since it refers to a dualistic conceiving of sign, although Petöfi recognizes that such a distinction is only a scientific one (2). Anyway what seems to me central is that such a conception ground the 'text' as a semiotical entity on the interactive context reader-physical semiotic object. I maintain that a text is a physical relational object (herefrom physeos: i.e. physical-semiotic-objects-setting), but in the main sense that its semiotical power is possible only within an active relation of a human being, which works out the physical object. The way of doing that is again to be inquired, but I will expose now a provisional setting that has to be seen as a first effort toward a more rigorous one (3).

3. Connective Ratio and semiotical Intentionality.

A heuristical concept which I consider of basic relevance for a semiotical textological analysis (and which I introduce here for the first time) is that of Connective Ratio. With it I refer to the dynamic property of construction (re-construction) of physeos, whose modus operandi is the co-structuring of three sub-properties, which constitute it, as follows:
The co-structuring of such sub-properties is synthetized in that general property assignable to a 'text' which is textual connectdness. Such property, as well as the three that constitute it, is not inherent to a text, but it is a theoretical construct to it assignable. It has not then the pretention to define ontologically what a text is, but rather, with the help of such heuristical notions, it can be build a theoretical model to a better understanding of the phenomenon of textuality from all point of view (production, enjoyment 4), etc.), i.e. a model of text in vitro, a lab reproduction for research and experimental tasks.
Now it is necessary to point out the relation between textual connectdness and textual production, relation which will permit to me to deeper outline the same concept of connective Ratio.
The process of semiotical production, which pass necessarily through the construction of a structured whole of elements (text), represents the activity of an extremely dynamic (and important) faculty of human beings. This faculty is really difficult to define and it has received few attention within semiotics(5). The reason lies in the assumption of the informational model which give to production a mechanic feature, a mere coding-transmitting, and overall which move the research interest upon message and/or upon the effects of receiving, being also the latter conceived as a mechanical decoding. In this way semiotics has circumscribed extremely its ambit of research to sign systems, i.e. abstracted categories totally untied from what grounds them as realia, human beings thus. In my humble opinion is instead or importance to hold at the center of any semiotical speculation human beings through a constantly referring to what is their communicative praxis, which represents the place of every possible sense, even that philosophically grounding of to be. Any thing is for us (it is possible to define its existence, to speak of it, to take in account) only within this communicative daily praxis, in a space directly and immediately unseizable which is that physical-semiotical one, a strange dimension slipping theoresis in virtue of the fact that it grounds and constitutes it. It is then of extreme relevance to try to understand semiotical activity from any point of view. Connective Ratio is a heuristic concept through which I try to build a modelization of semiotical activity. I define it the property to act within the semiotical space through the textual connectivization of physical semiotical elements. I do not define here the foundation and definition of the concept of semiotic space because it would require a wide treating (About it see: Teobaldelli: 1997)
Connective Ratio is a theoretical model, with it I try to make possible an understanding of the concrete-way-of-being of what I define semiotical Intentionality, i.e. the active tension that human Being presents to act in a physical-semiotical way within the semiotic space; it is what characterizes and make possible the communicative praxis to which human being tends in an intentional way (6), through the constitution of complex connexed cohesioned and coherent physical semiotical wholes. Connective Ratio has to be seen yet (being an heuristical general one) as a non-universal category and in the analysis of specific texts or textual types we have to maintain that it is hystorically and socio-culturally determined. The particular textual type it permits would have a determined textual connectdness which mark it and should be acknolewdged and re-put on being by who would enjoy such text.
Connective Ratio and semiotical Intentionality are not separable, (if not only for defining's tasks, in a way we could say that they are a unique dynamic property. Semiotical Intentionality, as a matter of fact is the dynamic tension which operates and put-on-being (through the tri-modal-structuring) physical semiotical wholes. We can model this significational elaboration into three 'pure' (abstracted from their possible physical realization) categories of sensus (7): These three modalities constitute the semiotical intentional tension and cooperate with connective ratio in the construction of a physical semiotical whole. Connective Ratio is very relevant within the physical rendering and then for the reality of the whole under construction.
We have now to specify two very important aspects of connective Ratio:
Thus connective Ratio as a general concept involves many other elements which constitute it and which are basic for its dynamic functioning; first of all the semiotic systems.

3. Semiotic Systems, media and textual Systems.

Since we are trying to reach a general theoretical frame for an understanding of human communication we may use in defining semiotic systems the traditional version of sign system according to which a semiotic system is constituted by: It is quite clear yet, that such a notion of sign system depends in a determining way from the conception that assumes the sign-meaning association as the central fulcrum of semiosis. It is thus highly problematic primarily for its stasticity and secondarily for its deriving from verbal systems conceiving. When we go out from verbality such a notion reveals its great fallacy and undeterminacy: which are the signs and the meanings-signs associations within painting?
Also if we look at verbality here from emerge a lot of problems. For example the fact that a really well-formed syntactical connection would be meaningless. Many have reflected upon this problem taking in account the famous chomskyan example green ideas sleep furiously, but being this an aseptic example I think it is not so much useful for our tasks. Let we take an example from literature; in the VIII chapter of the anonymous work La tavola ritonda (the round table; 1200-1300 d.c.) the narrator tells of the knight Lancilotto who is trying to conquer the Castle of Dolorosa Guardia belonging to a dreadful Saracen; in front of the first door the knight speaks with the door-keeper in saracenic language, a fictional one that would have given, I think, an effect of the real language and at the same time would have inspired a strong feeling of fear:
"-Tales dalena fregis falundas elustendas avrezis eoli perfersarti fiezes.
To these words the door keeper said:
- Eschirimbett eschinbi lecurdire chersi eriperendes efreson."
Then the dialogue returns into vulgar tongue. Now, if we apply the traditional sign-meaning conception to this dialogue we would put it into nonsense. Yet these sentences have a role within the text, a role which I could define emotional-aesthetical one, and in my humble opinion it has also a significative role although not a conceptual one.
Since I have to respect the limits of this space I will not proceed further about this theme, it is enough to assert that I do not use the term semiotic system here as synonymous of sign system.
I will take in account here two semiotic systems conceived as abstracted heuristical categories, i.e. without referring for the moment to their possible physical states:
Their concrete modalities pass instead through the use and complex combination of different physicalizations, the media being such concrete systems with the help of which we construct textual systems. The difference among different textual systems is given either by the use of different media, or by the different use of media i.e. by a different way of connectivization, of use of the connectdness.

4. Connectdness

I do think that it would be possible to connectivize a text through two main procedures, i.e. we can hypothesize two types of textual connectdness: These two procedures can be used either separately or together, producing thus different types of mono-multi medial texts.

5. Multimedial semiotic System and informatic textualization.

Elsewhere (8) I defined the category of multimedial semiotic System as a complex system of mixed textualization involving the two semiotic systems above outlined and their possible connectivizations through multiple possibilities, among which the informatic one is the most recent. The informatic textualization is anyway able to realize several types of multimedial texts, although in its own way that is the videographic one (until what displayed isn't send to a printer), and yet it can realize own forms of all textual semiotic systems I classified, thus the followings: where capital expresses the dominance of the semiotic System(s) and within brackets are the type of connectdness being ser the serial one and int the integral one.

6. Informatic Hypertextuality.

Informatic hypertextual textualization therefore represents only a part of informatic textualization. Firstly is to be clear, by abstracting for an instance from the possible semiotic systems involved, that hypertextualization presents a main structure constituted from blocks at integral connectdness (given thus into the videographic display) serially linked together. Within the single block it is possible to have several other combinations.
Thus we can classify Hypertextuality as a type of textualization having such a connectivizing structure:
For a better understanding of its specific characteristics we can compare it with the textualization of a printed (dominantly verbal) book subdivided into chapters, paragraphs etc.
It should has a structure like this:
Blocks (chapters and paragraphs) are serially organized, they do not are close into integral blocks then connected together.
Now we can analyze a photographic book, or a book of concrete poetry; the organization is the same of hypertetxuality, i.e.:
The fact that photos or poems would be one following the other one, do not modify the analogy. As a matter of fact the reader can jump to one to the other through meaningful (conceptual, figural, emotional) connections, and, let me say that, with more freedom of that given by a hypertext, since there are no pre-fixed links and nobody says that photos or poems should be read with a determined order, although they are linearly presented.
Therefore, I think that to conceive hypertextuality as a cognitive revolution would be quite a great pretension without foundation. Hypertextuality can on the contrary be seen as a flexible new phsysical semiotical system (i.e. a new medium) which has either vantages and also limits. Hypertextual structuring is simply an informatic way of textualizing. The same operative system Windows, or a relational database as Access, can be seen as such. The link, in few words, is a dynamical recall from memory, an evokation would I say (10), within a scope or module, be it a global one (i.e. the entire scope of a software) or be it a local (i.e. internal to a software, a sub-scope like a determined procedure etc.), and it depends to the architecture of computers, it is so because so works a computer.
The fact that the link open itself through the pointing to words, key expressions etc. do not change the seriality of enjoyment. Surely is text no more strictly linearly conceived but at the same time the enjoyer operates a serial re-connectivization passing serially from a block to an other having (within hypertext as open text and not by net surfing) determined link-possibilities and no more of them. Then that the order of link would depend totally from enjoyer isn't strictly true, because being links pre-constituted also informatic hyper-textualization is to be seen as a bipolar reduced communication, i.e. that type of communication where one of the poles involved have only the possibility to activate the physical semiotical whole without having any influence to modify its physical structure (11). The enjoyer can choose some links instead of others but anyway all links and no other are there, all pre-fixed and unmodifiable.
A diverse argomentation is to be made for those hypertext offering the direct intervention of enjoyers within the physical semiotical structure. Yet it is to be said that they are not the first texts having such characteristic; for example didactic texts for children where one have to fill empty spaces whithin verbal sentence, or where there are empty spaces to draw something inspired to a the story narrated previously etc. And, I would add, in a way also within the tradional paper-made text is possible to intervene for example by writing notes in the white area between verbal text and sheet (left or right) margin, or by underlining blocks. Or within figural text, You can think for example to the classical moustache added to electoral poster-photos of some candidate.
In conclusion I would like to say that the whole discussing upon hypertextuality is to be re-sized (without covering the innovative technological and communicational feature that informatic communicative contexts offer) and led into a serious scientific treating which would inquire properties and features of informatic media and their possible communicative situations within a global semiotical communicational frame, so that it would be possible also a compare with any other type of textualization and communicative relation.


1 About my critical view of a semiotics as a static sign-science' see Teobaldelli: 1993-94; 1995.Back to the text
2 The complex modelization of semiotic and communicative relation worked out from Petöfi, in my humble opinion, is based in a way on a gnoseologistic view of the relation man-world, but it offers anyway many useful indications that go further on such basis and can stimulate a non-dualistic thinking of human communication too. For a deeper discussing of Petöfi's textual theory see: Teobaldelli: 1993-94, chapt. 3.. Back to the text
3 Many of the concepts and models I will discuss here are still experimental and if they would appear approximate the reason is that their foundation is still in progress. Back to the text
4 Term I prefer to that of 'receiving', having the latter a passive sense which I think is to be avoided in any modelization of knowing processes.Back to the text
5 On the contrary philosophy and psychology has often tried to define it through concepts as rationality, imagination, fantasy. For example Cassirer spoke of imaginative fantasy of language which all simbolic human activity pass through, Husserl analyzed deeply the problematic of imagination and of imaginative representation (although is analysis is often based on an idealized and static perspective), and it is not a mistake I think, to say that such a problematic is not a minor one but rather invests fully the relation subject-object (i.e. the philosophical problematic for excellence). And as a consequence its absence within semiotics appears to be a singolar and symptomatic one. (Cassirer: 1923) Back to the text
6 For a deeper discussing of the problematic of intentionality within Comunication Studies and Semiotics see Teobaldelli: 1993-94, chapt. I; 1995. For what concerns an interrelated argomentation of such problematic and a comparison with the specific philosophical discussing of knowledge and the relation subject-object see Teobaldelli: 1997). Back to the text
7 Which is an extension of the tripartitional verbal-sensus worked out from Petöfi: 1988; yet it is different from the first extension I made in Teobaldelli: 1993-94, chapt.III. Back to the text
8 The theoretical frame I developed in Teobaldelli1993-94, and 1995 links this textual model to a conceiving of communication which avoid, in my opinion, any possible reduction of it passing through a non-balanced analysis, i.e. an analysis which would pay attention only to one or the other pole of communicative context. Back to the text
9 I operated with this typology and the related theoretical frame an extension of semiotic Textology from the ambit of dominantly verbal multimediality, as conceived by Petöfi (1989-90), to the ambit of general multimediality, since I recognized daily face-to-face communication being a multimedial one, and I distinguished textual texts where verbality although present is not dominantly. Herefrom Petöfi revised partially his view coining the notion of equidominance. About this and about the integration of such Typology within the theoretical frame of Petöfi see Petöfi: 1994; 1995.
Such a Typology would be in my opinion quite useful also to teaching tasks, since it make hand a distinction of textual types without referring for example to the notion of gender. Back to the text
10 This is in my opinion the most central aspect of physical semiotical informatic dynamic that should be of relevance for a cognitive discussing. Hypertextuality on the contrary seems to me more relevant for a socio-cultural analysis and discussing, for example with reference to the Theory of Social Representations or to any other social consideration of communicative dinamycs. Anyway both points are in a way linked each others; for a deeper discussing of them see Teobaldelli: 1997. Back to the text
11 For a deepening of these notions see Teobaldelli: 1993-94, and 1995. Back to the text


References

Bush, V., 1923, As we may think, in "Atlantic Monthly/176", July, pp. 101-108.
Cassirer, E., 1923, Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen I: die Sprache.
Kolb, D., 1994, Socrates in the labyrinth, Hypertext.
Landow, G. P., 1992, Hypertext: the Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Nelson, T., 1987, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Microsoft Press, Seattle.
Petöfi, J.S., 1985, Text Connectdness from psychological Point of View, Buske, Hamburg.
--1988, La lingua come mezzo di comunicazione scritta: il testo, Urbino University, International Center of Semiotics and Linguistics, Working Papers and Pre-Publications, serie A, N.173-175.
--1989, Constitution and Meaning: a Semiotic Text-Tehoretical Approach, in Petöfi-Sözer-Conte: 1989, pp. 507-542.
-- 1989-90, Verso una teoria e filosofia semiotica della comunicazione umana, prevalentemente verbale, in "Annals of the Facoltà of Literature and Philosophy of Macerata University, XXII-XXIII, pp. 621-641.
-- 1994, A Szemiotikai Textológia Mint Egy Studium Generale Egyk Lehetséges Eleme, in Magister Emeritus, booklet published for the grant of a ad Honorem graduate certificate to Petöfi from Szege University, Hungary.
-- 1995, Die semiotische Textologie und die Pragmatischen Aspekte der Kommunikation, in Sprache als Kognition - Sprache als Interaktion. Studien zum Grammatik-Pragmatik -Verhältnis (=Metalinguistica 1), Kertész, A. (ed), Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, pp. 59-100.
Petöfi, J.S., & Sözer, E., 1983, Micro and Macro Connexity of Texts, Buske, Hamburg.
Petöfi, J.S., Sözer, E., Conte, M.E., 1989, Text and Discourse Connectdness, (eds.), John Benjamins, Amsterdam-Philadelphia.
Sözer, E., 1985, Text Connexity, Text Coherence. Aspects, methods, results , (ed.), Buske, Hamburg.
Teobaldelli, P., 1993-94, Per la costruzione di una tipologia dei testi multimediali dal punto di vista della Testologia Semiotica, unpublished graduate thesis, Dpt. of Philosophy and Human Sciences, Macerata University.
--1995, Aspects of Multimedial Communication, in press by De Gruyter.
--1997, The semiotic Space, Ph.D. Thesis (working paper).


Back