A pragmatics of links

Abstract

This paper applies linguistic theory of relevance to study of way work, insisting on lyrical quality of link-interpreting activity. It is argued that such a pragmatic approach can help us understand hypertext readersbehavior, and thus be useful for authors and tool- builders alike. 1 rather than a narrative form. It proposed close examination of explicit links as starting point for a study of hyperfiction rhetoric. This claim was based on a comparison of and poetry, conclusion being that the ability of hyperfiction to combine mental jumps with physical ones conveys a new poetical dimension that should be studied relation to choice as another way of exploring context. Not very sure of how to look at these movements of meaning, I suggested examining relationship between and classical figures of speech. Curiously enough, this is exactly what Wendy Morgan did about same time her paper for Writers Workshop HT´99: Heterotopics, towards a grammar of hyperlinks (22) She offered two possible categories of based on two different linguistic approaches. The first (called Conjunctive functionality) was that of systemic functional grammar, accounting for in terms of their cohesiveness, an ultimately unsatisfactory choice unable to accommodate linguistic incoherence of hypertext.