Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Schema theory, hypertext fiction and links

2014; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2374-6629

Alice Bell,

Digital Games and Media

Introduction The academic study of digital fiction has recently undergone a significant paradigm shift. Research has moved from a first wave of pure theoretical debate to a second wave of narratological, stylistic, and semiotic analysis. While theoretical intricacies of second-wave digital fiction theory have been well debated (see Ciccoricco; Ensslin; Ensslin and Bell; Bell, Possible Worlds), discipline and practice of analyzing digital fiction require a more systematic engagement and understanding than offered by much previous scholarship. With this critical need in mind, scholars have has been exploring new avenues of defining and implementing approaches to analyzing digital fiction in order to develop a range of tools and associated terminology for digital fiction analysis and, in a related step, provide a body of analyses based on systematic analyses of texts, which are substantiated by robust theoretical and terminological conclusions (e.g. Page and Thomas; Bell, Ensslin and Rustad). In line with that commitment this article provides a means of analyzing hyperlinks in web-based fiction. It begins by showing that hyperlinks in work associatively. It then argues that schema theory can be used to analyze ways in which readers approach reading as well as how links function in fiction. The approach is demonstrated via an analysis of external links in a web-based fiction, 10:01 by Lance Olsen and Tim Guthrie. It shows that links are used to provide an ideological context to narrative as well as forging a relationship between fictional and actual world. Hypertext, Association and Cognition Hypertext is a form of electronic text in which documents are linked together using an system. The World Wide Web is most extensive and renowned example of a in which individual electronic files are linked to form a vast network of textual documents, visual media, executable programs and software applications. Hypertext can also be used for a range of different purposes ranging from informational web pages and wikis to literary forms of such as fiction and poetry. Since emergence of in 1980s, theorists have stressed significance of hyperlink in both informational and literary hypertext. Landow claims that it is the element that adds to writing (13); Ryan suggests it functions as primary mode of moving though hypertext (Cyberspace); and Ensslin views it as the crucial structural and aesthetic component of hypertext (31) (cf. Harpold). While some theory stresses hyperlink's structural function, others as will be discussed below, return to properties of which its founders conceived. The origins of can be traced to Vannevar Bush's article We May Think in which he outlined a plan for machine, an information storage system, built using microform technology, in which items would be catalogued according to associative (45). The user of memex would instruct machine to create links between documents so as to build a trail (45). At a later juncture while one item was being consulted, user could quickly recall associated items by simply clicking a button. The aim of memex was therefore to allow users to retrieve information quickly and easily via a system that relied on linking rather than a more arbitrary alphabetical or numerical system. As title of Bush's article suggests, rationale behind memex was ultimately cognitive. Bush argued that while most information storage systems, including libraries, employ numerical or alphabetic indexing systems, the human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to next that is suggested by association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by cells of brain (44). …