Toward a Post-critical Theory of Hypertext

John E. McEneaneyIndiana University South Bend

South Bend, Indiana [email protected]

Voice: 219-237-4576FAX: 219-237-4550

Toward a Post-Critical Theory of Hypertext

Running head: Toward a post-critical theory of hypertext

Toward a post-critical theory of hypertext - Page 2

Toward a Post-Critical Theory of Hypertext

This paper has two objectives. One objective is to examine and critique

a critical theory perspective on hypertext and argue that it is flawed in at

least two ways. The second objective is to describe an alternative theory of

hypertext that addresses the weaknesses of the critical theory view and

suggests a number of new concepts relevant to our understanding of hypertext

and its application as a teaching and learning tool.

Hypertext and Critical Theory

The critical theory view of hypertext has its roots in works that focus

on the limitations of traditional print. Critical theorists point out that

traditional print is linear, while human thought is not. They emphasize the

structured, hierarchical character of traditional print and point out that

this imposed structure may serve the needs of the writer but only constrains

the reader in undesirable ways. Related to the idea of an imposed structure

is the concept of a central axis of organization that establishes an a priori

center, regardless of the needs and interests of the reader. Critical

theorists argue that the centeredness and fixity of traditional print

marginalize readers, who are obliged to simply accept the text as written or

stand in silence before it since there is no way directly to refute a text

(Ong, 1982, p. 79).

Critical theorists argue that these features of text are not necessary

and, indeed, are unfortunate and thoroughly unnatural (McArthur, 1986, p.

69) artifacts of the technologies of traditional print (i.e. the book).

Critical theorists advocate we abandon conceptual systems founded upon ideas

of center, margin, hierarchy, and linearity and replace them with ones of

multilinearity, nodes, links, and textual networks (Landow, 1992, p. 2).


What is unnatural in print will become natural in the electronic medium

because hypertext literally embodies poststructuralist conceptions of the open

text (Bolter, 1990, p. 143). Critical theory promises to theorize hypertext,

and hypertext promises to embody and thereby test aspects of theory,

particularly those concerning textuality, narrative, and the roles or

functions of reader and writer (Landow, 1992, p. 3).

The problem with the critical theory view

I believe there are two problems with critical theory's view of

hypertext. One problem is that the characteristics typically identified as

specific to hypertext do not, in fact, adequately distinguish the new

hypertext technologies from traditional print. The second problem is that

critical theory overlooks what is the single most important feature of

computer-mediated text - its capacity to support a dynamic and interactive

textual intentionality that has never been possible before. I will argue

that, despite the utility of concepts from critical theory in articulating

features of hypertext, critical theorists are still fixed on a notion of text

grounded in traditional print.

If hypertext is really the technological revolution that will embody

critical theory's notions of textuality, authorship, and meaning, it seems

reasonable to require that critical theory provide criteria that can reliably

distinguish hypertext from its predecessor. It is not clear, however, that

criteria suggested by critical theory effectively differentiate the new open

text from the print tradition. To begin with, although rarely noted,

distinguishing characteristics offered by critical theory are invariably

based on features that vary along a continuum, rather than on the presence of

a clear distinctive feature. In itself, this might not be a problem if

existing hypertext was routinely at one end of the spectrum and traditional

print routinely resided at the other end of the spectrum. Actual examples of

hypertext systems and traditional print, however, make clear that there is


Hypertext

intertextualde-centerednon-linear

anti-hierarchicalmulti-vocal

readerlydispersed

Traditional Print

textually isolatedcentered

linear/sequentialhierarchical

uni-vocalwriterlyunitary

Table 1. Terms frequently used bycritical theorists to contrasthypertext and traditional print.

substantial overlap of traditional print and hypertext on the characteristics

(see Table 1) usually taken to define hypertextuality by critical theory.

A difficulty arises, for

instance, in considering works

published as traditional print that

seem to require the label of

hypertext - works by Sterne (1965),

Joyce (1961, 1967), and Borges

(1962). Landow(1992 ,p. 102) refers

to these works as experiments in

quasi-hypertextuality or as

hypertextual (Delaney & Landow, 1991, p. 18), and suggests that what

distinguishes these works from true hypertext is simply the greater freedom

and power of the hypertext reader (Landow, 1991, p. 108). Bolter, on the

other hand, is explicit in identifying works like this as forms of hypertext

(Bolter, 1991, p. 135).

These critical theorists must also be prepared to respond to the

observation that existing hypertext systems, including on-line help systems,

text-based diagnostic systems, and hypertext fiction typically involve either

a central axis of organization, a hierarchical structure, or both, contrary to

insistent claims on the part of critical theorists that hypertext is

intrinsically anti-hierarchical, decentered (Landow, 1991, pp. 11, 128),

and has no canonical order (Bolter, 1991, p. 25). Here, as in the other

features presumed to distinguish traditional print from hypertext, there are

clear examples where traditional print is more hypertextual than computer-

mediated materials based on a point-and-click network of text.

A particularly telling counter-example from the electronic side of the

divide is William Gibson's Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (cited in Jonas,

1993). This short story is published as an electronic file on a floppy disk

but it cannot be printed out or viewed in the manner electronic files usually


are. Rather, upon insertion into a computer, the words of the story scroll

across the computer screen at a preset rate and as those words leave the

screen they are erased from the file. When the story has been read in this

way the disk has been wiped clean. In this instance, the electronic medium

serves not only to enforce the linearity of the text, but even takes the

linearity two steps further by making it both directional and temporal -

Agrippa is a one-way trip and there's no way back!

Simply claiming that Agrippa is not hypertext doesn't solve the problem

of its status, however, since the criteria used to exclude it have not been

specified. One could claim, for instance, that it is hypertext by virtue of

its electronic format and computer-mediated delivery which simply makes all

its links automatically. This position might be challenged by the claim

that automatic links don't give readers choices so that the resulting text

is highly centered and writerly rather than de-centered and readerly.

But this challenge founders on both the observed centeredness of existing

hypertext systems and the hypertextuality of traditional linear print.

A post-critical view of hypertext

I have demonstrated what I believe to be a serious flaw in critical

theory's attempt to define hypertext and distinguish it from traditional

print. In this section, my purpose is more constructive. My intent is to

propose a more adequate theoretical foundation for hypertext that relies on

the distinctions between text, metatext, and code. I claim that these

distinctions provide a more adequate basis for distinguishing hypertext from

traditional print. They also help ground a number of ideas that follow as

corollaries, the concepts of intentional text and a mediating device , both of

which, I will argue, are also essential features of the new hypertext

literacy.

The term Text refers to the content of a document as traditionally

considered - the words that one might quote or cite. In an html document, the


Figure 1. The On-Line Advisor withtitle bar and navigational buttonsat the top, a dynamic link panel atthe bottom and large passage viewerpanel in the middle.

text consists of the unformatted words and characters that make up the file.

Metatext refers to a variety of elements that are about the text proper.

Examples of metatext include links, formatting, and presentation conventions.

Metatext also includes reader aids such as tables of content and indexes.

Text and metatext are represented in both traditional print and in hypertext

(although in different ways) and, therefore, represent a common ground that

the new technologies share with the old.

Code, on the other hand, is a new idea that has no counterpart in

traditional print since this term has been borrowed from computer science

rather than linguistics, semiotics, or literary studies. In computer science,

the term code is used to refer to the programming language statements that

make up a computer program. In the present context, code refers to the

program that is employed by a mediating device (i.e. a computer) to deliver a

document to a reader. Although the term code has no counterpart in

traditional print, it does have a counterpart in the act of reading

traditional print. In the context of a reader using traditional print, code

corresponds to the intentionality of the reader, who directs the reading

process by choosing what to read, how to read, and when to read it. Although

the use of code does not (and will

never) exclude the intentionality of

the reader, its presence endows

hypertext with an intentionality of its

own as a consequence of the codes

capacity to monitor, respond to, and

control aspects of the reading process.

Two Examples of Intentional Text

The concepts of text, metatext,

and code are perhaps best explicated

through examples. One example comes


6

MAIN TABLE OF CONTENTS

This Handbook describes Division of Education policies,procedures,and requirements for undergraduate programs in education at IUSB. If you are unfamiliar with Netscape please refer to the Help File. It will explain how to use this Handbook... (text and metatext omitted).

Senior High/Junior High/Middle SchoolSpecial Education Supplementary PagesHelp Page

Table 2. Text (bold Times New Roman), Metatext (italic Times NewRoman and Code (Arial sans serif) in the On-Line Advisor pageillustrated in Figure 1.

from a study I recently conducted that examined the reading performance of

students using two versions of a student advising handbook, one presented in

print form and the other as a hypertext document. The user interface for the

On-Line Advisor (Author, 1997) is illustrated in Figure 1. Two features

distinguish the On-Line Advisor from the Netscape browser interface it is

based on.

One feature is that the On-Line Advisor looks somewhat different, with

the usual menus, tool bars, and directory buttons eliminated. A second, more

important, difference is that the On-Line Advisor reads the reader as well

as the electronic files that store the information it presents. It does this

using code that records both the readers movement through the handbook and

the time spent on each page (the SetCookieChild() function in Table 2). In

addition, there are two distinctly different kinds of text that appear in the

on-line version of the handbook. Static text consists of fixed text files

that are simply displayed

by the browser. Dynamic

text , on the other hand,

is created on-the-fly by

JavaScript code that is

running in the background

(the SetLinksChild()

function in Table 2). In

the version of the

handbook used in the

study, the only dynamic

text included appears as

dynamic links in the panel

at the bottom of the

screen, although the

potential to incorporate


dynamic text in other ways is present (as will be described in the second

example that follows.)

The importance of the distinction between static and dynamic text

resides in the fact that dynamic text can be created in response to the user.

It could depend on the users path thus far through the document, on whether

certain pages were or were not visited, or on the response of the user to

questions posed by the system (which could in turn be based on prior

interaction.)

Table 2 presents some concrete examples of text , metatext, and code in

the html page from the On-Line advisor illustrated in Figure 1. In this

table, text is presented as a bold face regular font (e.g. This Handbook

describes ...). A careful inspection of Figure 1 reveals that all of the

characters in this font actually appear in the page when it is displayed (with

the exception of the title 6" which does not appear where it usually would

because of the use of nested frames). Metatext in this page is indicated with

an italic font (e.g. ) and is associated with HTML opening and

closing tags (e.g. and ). The purpose of the metatext is

to format the content that is displayed. For example, the use of the HTML

tags and surrounding the text Supplementary Pages respectively

turns on and off the bold face font. Any text appearing within these tags

appears as a bold font in the page when it is displayed. Code in this page is

represented by a sans serif font (Arial) and, in this case, is associated with

the function, onLoad, and onUnload Javascript keywords. The

SetLinksChild() function is responsible for creating dynamic links when the

page is loaded. The SetCookieChild() function is responsible for recording

the users path through the handbook and recording the duration of each page

visit.

The On-Line Advisor provides the usual text and metatext, but it also

includes the critical third element: a program that supports real-time dynamic

access to the text. Moreover, the code that provides access also supports


memory for user paths and reading time. I would argue that a limited but real

intentionality resides in the capacity of a program to pursue a plan and, even

more powerful, to redefine and adjust that plan in a dynamic fashion.

Although it might be objected that the On-Line Advisor is a poor example

of the new intentional text because it is a specialized system with features

that may not seem to be a part of other browsers, the differences between the

On-line Advisor and most other Web documents are purely cosmetic, with the

code-driven intentionality of the Web as, perhaps, less apparent, rather than

less real. Another example will serve to make this point in a convincing

manner.

As a second example of intentional text, consider the case of the

documents we know of as Web search engines (e.g Yahoo, Alta Vista, InfoSeek,

etc.) The purpose of a Web search engine is to provide better access to

specific documents among the many millions available on the Web. Typically, a

search engine will ask for search terms and then use the terms provided to

seek out and display links to those documents that best match the search terms

according to some criteria.

You may already know (or not be too surprised to learn) however, that as

the growth of business on the Web has increased commercial Web developers have

become well versed in the methods used by search engines to identify and

prioritize the links that are returned. The reason for this interest becomes

abundantly clear when it is recognized that there are distinct financial

advantages to commercial links that appear at the top of the first page of

links returned as opposed to those links appearing at the bottom of the 63rd.

In effect, what Web developers are beginning to learn is how to use other

peoples code (i.e. the code in search engines) to their best advantage.

In effect, the practice of planting data in Web pages with the sole

purpose of increasing the hit rate for a search engine is a simple form of

manipulation, like twisting someone elses words to suit ones own position.

An important difference remains, however, in that what is being twisted is


Figure 2 . Response from the Excitesearch engine upon entering thesearch term travel.

not words uttered at some point in the past but, responses emitted by a

search engine at some time in the future. Id be willing to bet that more

than one zealous Web developer has created software for the explicit purpose

of interacting with search engines in order to empirically test the hit

rates of variously engineered Web documents so as to assure optimal exposure

in the Web marketplace.

But this example is still only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The

next time you are surfing the Web, take a moment to drop by a search engine

site and type in a general term like travel. Within a few seconds you will

have a list of travel-related links to click on (like those illustrated in

Figure 2), but thats not all. If you have used any of the major search

engines youll also find an advertisement near the top of your screen and it

is very likely that the advertisement you see is related to one or more of the

search terms you entered. Try it - if your enter travel youre very likely

to get a travel oriented ad (like the one illustrated in Figure 2). Entering

sports as your search term results in a different advertisement. In fact,

the ad that appears depends on what you typed in on the search term line.

This is the kind of dynamic content that hypertext can provide. Some of this

dynamic content is, of course, entirely expected - that was the whole point of

the using the search engine. But some

of the dynamic text may be less obvious

and it could easily occur that a reader

might not know if the text presented has

been somehow altered specifically in

response to information that has been

gathered about the reader.

Consider a variation on this theme

- a print magazine to which you

hypothetically subscribe that is

especially printed for you so that your


colleague who subscribes to the same magazine has different ads and articles.

If an enterprising publisher managed to create individually tailored magazines

like this wouldnt that be just like the search engine page? And if so, does

this idea of dynamic text really offer any hope of adequately distinguishing

hypertext from its print predecessor? I would argue, however, that although

this variation certainly shares some characteristics with the search engine

example, the individualized magazine is as static as any other print document

once it leaves the printers hands. The critical difference is that the

response you get from the search engine happens in real-time based on your on-

line interactions, so what you read on the Web depends on what you read or how

you responded only moments before.

At this point, the role of the mediating device also becomes fairly

obvious. While it is the readers job to read the text and metatext, it is

the job of the mediating device to read the code. In Agrippa , for example,

the mediating device delivered the content and then promptly destroyed it. In

the search engine example above it is the mediating device (which, in this

case, happens to be the remote server) that constructs a Web page while you

wait based on the search terms entered. For all the obviousness of the

mediating device, however, code tends to remain persistently elusive since it

is not intended for consumption by human readers.

The Text as Author

Although critical theory highlights the dynamic nature of the reading

act, the dynamic possibilities of the hypertext delivery system are ignored in

favor of the dynamic element provided by the reader. It seems to me this

occurs because, a genuinely dynamic text challenges the empowerment of the

reader in ways that critical theory finds unacceptable. Gibson's disappearing

book is a case in point. Agrippa insists on having its own way and pushes the

reader into a far more passive mode than any work in traditional print. Like

traditional print, Agrippa includes text (its content) and metatext


(formatting, supporting documentation about the text, etc.) But Agrippa , and

any other computer-mediated text also includes a third form of text - the

program or code that runs behind the text proper, delivering and deleting

the text, and this code establishes an intentionality independent of the

reader. It is this feature - the third form of text that I have referred to

as code - that I contend is what is unique to and defines hypertext as the

text as author.

Barthes (1974), in effect, discovers the flip-side of this coin when he

suggests the idea of the author as text where this 'I' [the author] which

approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes,

that are infinite (p. 10). But if literary theory can entertain the idea of

author as text, why not also consider text as author (i.e. as intentional)?

Not only is text as author possible, it also provides a useful vantage

point for addressing a number of practical problems having to do with

disorientation and cognitive overload in hypertext environments (Conklin,

1987; Utting & Yankelovich, 1989; Zellweger, 1989). The concept of a text as

author is possible because of work that has significantly extended the

capacity of computers to represent and manipulate knowledge about both subject

domains and learners. A good example of this capacity is demonstrated in

recent work in intelligent tutoring systems, which deliver instruction in an

adaptive fashion based on interactions with learners (e.g. Chambreuil,

Charnbreuil, & Cherkaoui, 1994; Weber, 1996).

This capacity also offers a means for diagnosing and solving problems

that readers sometimes experience in hypertext environments through the use of

code that models readers and can respond by providing user selectable guided

tours and other organizational structures. In the absence of such

structures, readers may enjoy a freedom burdened with disorientation and

cognitive overload that can be so severe performance is degraded, rather than

improved, by the use of hypertext materials (Gordon, Gustavel, Moore, &

Hankey, 1988; Marchionini & Schneiderman, 1988; McKnight, Dillon, &


Richardson, 1989). Empowering readers is a good idea, but it is clear that,

not only are there diminishing returns, there comes a point where the freedom

celebrated by critical theory becomes a liability.

Conclusions and implications

I have attempted to demonstrate that the critical theory perspective on

hypertext (as exemplified by Landow, Bolter, and others) has seized on a

single aspect of hypertext environments (reader empowerment) and has failed to

appreciate the way hypertext equally empowers the author and text. Moreover,

I have argued that features cited by these theorists as distinguishing

hypertext from the print tradition are inadequate to the task.

In the place of the critical theory view, I have suggested that it may

be useful to consider the constructs of Text, Metatext, and Code and their

corollaries (mediating device and intentional text) as the essential

dimensions of the new (and old) text, with the concept of code serving as the

true criterial feature of hypertext, that feature which distinguishes it from

the print tradition. I have also tried to show that the notion of intentional

text, even if it seems radical, now pervades the Web, most conspicuously in

the search engines which have become a regular tool of Web users worldwide.

While critical theory has provided a useful starting point for

conceptualizing hypertext, it fails to support a workable theory by

overlooking what is most distinctive about hypertext - its capacity to support

dynamic textual intentionality. Hypertext is not simply about access, it is

also about the purposes for and the process of reading and these new dynamic

capabilities may, in fact, be crucial if readers are to succeed in this new

more complex literacy environment.

Research suggests, for instance, that hypertext materials may be more

cognitively demanding (Conklin, 1987; Egan, Remde, Gomez, Landauer, Eberhardt,

& Lochbaum, 1989) or require a greater degree of higher-level relational

processing (Wenger & Payne, 1996) than traditional print. There are


consistent findings that even highly skilled readers of print experience

navigational problems as they move around within hypertext networks (e.g.

Neilsen, 1989; Van Dam, 1988; Edwards & Hardman, 1989). Recent postings

(Harste, 1997; Leu, 1997, Nederhauser, 1997) to on-line forums at Reading

Online in response to hypertext articles by Reinking (1997) and Isidro Bruno

(1997) echo these concerns.

Moreover, studies exploring relationships between hypertext use and

learner characteristics consistently identify less effective use of hypertext

by individuals with characteristics traditionally associated with less able

readers such as field dependence (Carrier, Davidson, Higson, & Williams, 1984;

Lee, 1989; Weller, Repman, Rooze & Parker 1994), poor visualization and

spatial ability (Vincente & Williges, 1988; Campognoni & Erlich, 1989),

external locus of control (Gray, Barber, & Shasha, 1991), and use of less

active learning strategies (Chen & Rada, 1996).

Although the interactive nature of computer-mediated learning materials

seems, on face value, to make a compelling logical argument in support of

technology as assistive and liberating, the power that technology provides

learners is almost invariably dependent on sophisticated user skills that are,

by no means, assured among all learners. While it may be that technology can

empower readers, the evidence thus far suggests it could just as easily prove

an impediment to learning rather than an aid.

If we fail to appreciate the potential of, and need for, dynamic control

structures in hypertext environments, the ultimate outcome may be to put

readers and learners at risk in these environments. Fortunately, the same

power that overwhelms readers can also be harnessed to assist them - if we can

determine how to do this. For that, we must begin to develop the same kind of

empirical knowledge base for hypertext that we now have for print.


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Table 1. Terms frequently used by critical theorists to contrast hypertext

and traditional print.

Hypertext

intertextualde-centerednon-linear

anti-hierarchicalmulti-vocal

readerlydispersed

Traditional Print

textually isolatedcentered

linear/sequentialhierarchical

uni-vocalwriterlyunitary


Figure 1. The On-line Advisor with title bar and navigational buttons at the

top, a dynamic link panel at the bottom and large passage viewer panel in the

middle.


Table 2. Text (bold font), Metatext (italic font), and Code (Arial sans serif

font) in the html page illustrated in Figure 1.

6

MAIN TABLE OF CONTENTS

This Handbook describes Division of Education policies, procedures,and requirements for undergraduate programs in education at IUSB. If you areunfamiliar with Netscape please refer to the Help File. It will explain how to use this Handbook... (text and metatext omitted).Senior High/Junior High/Middle SchoolSpecial Education Supplementary PagesHelp Page


Figure 2. Response from the Excite search engine upon entering the search

term travel.

December 17, 1997

Timothy Shanahan &Flora Rodriguez-Brown, EditorsNational Reading Conference Yearbook1040 W. Harrison (M/C 147)University of Illinois at ChicagoChicago, IL 60607-7133

Dear Colleagues,

You will find enclosed 4 copies of a manuscript I would like considered forpublication in the National Reading Conference Yearbook. I have also enclosedtwo stamped, self-addressed envelopes. Any questions about this submission canbe directed to me at the address on the left. I can also be reached by telephone(219-237-4576), fax (219-237-4550), and email ([email protected]). Thank you for your service to NRC.

John E. McEneaney, Ph.D.Associate Professor of Education

Documents

Toward a Post-critical Theory of Hypertext