Textual Practitioners: Hypertext, Annotation and the Phenomenology of Online Reading

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Textual PractitionersHypertext, Annotation and
the Phenomenology of Online Reading

• Annamaria Carusi
• e-Learning Research Centre
• University of Southampton
• a.carusi_at_soton.ac.uk

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• Online reading what is it?
• Two accounts
• Hypertext theory
• Drawn from literary and cultural theory
• That is, from theories of the nature of text
• Articulated, worked out theory of online
  presentation of texts
• Phenomenology of reading
• Drawn from philosophical phenomenology related
  to literary theory and literary studies
• Focus is on experience and on consciousness
• Articulated, worked out theory of reading
  traditional linear, and especially literary
  texts but not online texts.

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• From Hypertext Theory we get an account of
  hypertext as leading to engaged active reading
• . against the background of what counts as such
  in literature / literary studies.
• My aim
• . to look at another account of reading
  literature the phenomenological account and
  see whether the ideal of engaged active reading
  can be realised in any other way in online
  presentation of text.

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• Which hypertexts?
• Hypertexts for educational purposes
• Where the focus is on the text / document
• learning to read
• learning to become proficient in a discourse in a
  specific discipline
• In other words
• where one does not read for content / information
  alone, but one reads in order to learn the
  discursive moves
• what is the language of the discipline (its
  sociolect)?
• what are the basic terms?
• what is its basic ontology?
• what questions does a practitioner of the
  discipline ask?
• what counts as an answer?
• what counts as justification?

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The nature of hypertext

• By hypertext I mean non-sequential writing
  the text that branches and allows choices to the
  reader, best read at an interactive screen. As
  popularly conceived, this is a series of text
  chunks connected by links which offer the reader
  different pathways. (Theodor Nelson, quoted
  Landow 19923)

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Some dichotomies

• web-like / linear
• non-hierarchical / hierarchical
• open / closed
• dispersed or diffused / centred or focused
• reader-centred / author-centred
• anti-authoritarian / authoritarian
• active reading / passive reading

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• readers / writers
• wreaders

• tutors / students
• active learners

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• Hypertext ? proliferation of texts / works /
  documents
• Problems for discussion and debate
• Problems for the actualisation of active reading
• Hypertexts made up of
• lexias reading units or chunks
• links between lexias normally an array of links
  which can be selected or chosen by the reader

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• Central claim
• There are as many texts as there are routes
  through the text.
• texts ? works / documents
• physical entities ? meaningful entities
• cf
• body ? person (intentions, attitudes,
  expressions, actions, personality, etc.)

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• Different reader paths different ways of
  connecting up lexias different texts/works
  (textmeaning)
• Cf
• Printed linear text one page after another
  everyone gets the same text / work (textmeaning)
  ???

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• Linear text does not result in linear readings
• Chapter heading, index, dipping in, re-reading,
  skipping sections, coming back, coming back in
  different circumstances
• Sense-making processes are relatively independent
  of the technologies for producing the text on
  which they physically rely.
• Linear text isnt as linear as it looks.

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Is hypertext any good for learning and teaching?

• Mixed reviews
• Dillon Gabbard 1998
• Good for rapid searches high ability learners
  learners who are already explorers
• Charney 1994
• Hypertext does not approximate or resemble the
  way in which human cognition and memory work
• Burden of structuring cannot be placed on reader,
  or disorientation, cognitive overload, and
  incomplete representation of text.
• Best sequencing choices made by readers who are
  already skilled readers in their discipline.

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Literary reading?

• Miall Dobson 2001
• Hypertext theory does not match the experience of
  reading literature
• Readers of hypertext
• take longer
• feel confused
• dont have a sense of wholeness have I missed
  something?
• Reading practices become increasingly fragmentary
  and superficial

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Response to these criticisms

• Hypertext theorists claims that the experience of
  reading will change perhaps after sufficient
  exposure to change expectations of text.
• Readers are already changing post-modernist
  readers dont expect focus and possession, but
  rather are comfortable with multiplicity,
  contingency and uncertainty (Johnson-Eilola
  1998).
• Principles of association may change a new
  rhetoric? new ways of making sense? (Joyce 1998)
  new forms of argument? (Kolb 1994).

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So .

• even if hypertext theory does not fit with the
  current experience of reading hypertext
• . it will eventually.

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The phenomenology of reading literary texts

• Wolfgang Iser The Act of Reading. A theory of
  aesthetic response. 1978.
• Roman Ingarden Selected Papers in Aesthetics
  (ed. P. McCormick). 1985
• The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art.
• Jean-Paul Sartre What is literature?

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• Reading an activity of consciousness
• Consciousness implies intentionality
• Intentional object of consciousness that
  towards which consciousness or awareness is
  directed
• Intentional object what the subject is aware or
  conscious of specifies the content of
  consciousness

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• The text is not the object of reading rather
  the work is or the textmeaning
• The reader does not take a view of the tm as
  object the reader is in the tm
• Temporal rather than spatial ontology.
• Different objects text (tm) as object (Object)
  vs objects posited by the text (object/s).
• Reader takes up now one, now another viewpoint on
  objects posited by the text (eg a character, an
  episode, an action, a landscape, a room, etc.).
• and constructs the object as she wanders from
  one viewpoint to the other.
• The reader occupies the wandering viewpoint

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• At any instant in time, reader has an incomplete
  manifestation of an object
• Reader synthesises different views of the object
  in order to construct it
• Readers wandering viewpoint is located within a
  system of retentions and protensions
• Retentions a store of what the reader has
  already taken up regarding the object
• Protensions expectations of future
  presentations of the object on the basis of
  retentions.

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• Retention ------ protention
• new viewpoint of the object / another instant of
  reading
• meets expectation or breaks expectation
• Consolidation gap or blank
• new expectation ---- becomes part of
  retention and new protention formed
• text-as-object-of-consciousness is formed
• i.e. textmeaning

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• Blanks appear in the process of trying to form
  gestalten or wholes
• Blanks are places of connectability they open
  up a range of possible connections to be made.

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Comparison (1)

• Hypertext theory
• Object of reading is constructed
• 2 terms lexias and links

• Phenomenology
• Object of reading is constructed
• 3 terms gestalten, blanks, and connectability

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Comparison (2)

• Lexias pre-formed
• Range of link selection pre-given

• Reader forms gestalten, makes connections by
  choosing among a number of possibilities
• Possibilities formed by reader

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Higher Education Reading Practices

• Some examples
• Interpretation and evaluation of a philosophical
  argument test definitions of terms, analyse the
  argument into statements, show which of these are
  premises and which conclusions. Describe the
  structure of the argument, and evaluate it.
• Assessment of a research article pick out the
  most important concepts and terms used show what
  are the hypotheses that the article proposes and
  what justifications it advances for it.
• Doing critiques of essays in literary studies,
  art history, social and cultural studies paying
  attention to the diction, rhetoric, conceptual
  scheme, the range of evidence advanced for
  positions, the relations of implication and
  entailment, etc.

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Typical reading activities

• picking out significant or salient terms/phrases
• embedding them in the appropriate backgrounds
• forming interpretational hypotheses and testing
  them against the text

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• Treat texts as ill-structured (or
  non-structured) domains get students to
  structure texts ..
• through formation of gestalten coming up against
  blanks or gaps trying to fill them by making
  connections ..

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The ideal online reading space

• Phenomenology is a description of the experience
  of reading it is not a prescriptive theory, and
  it does not make recommendations.
• However, perhaps we can speculate as to how
  online reading spaces can approximate the
  experience of reading literature as described by
  phenomenology.
• Online reading spaces which will encourage
  readers to view all texts as though they are
  literary texts, and get them to use the same kind
  of reading activity.

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• Hypertext makes readers more aware of themselves
  as active participants in the sense-making
  process.
• But .
• superficial readings
• need to check interpretations?
• reflection on connections?
• range and richness of connections?
• false sense of power over the text?

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Recommendations

• put the hypertext creation in the hands of the
  reader in a far more fundamental way, by allowing
  the reader to form the lexias (that is determine
  the boundaries of reading units or chunks) as
  well as connect them up
• (ii) make good use of comment and annotation
  functions which make explicit what are the blank
  spaces and their principles of connectability.

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What do we need?

• for lexia creation a web-authoring tool or
  coarse grain annotator
• gestalt
• for highlighting of blank spaces and other
  features a fine to coarse grain annotator
• make blanks / horizon of expectation explicit
• for linking of lexias cross-referencing tool
  (within text and within annotations)
• make explicit which principles of connectability
  have been used

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• In this kind of reading space readers are
  encouraged to
• consider the terms they come across
• embed terms within larger sections
• consider how different parts of the text are
  related
• constantly return their attention to the text,
  and thus be encouraged to test interpretations by
  repeated consideration of the text, and make
  proposals that remain relevant to it.

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Some available tools

• D3E (http//d3e.sourceforge.net/
• Text is segmented by web-author in principle
  could be modified so reader could do this in
  personal space.
• Comments on sections are possible i.e.
  coarse-grain annotator.
• No fine-grain annotator
• No cross-referencing
• . Amaya (http//www.w3.org/Amaya/)
• Annotations on any web-page.
• No segmenting
• No cross-referencing

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What do we get?

• Not much, if a revolution in reading practices is
  what were after
• Articulation of implicit reading processes and
  so, possibly, the opportunity to develop those
  which produce active readers

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• References
• Bolter, J.D. (1992) Writing Space The Computer,
  Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Lawrence
  Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J.
• Burbules, N.C. (1998) Rhetorics of the Web
  hyperreading and critical literacy. In Snyder,
  I. (1998) pp.102-122.
• Charney, D. (1994) The Impact of Hypertext on
  Processes of Reading and Writing. In Selfe,
  C.L., Hilligoss, S. (ed), Literacy and Computers.
  Modern Language Association, New York, pp.
  238-263.
• Dillon, A. Gabbard, R. (1998) Hypermedia as an
  educational technology, Review of Educational
  Research, 68, 322-349.
• Iser, W. (1978) The Act of Reading A Theory of
  Aesthetic Response, Johns Hopkins University
  Press, Baltimore.
• Jacobson, M. Spiro, R. (1995) Hypertext
  Learning Environments, Cognitive Flexibility, and
  the Transfer of Complex Knowledge An Empirical
  Investigation. Journal of Educational Computing
  Research, 12, 301-333.
• Johnson-Eilola, J. (1994) Nostalgic Angels
  Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Ablex, Norwood,
  NJ.
• Johnson-Eilola, J. (1998) Living on the surface
  learning in the age of global communication
  networks. In Snyder, I. (1998), pp.185-210.
• Jones, R.A., Spiro, R. (1995) Contextualisation,
  cognitive flexibility, and hypertext the
  convergence of interpretative theory, cognitive
  psychology, and advanced information technology.
  In Star, S.L. (ed), The Cultures of Computing.
  Blackwell, Cambridge, pp.146-157.
• Joyce, M. (1998) New stories for new readers
  contour,coherence and constructive hypertext. In
  Snyder, I. (1998), pp.163-182.
• Kolb, D. (1994) Socrates in the Labyrinth. In
  Landow, G. (1994), pp. 323-344.
• Landow, G. (1992) Hypertext 2.0 The Convergence
  of Contemporary Literary Theory and Technology.
  Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
• (ed.) (1994) Hyper / Text / Theory. Johns
  Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
• Miall, D.S. Dobson, T (2001) Reading Hypertext
  and the Experience of Literature. Journal of
  Digital Information, 2.
• Snyder, I. (ed.) (1998) Page to Screen Taking
  Literacy Into the Electronic Age, Routledge,
  London NY.

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Textual PractitionersHypertext, Annotation and
the Phenomenology of Online Reading

• Annamaria Carusi
• e-Learning Research Centre
• University of Southampton
• a.carusi_at_soton.ac.uk