Rhetorics of the Web: hyperreading and critical literacy

Nicholas C. Burbules

 

Summary

Burbules begins by briefly addressing the differences between print texts and hypertexts on the Web. He then goes on to the importance of links in a hypertextual structure and how they are not as neutral as people often think them to be. Instead, he proposes that they have "associative relations that change, redefine, and enhance or restrict access to the information they comprise." (p. 103)

Following which, he suggests that links are not all in the same but rather are dependent on the meaning that the reader brings with him. Furthermore, these links are created by an individual who carries with him his own meaning system.

Burbules then goes on to address the issue of links having the power to "change the way in which material is read and understood" (p. 105) through putting together two related texts and through the significance of connecting these two texts in the first place. In addition, links have a regulatory ability of controlling the right of entry to information. Conversely, readers have power in the sense that they can chose which links they want to explore. However, their power ends there as they have no choice except to pick links that the author has already laid out for them.

He then proposes that hypertext adds new elements of writing and from there, breeds new systems of reading as well. Subsequently, he goes on to describe several different types of links and how these links have to be understood for critical hyperreading to take place.

 

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