abstract

background

theory

praxis

models

course

multilinearity
visual rhetoric
theory in practice

references

The concrete meaning of multilinearity is only one place where hypertext theory can be productively applied to academic hypertext. Another fertile source of ideas for authors of hypertext essays are theories of visual rhetoric or visual literacy.

Mary Hocks' (2003) three-dimensional visual digital rhetoric can inform academic hypertext composition, as can Shauf's (2001) two grammars of visual rhetoric. The hypertext author cognizant of Hocks' (2003) categories of audience sense, transparency, and hybridity (p. 632) can potentially develop greater control over the dimensionality of his or her hypertexts. Awareness of Shauf's (2001) logic of the image and logic of space (p.34) can work in the same way. Attention to the contribution of the visual to the textual can strengthen both the visual composition of a hypertext and the rhetorical impact of both the image and the word, while a focus on the spatial arrangements of an argument may enhance an author's ability to map an argument as a hypertext (Shauf, 2001).

Drawing on Kress's (1999) distinction between critique and design, Hocks recommends a two-fold approach to teaching and practicing visual rhetoric. "Students need to learn the 'distanced' process of how to critique the saturated visual and technological landscape that surrounds them as something structured and written in a set of deliberate rhetorical moves" (Hocks, 2003, p. 645). With academic hypertext, this moment of critique can come through the sort of "distanced, analytic scrutiny" (Kress, 1999, p. 87) of existing forms of academic hypertext that my course's "hypertext evaluation" assignment might encourage . Already embedded in an academic hypertext is another, more conventional moment of critique since analytic scrutiny lies at the center of the academic essay.

theory in practice | multiple perspectives? | attention to audience
productive messiness

abstract | background | theory | praxis | models | course