[cont.]
Jean Mason
Hyperwriting: A New Process Model

[ Home ] [ Introduction ] [ Context of Study ] [ Research Approach ] [ Converging Theories ] [ The Hyperwriters ] [ Interpretations ] [ New Process Model ] [ Implications ] [ Speculations ] [ The Wired Classroom ] [ Appendices ] [ Works Cited ] [ Site Map ]

This study was guided by the overarching question:

How are writers' perceptions of the new rhetorical situations presented by hypertext affecting their attitudes towards writing and the consequent decisions they make in response to these perceptions?

The findings of this study are contextualized principally within a significant body of pre-hypertextual composition theory that has developed over the past half century, and the small but growing body of hypertext theory that has emerged within the last decade.

Although recent writing or composition theory increasingly addresses writing in the context of computers (see notably Hawisher and Selfe, Selfe, and Selfe and Hilligoss), hypertext is largely regarded as an aberration of print-based literacy, and research into the particulars of the hyperwriting process is nearly nonexistent.  A notable exception is Johndan Johnson-Eilola's book, Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing.  Johnson-Eilola suggests ways in which writers and writing instructors need to liberate themselves from traditional notions of textuality, and calls for a rearticulation of our understanding of hypertext that pushes beyond the confines of postmodern theories dependent principally on print-based paradigms. 

However, it is within the postmodern context critiqued by Johnson-Eilola that one does find the most identifiable body of hypertext studies to date. As Johnson-Eilola describes, the scholars who contribute to hypertext theory do draw mainly on postmodern literary theory, communication theory, and social theory in pursuit of the kind of interdisciplinarity that the unprecedented phenomenon of hypertext demands.  What all these theorists share in common is a view of hypertext as a paradigm shift, and as a physical embodiment of the textual principles articulated by familiar figures such as Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, and Bakhtin.  That is, a text whose structure consists of multi-sequential nodes, links, and networks, whose content can include the aural, the pictorial, the still and the moving, and whose interactive nature renegotiates the relationship between reader and writer.  In other words, hypertext is envisioned by these theorists as a phenomenon that reconfigures the writing space and the thinking processes behind it.

The following external links to my larger study provide a more in-depth review:

The historical development and major tenets of writing theory.

The major researchers in hypertext theory and their key works.

[Home]  [Introduction]  [Context of Study]   [Research Approach]  [Converging Theories]  [The Hyperwriters]  [Interpretations]  [New Process Model]  [Implications]  [Speculations]  [The Wired Classroom]  [Appendices]  [Works Cited]  [Site Map]