The English language is fascinating, as we think when we combine two words, it’s basically combining two definitions and mixing them together. Take digital rhetoric. In Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric, page 24, Lanham describes “digital rhetoric” as an art that follows the pulse of hypertext. How digital texts and literary studies follow the lead of hypertext. The term hypertext stopped me when I first read it, for it is not just a jargon, it is the prerequisite for understanding digital rhetoric
Hypertext as a superpower
Take a moment and imagine hypertext as a superpower; instead of being trapped on a page, it can jump into multiple dimensions. Stuart Moulthrop nails this idea when he argues that it’s, “a shift in understanding of hypertext could allow us to move beyond the concept of the text as a fixed hierarchy.” Breaking the chains of a linear ending.
BLUEPRINT
What if we saw technology the same as the human body? It sparks, connects, and lets information travel in pathways unknown. I began to view Hypertext like the nervous system of the internet: through texts and links. That allows us to flow from one place to the other. Instead of us flipping through pages, we go through one link and end up in a completely different topic at the end. In my previous blog post, I explained the rabbit hole and how electrifying it is, and how it’s always moving yet never-ending.
Let’s create the dance
If you put Eyman’s digital rhetoric and hypertext together, we choreograph something larger- a dance of ideas. This dance isn’t a waltz; it’s a spiral and reminds me of mycelium. How it forms networks of meaning, and feeds off one another to form a new whole.
Arguments aren’t just in essays and debates; they exist in tweets and TikTok comments. Where those TikTok comments are hyperlinked to the background of its story to create a bigger cultural narrative.
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