Tosca on lyrical and informational navigation
My project aims at what Susanna Tosca calls a "non-fictional hypertext that allows for a poeticalIy pragmatic reading" (Tosca 2000, 82).
Tosca distinguishes different kinds of authorial intention. She distinguishes two different goals for navigation and link structure. In the first case "we want a clear-cut structure where the reader knows where she is and where she can go at all times" in order to get maximum informational cognitive return for minimum processing effort. This goal asks for efficient clear links and navigational aids.
In the second case "we want a structure where the relevance is determined by the cognitive effects of exploring a context made up of a wide range of weak implicatures" for maximum lyrical-poetic cognitive return from an increased processing effort that is itself pleasurable and meaningful. This goal asks for links that are more evocative than efficient, playing with the reader's expectations, and leaving it to the reader to make out the overall structure. (Tosca 2000, 82-3.)
She points out that hypertexts can mix these goals and strategies. The kind of text I am writing about here attempts such a mix. It is also open to other goals. It wants the reader to understand what is being argued for, and why, but also to find new directions and dimensions of thought that might be explored in ways the author cannot predict.