National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod
Antinomy of text in the interface: Continuity and discreteness
Abstract. This paper presents an approach to examining text in the digital environment, focusing on both the features of a conceptual perception of text and its essential properties, associated with its specific organization in the digital environment. The author relies on a linguistic definition of text as a written message, objectified in the form of a written document that contains a series of statements combining different types of lexical, grammatical, and logical connections. The paper distinguishes the features of the conceptual perception of text and the essential properties conditioned by the digital background of the place it is represented on. The author provides an analysis of the constituent characteristics of the digital environment that constitutes it and, proceeding from them, differentiates the features of digital textuality associated with materiality of its medium – discreteness and variability. Their manifestation becomes most evident in contact with the interface, which, on the one hand, communicates with the person through the text, and on the other – provides arrays of texts to view. Based on this analysis, the paper focuses on how text in the digital environment is included in interactions with humans, how it undergoes restrictions and which qualities it acquires. This suggests some changes in the conceptualization of the written – another model of text perception is emerging, in which text appears as an antinomic phenomenon, both continuous and discrete. This contributes to transformations in the perception of information as a whole and the methods of its generation. The author relies on the works by such media theorists, as Lev Manovich and Alexander Galloway, as well as on the theory of cognitive metaphor by J. Lakoff and M. Johnson.
Keywords: continuity, discreteness, text, interface, digital environment, media theory, cognitive metaphor
DOI: 10.5840/dspl20192111
References:
- Aarseth, E.J. Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 216 pp.
- Austin, J. Tri sposoba prolit tchernila: filosofskie raboty [Three Ways of Spilling Ink: Philosophical Papers] / transl. [from Engl.] by V. Kiryuschenko. Saint-Petersburg: Aletheia Publ., 2006. 335 pp. (In Russian)
- Clarke, B. Neocybernetics and Narration. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. 248 pp.
- Galloway, A.R. Nerabotayushhij interfejs [The Unworkable Interface], in: Media: mezhdu magiej i tekhnologiej [Media: Between Magic and Technology] / ed. by N. Sosna, K. Fedorova. Moscow; Ekaterinburg: Armchair Scientist Publ., 2014, pp. 252–288. (In Russian)
- Galloway, A.R. The Interface Effect. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012. 200 pp.
- Gleick, J. Informatsiya. Istoriya. Teoriya. Potok [The Information. A History. A Theory. A Flood] / transl. [from Engl.] by M. Kononenko. Moscow: AST Publ.: CORPUS, 2016. 576 pp. (In Russian)
- Kittler, F.A. Opticheskie media: berlinskie lektsii 1999 goda [Optical Media: Berlin Lectures of 1999] / transl. [from German] by O. Nikiforov, B. Skuratov. Moscow: Logos/Gnosis Publ, 2009. 272 pp. (In Russian)
- Lakoff, G., Johnsen, M. Metafory, kotorymi my zhivem [Metaphors We Live by] / transl. [from Engl.] by A.N. Baranov, A.V. Morozova. Moscow: Editorial URSS Publ., 2004. 256 pp. (In Russian)
- Manovich, L. Yazyk novyh media [The Language of New Media] / transl. [from Engl.] by D. Kulchitskaya. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press, 2018. 399 pp. (In Russian)
- McLuhan, M. Ponimanie media: Vneshnie rashireniya cheloveka [Understanding Media] / transl. [from Engl.] by V. Nikolaev. Moscow: Kuchkovo Pole Publ., 2014. 464 pp. (In Russian)
- Media Poetry: An International Anthology / ed. by E. Kac. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2007. 288 pp.
- Mon, F. Texte über Texte [Texts about Texts]. Neuwied. Berlin: Luchterhand, 1970. 142 pp.
- Software Studies: A Lexicon / ed. by Matthew Fuller. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008. 352 pp.