Goals

The course goals are practical, but theoretically based. At the end of the term, participants will be expected to be able to do the following kinds of analysis on hypertext documents:

1. distinguish and describe different levels of analysis of hypertext, from presentation pattern through text structure to information networks, and describe details of the syntax and semantics of hypertext;
2. discuss and characterise different types of `navigation' in hypertexts in terms of linguistically motivated graphs;
3. develop linguistically well-founded functional interpretations of hypertext for specific purposes, based on principles of communication and speech act theory.

The more general goals are:

1. to learn how to use scientific methods for the description and critical analysis of hypertexts, particularly hypertexts in the Internet.
2. to become acquainted with some of the more important theoretical aspects of text and hypertext analysis, and to test the theories using the data.
3. to present descriptions with audio-visual aids, including Internet techniques.