230060 Dafydd Gibbon: Linguistic Design and Production of Hypertexts (cancelled - replacement class: Claudia Sassen)

You will find further information at this URL.

Based on the notion that hypertext is text, this seminar examines issues involved in text linguistics and the production of hypertexts for the World-Wide-Web. Text linguistics (`Textlinguistik') was first developed as a specific subfield of linguistics during the 1970s, mainly in continental Europe, and our faculty was intimately connected with its development. But how relevant is it to modern developments in personal and mass media? This is one of the topics to be pursued in the course.

The class has mainly descriptive goals, in both theoretical and practical areas:

1. Overview of the development of text linguistics from the 1970s.
2. Mutual influences between text linguistics and artificial intelligence, including `story grammars', `scripts'.
3. Classification of texts into `text sorts', `genres', `styles', `registers' using selections of texts from advertising to science and from football to religion.
4. Examination of the relevance of these concepts for modern electronic media.
5. Techniques of text production for practical purposes with computer assistance.

This course is directed primarily at Anglistik M.A. students but is open also to students of English Lehramt (SI/SII) who are interested in practical applications in multilingual text construction in classroom contexts. A condition of participation is that all students hold oral reports, and participate in a practical text construction project (advertising, cooking,...) which will be evaluated at the end of term. The following book is recommended for general preparatory reading on applications of computers:

Winograd, T. & Flores, F. (1986): Understanding Computers and Cognition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Please check the Anglistik/Linguistic class pages on the web for further information:

http://coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Classes/