Links

Links suggest (indeterminate) meaningful associations between two pages, a page and another element, a word and another element - between any two elements. The link itself can facilitate visitors making connections between the two. At minimum, the link suggests that the link-maker sees a relation between two elements: that one is an example of, a member of a category of, a continuation of... the other.

Links are indeterminate because visitors are not required to follow or acknowledge a link, nor to follow them in the order presented by the rhetor. Links seem to be always a suggestion, and visitors need to be persuaded to follow them.

What is a link (adapted from Burbules, Rhetorics of the Web)

The link is the elemental structure that represents a hypertext as a semic web of meaningful relations. Every text, or set of texts, can be read hypertextually; this involves the reader making connections within and across texts, sometimes in ways that are structured by the rhetor (for example, following footnotes or quotations), but often in ways determined by the reader.

But in on-line texts, links define a fixed set of relations given to the reader, among which the reader may choose, but beyond which most readers will never go.

Moreover, links establish pathways of possible movement within the web space; they suggest relations, but also control access to information (if there is no link from A to B, for many users the existence of B may never be known - in one sense, the link creates B as possibility).

Links are associative - as differentiated from sequential or hierarchical. They associate this with that. But associative doesn't mean arbitrary. The link is purposeful - and readers will look for a connection between the two ends of the link. The association might be public or more idiosyncratic. If too idiosyncratic, the link risks seeming a non sequitur.

Links establish (or suggest) a relationship between the text or element linked from (source) and the element linked to (target), a relationship mediated by the affordance (the linktext or image that triggers the link). Rhetorical tropes can describe the associative relationships between source and target: metaphor, metonymy, identity. BurbulesHandlistOfLinks describes some possible associative relations.

Weblogs, as a genre, may use linking in characteristic ways. LinksInBlogging discusses this.

kinds of links

from Hammerich, p 177ff

• navigational
• internal
• external
• embedded

• drill down link takes visitor deeper into the structure
• lateral link takes visitor across the structure, at the same level

Links in the body of the text

• also called contextual links because relation between linked node is dependent on the local context
• typically internal
• primary function is associative: used to gain additional knowledge.

ReadingPathsAreIndeterminate