In this chapter, Bolter promises that hypertext is the fulfillment of the semiotic revolution theorized by Peirce, Saussure et al. Semiotics is a useful way to understand the economy of interpretation in hypertext because hypertext makes literal the theory that semioticians use to explain language. Hypertext allows the reader to trace the "interpretant," or the system of signs creating meaning for a particular sign; by the links they choose they can see what informs a particular "sign." The computer system actually serves as the interpretant. Hypertext also embodies a semiotic system because the system is self-contained; the "signs can only lead you elsewhere in the same system." The reader must learn a new strategy of reading, "cooperating" with a text that explicitly contains it own means of interpretation, and that "unambiguously" holds the mysteries to its intertextuality. (Kristin Bolton.)
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Michael Hancher

Department of English, University of Minnesota

URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/ebibkb6.html

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Created 5 May 1995

Last revised 17 September 1996