Hypertext and complexity

Abstract

This text claims that the concept of hypertext must be seen both as a cognitive and as an enunciative mechanism. Ted Nelson, inspired by his own experience as a writer, developed a digital device in order to enable writers to escape the linearity imposed by print technology. In this article, hypertext is discussed in the light of complexity theory in a dialogue with Benveniste’s enunciative theory and conceptual integration theory, as proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002). It is assumed that language is a complex adaptive system and that hipertextuality should be understood as a recursive principle, a basic property of complex systems. Finally, examples of different kinds of texts (including images and sounds) are provided to show how hipertextuality works in textual processing.