Hypertext in scientific and professional communication

 

HYPERTEXT IN SCIENTIFIC AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

The article substantiates the status of scientific text as a hypertext functioning in the situation of information perception in the new conditions of modern communication.
This article examines some of the characteristics inherent in modern communication in general, including scientific and professional communication. These include: the increasing volume of information, which exposes recipients to informational redundancy, leading to semantic redundancy; the emergence of multiple, complementary fragments of information, either within a single field or from different fields of knowledge. This trend results in the construction of additional models of the same object and the emergence of complementary yet independent knowledge structures.
An analysis of the universal properties of hypertext, which also characterize scientific text, is conducted. The ontological properties of scientific text, which allow it to be classified as hypertext, include intertextuality and precedent, which result in its secondary nature without compromising the novelty and originality of the scientific text; interactivity, reflecting the essence of modern communication, which is the simultaneous perception and generation of information; nonlinearity or hierarchical structuring of the content and meanings of the scientific text; and its incompleteness and semantic openness.
Based on the analysis of the above characteristics, it is concluded that scientific text as hypertext is an effective tool for modern scientific and professional communication.

Keywords: hypertext, scientific text, information redundancy, principle of complementarity, intertextuality, precedent, secondary nature, interactivity.

 

Peshkova N.

HYPERTEXT IN SCIENCE AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

The present paper proves the position of the scientific text as a hypertext performing in the situation of information perception under some new conditions of modern communication.
The article considers some specific typical features to modern communication in general and, particularly, to science and professional communication. Among them: increase of information volumes, which results in the information abundance generating sense abundance for an addressee; generation of multiple complementary information fragments belonging to the same or different fields of knowledge. This tendency results in constructing complementary models of one and the same object and generating complementary and, simultaneously, independent knowledge structures.
The universal properties typical both to the hypertext and to the scientific text are analyzed. The ontological properties of the scientific text which make possible its relating to the hypertext are: intertextuality and precedential nature resulting in its secondary nature which does not prevent it from having novelty and being original; interactivity reflecting the essence of the modern communication as simultaneous information perception and production; hierarchy structure of its content and sense; its incompleteness and open nature.
Based on the analysis of the characteristics mentioned above the conclusion is made that the scientific text as a hypertext is an effective instrument of the modern science and professional communication.

Keywords: hypertext, scientific text, information abundance, complementarity principle, intertextuality, precedential nature, secondary nature, interactivity.

 

Linguistic studies devoted to hypertext and hypertextuality typically note that the very concept of "hypertext," borrowed from computer technology and widely used in linguistic literature in recent years, currently lacks a common and unambiguous definition. However, most researchers agree on a number of universal characteristics inherent in the phenomenon designated by the term "hypertext," which facilitate the structuring of information, facilitating effective communication.

In our previous works we have examined some features of the perception of information related to the changes occurring in the new conditions of modern communication, such as the transition from "high" to mass culture, expressed in the use of "understandable for everyone", "simple" language; the rejection of implicitness and the desire for explicit "direct statements"; as well as the intensification of the processes of "textual violence" in various forms [10]. In the present study, however, we believe it is necessary to note two more important tendencies of modern communication related, firstly, to the increase in the volume of information and, secondly, to the emergence of many complementary fragments of information, from one or from different fields of knowledge, and the construction of different mutually complementary models of the same object.

The tendency towards an increase in the volume of information seems to be an inevitability of the modern information space, as a result of which the addressee finds himself in conditions of information redundancy, which gives rise to semantic redundancy.

The second characteristic of modern communication is, in our view, linked to the tendency toward interdisciplinarity inherent in the modern knowledge system, whereby the same multifaceted object receives different interpretations in related, and sometimes even different, subject areas. Complementary models of the same object arise when the object is "studied using different cognitive means" [11, p. 14]. The result of the "principle of complementarity" is the emergence of mutually complementary and, at the same time, independent knowledge structures.

Thus, modern communication in its various forms is characterized by dispersion, expressed in separately existing blocks of information (knowledge), and the absence of clearly defined boundaries, as a consequence of the increase in the volume of information.

One cannot help but mention such a seemingly universal property of any communication as interactivity. However, in today's conditions of information and semantic redundancy, it takes on a particular form, whereby any recipient, if they want to avoid being overwhelmed by information flows, must simultaneously be an author, selecting the information they need and generating their own internal "countertext.".

The consequence of information redundancy is such properties of modern communication as precedent and, in a certain sense, secondary nature.

It should be noted that professional scientific communication is no exception, and all the above characteristics are inherent in both oral and written scientific communication, carried out in the form of a scientific text.

It should be noted that in this study, the subject of our scientific interest is precisely the written text, which is the most important tool of scientific communication.

It should also be noted that in order to fulfill the role of an effective tool of professional scientific communication, a scientific text must comply with all the features of professional communication discussed above.

A modern scientific text, as a component of any scientific discourse—philosophical, linguistic, or biological—is also an integral part of the scientific discourse as a whole. It represents an independent, coherent work, conveying new meanings, building on existing ones, and updating connections with other texts in the scientific information space and with the sociocultural environment as a whole. With these properties, a scientific text meets all the requirements of modern communication and is nothing less than a form of hypertext.

During the discussions at the First Roundtable on Hypertext Perception, held in Moscow on February 1-2, 2018, it was noted that in today's context of information perception, any text is essentially hypertext. We fully share this position and believe that scientific text, as a product and process of professional scientific communication, is inherently hypertextual. Modern scientific text can be considered a typical example of hypertext if we consider the following concepts.

Let's remember that hypertext, in its traditional understanding, is associated with the computer environment and is a method by which documents are connected into a network. It is structured in such a way that semantic and associative links between its elements, concepts, terms, and entire sections are maintained throughout the text space.

However, as is well known, the author of the term "hypertext," T. Nelson, suggested that a computer is not a prerequisite for the existence of hypertext. It is impossible not to note that, regardless of its connection to the computer environment, any scientific text (and not just scientific reference books and encyclopedias) is structured by establishing and maintaining semantic connections between its components and constituent parts. A scientific text may also be accompanied by a subject index, and longer works may also have a table of contents, not to mention the obligatory presence of links or references to other texts and textual sources of information.

According to the formal rules for presenting scientific information in written form and by its fundamental nature, scientific text is intertextual and precedent-based, as it is the result of transcribing new ideas and discoveries into written form, necessarily relying on established theories, concepts, and principles. When constructing a mental image of a real-world object or modeling an abstract object, the author also draws on "old" foundational knowledge. This knowledge is, of course, reflected in the structure of the scientific text's content as a presupposition, without which progress is impossible. At the same time, the text also includes references to new information on the problem under consideration, existing concurrently with the hypotheses proposed in the text, complementing the data presented therein and contributing to the construction of a general picture of the subject.

The focus on interdisciplinarity inherent in scientific communication, as mentioned above, is realized in modern scientific writing, ensuring the multifaceted nature of its content and striving for objectivity. The latter inevitably presupposes an overview of various perspectives on a problem and different approaches to its solution.

Even if the scientific research presented in the text is conducted within a specific scientific paradigm and belongs to a single school of thought, while rejecting certain principles of other scientific fields, such a position requires the presentation of "foreign" points of view, citing specific quotes from other authors to critique or refute them, and to support one's own position. Thus, scientific hypertext, while remaining a coherent and independent work, nonetheless allows for the extraction of its inherent meanings only through connections with other texts in the same subject area, as well as with texts from the general sociocultural reality inherent in a mono- or multi-ethnic environment.

In other words, the extraction of the content and meaning of a scientific text, as well as the attribution of new meanings to it by the addressee, is possible only with the support of the content of other texts from one or several subject areas, previously known to the addressee or unknown, but mentioned by the author, as well as with the use of texts of the socio-cultural reality common to the author and addressees of the scientific text.

It should be noted that intertextuality and precedent, the inevitable characteristics of scientific text, like any other hypertext, determine another characteristic: its secondary nature. The secondary nature of scientific hypertext should not be understood as a property that undermines the necessary novelty and originality.

In this regard, we can recall the statement of M.V. Verbitskaya about the need to develop «a more universal (phenomenological) definition of secondary text that would correspond to modern concepts of text and intertextuality» [2, p. 7].

Without dwelling on the well-known history of the origin and evolution of the "primary-secondary" opposition, we note that the interpretation of these concepts, introduced in the seventeenth century by the philosopher, theologian, and physicist Robert Boyle and widely known in science thanks to the works of the English empiricist philosopher John Locke, has undergone significant changes. These qualities of objects have received varying interpretations in various fields of science and in human practice.

A scientific text has traditionally been considered primary if it contains dynamic, evolving scientific knowledge, describes the process of acquiring new knowledge, and presents new research results. Classic examples of primary scientific texts were reports of geographical discoveries and discoveries in other fields of science.

This understanding of the primary text implies that the secondary text must contain «knowledge in statics», constructed as a result of analytical and synthetic processing of data from primary texts.

The process of information accumulation and changing communication conditions forced the author of scientific texts to refer back to what had been written previously, at the very least to avoid repeating the discoveries and experiences of others. However, today it is difficult to agree with the notion that the significance of secondary texts is associated solely with the intention of not repeating "what has already been said," as well as with the assertion that texts characterized by secondary texts are "past-in-the-present," and that "already at the moment of their writing, they become hopelessly outdated for solving today's problems and provide only a reproduction of the past paradigm" [3, p. 341].

We adhere to the point of view of characterizing the secondary nature of the text as a necessary «cultural mediation» and «one of the main principles of text generation» [6, p. 94].

We also share the position that language is, first and foremost, a translation of the nonverbal world into verbal signs, and that each sign of language is a translation of other signs. Following this view, the properties of the primary and secondary nature of text can be viewed as somewhat conventional, since any text, no matter how unique, is a translation of other texts [12, p. 44].

Thus, in the context of modern communication, the distinction between primary and secondary texts in relation to scientific texts seems rather arbitrary. At the same time, the property of secondary texts appears to be universal, inherent in all texts without exception, including scientific ones.

The peculiarities of modern communication not only confirm, but also give a new meaning to the definition of text as a «new fabric», although «woven from old texts, old quotes» [1].

This definition of text as a new structure («new fabric»), combining (but not mixing) known texts, full of quotations and references to previous experience, is consonant with the modern approach to the concept of hypertextuality, which forms the basis of the theory of hypertext currently being developed.

Thus, we conclude that secondary nature, a significant property of any modern scientific text and a hallmark of hypertextuality, facilitates the recipient's perception of information in today's conditions of information redundancy. It is this property that ensures the connection between scientific text and the information environment that supports professional and scientific activity in modern society.

If we are consistent in such an interpretation of hypertextuality, we cannot help but come to the conclusion that any text containing and transmitting scientific knowledge, used in professional and scientific communication, is a hypertext, the meanings of which can be revealed in whole or in part only through correlation with other texts from the discursive area to which it belongs, as well as through the involvement of additional texts and discourses that make up socio-cultural reality as a whole.

In addition to the above-mentioned characteristics of intertextuality, precedent and secondary nature, scientific hypertext is characterized by the property of interactivity.

We consider scientific text not only as a product and outcome of the author's scientific activity, but also in the dynamics of its perception and generation, as a process in which the addressee is simultaneously the author. The addressee not only actively selects information, independently managing the selection process; they generate their own "countertext" or "counter-text" [8]. As we have repeatedly noted, the meanings generated, extracted, and ascribed by participants in scientific professional communication are projections of the linguistic consciousness of the authors and recipients onto the produced and perceived content. In such a situation, the "countertexts" generated by recipients do not exclude the presence of a certain subjectivity and emotional evaluativeness.

Experimental data demonstrates that subjectivity, value judgments, and opinions on the part of the author are inevitable in any dialogue. The same can be observed with regard to the recipient. The author's position does not deprive the recipient of the potential opportunity to form their own opinion and perspective, using both new information presented in the text being received and existing data necessary for finding, understanding, and interpreting the desired information and filtering out unnecessary or redundant information.

In the context of the emergence of a new polycode format of scientific text, combining verbal and non-verbal forms of information presentation, the addressee faces additional difficulties in overcoming «semantic redundancy» and selecting information in the process of its initial perception for further analysis of the obtained data.

An analysis of the experimental database, compiled by us and our colleagues over the past ten years based on research into the understanding and interpretation of various types of text, including scientific text, allows us to come to the following conclusions regarding the interactivity features of scientific hypertext.

It should be noted that our new data largely coincide with the data described by the author of the "counter text" method [8, p. 69]. According to them, the core of the model of comprehension of a scientific text is made up of verbal reactions: "opinion" - from 20.81 TP3T (data of A.I. Novikov) to 251 TP3T (according to our data); "assessment" - from 19.31 TP3T (data of A.I. Novikov) to 281 TP3T (according to our data); "orientation" - 13.8 TP3T (data of A.I. Novikov) to 15 TP3T (according to our data); "argumentation" - 8.4 TP3T (data of A.I. Novikov) to 12 TP3T (according to our data); «conclusion» – 8.2 % (data of A.I. Novikov) to 10 % (according to our data).

Thus, we observe an increase in the number of responses conveying the evaluation and opinion of recipients of scientific information. In our model, constructed more than ten years after the first data obtained by the author of the "countertext" method in 2002, evaluation takes first place, followed by opinion, orientation, argumentation, and conclusion. We attribute the shifts occurring in the core of the scientific text comprehension model to the changes in communication conditions discussed above.

Two more significant properties of the structure of scientific hypertext can be named: hierarchy and semantic openness.

As is well known, many authors point to the hierarchical nature of hypertext. We share the point of view indicating the semantic and substantive nonlinearity of the hypertext structure [5, p. 41]. Our previous studies using the method of denotative analysis and the denotative graph [7] testify in favor of the existence of such a crucial characteristic of the content of scientific text as the hierarchical nature of its substantive and semantic structure. Moreover, the use of this method made it possible to identify several types of structure of the content of scientific text with a predominance of network or purely hierarchical relationships between the information blocks of the text. However, despite the presence of a network in a particular type of denotative graph, its basis is always a hierarchical tree [9].

Regarding the incompleteness and open-ended nature of hypertext, which suggest further development of the issues discussed within the text, many researchers note this as an important characteristic. It must be noted that, given the dynamic development of modern science, research in any field presented in a scientific text is, by definition, characterized by incompleteness and open-endedness, suggesting further development of the problem and the acquisition of new results at a new stage of scientific development.

Having discussed the most essential characteristics of a scientific text, such as intertextuality and precedent, secondary nature and interactivity, nonlinearity, hierarchical structuring of content and meanings, incompleteness and semantic openness, which allow it to be classified as a hypertext, one cannot help but note the fact that it also has all the ontological qualities that unite a scientific text with other types of texts, such as, for example, popular science and fiction.

Any scientific text is characterized by the properties of integrity and internal coherence, internal and external expansion, as well as the sequence of its elements in an external linear structure, the manifestations of which have been deeply studied and described in detail in works on text linguistics and text psycholinguistics, including in our works [9].

In conclusion, it can be assumed that scientific hypertext, representing a new textual paradigm, is a fairly effective means of communication for modern scientific society, encompassed by multiple "simultaneous information flows" [4]. Such hypertext, as a communication tool, facilitates the recipient's process of solving problems of perception, understanding, and assimilation of necessary knowledge in a situation of increasing volume and redundancy of scientific information.

There is an opinion that the very life of modern society, and we would add, first of all, various types of its activity, including professional and scientific, are represented as a kind of hypertext, providing, simultaneously, methods of obtaining/consuming information and tools for implementing communication.

Finally, in conclusion, it is necessary to emphasize the following. As our own empirical experience of working in mono- and multicultural scientific communities demonstrates, scientific hypertext is a universal method of professional communication, effective regardless of whether its environment is mono- or multicultural. This is made possible by its universal characteristics, which we have analyzed in the study presented in this article.

 

 

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