Marianne Sandberg

School of the Humanities/English Dept., Växjö University, Sweden

Literacy and homepages: turning to the hypertext of academic homepages

The notion of hypertext has been widely discussed, especially, but not exclusively, in connection with electronic texts (Aarseth 1997, Landow 1997, Pang 1998, Snyder 1998). It has become a common term which has been both used and somewhat misused in the literature. One aspect which has been debated is whether hypertext is a structural text phenomenon that can be considered to be independent of the type of medium used or whether it is in fact very much dependent on it. This paper sets out to explore hypertext in personal homepages by people in academia in relation to hypertext concepts such as ‘linearity’, ‘sequentiality’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘networks’. In particular, I am interested in the role of the reader and the writer and the degree of interaction between the two groups. The analysis has its foundation in SFG theory, with specific focus on the textual and the interpersonal metafunctions (Halliday 1994, Eggins 1994, Thompson 1996). One of the aims is to move beyond a mere description and to broaden our understanding of hypertext in relation to the personal homepage.