The Mutual Relationship of Linguistic and Non-linguistic Elements in Breaking Down the Hierarchy of Language in Digital Narrative

1. Historical Background

The introduction of digital media to the literary scene encouraged a number of experimental novelists—some of whom like Joyce had published novels in print—to try their hand at this medium to create works which were both written on the computer and necessarily had to be read on the screen as well. These writers who were later known as hypertext novelists experimented with the materiality of this new medium, and made its materiality an explicit part of the conception of their novels. Although some conventions of the print medium were discernible in the works of these writers, the arrival of the Internet and the developments in digital media provided a significant opportunity for these writers and the new generation of writers to experiment with new conventions for novel writing in digital media. Moreover, these experimentations with the materiality of the medium encouraged the experimental print novelists of the digital era to experiment more extensively with print as a medium.

N. Katherine Hayles is a prominent scholar who has consistently written on the “materiality of the medium” and this paper has heavily borrowed from her theoretical discussions and coinages. Hayles advocates a method of reading called Media-Specific Analysis (MSA) which involves paying particular attention to the materiality of the medium in which the work of fiction is presented. The importance of Hayles’ analytical method is that it provides a practical method for thinking about text as a linguistic object, and provides a new perspective to think and write about texts. Another advantage of Hayles’ approach is that it brings the medium to the foreground from the very beginning and can be applied for the analysis of both print and digital novels.

Since the novel as a specific genre and media form developed its defining characteristics and conventions in association with the evolution of print technology, the question of how narrative in novels is transformed through works of hypertext or web-fiction is a significant one. H. Porter Abbott has a useful definition of narrative and his definition will be used as a guide in the controversial subject of narrative and how it should be thought of in the works of hypertext and web-fiction. In Abbott’s definition, “narrative is the representation of events, consisting of story and narrative discourse.” Story “is an event or sequence of events (the action), and narrative discourse is those events as represented” (16). The main reason that Abbott’s definition has been chosen here is that it can be applied to the study of narrative in an almost any medium.

The non-linguistic elements which have been used in media-conscious novels are referred to as modes here, therefore a novel which has used several modes in its narrative is a multimodal novel. This usage of the term mode is more in line with the way Alison Gibbons has defined this term as “a system of choices used to communicate meaning.” Looking at novel from the modality perspective, provides us a better understanding of how each work is created out of the different combinations of modalities of three different but related categories. A fictional text uses a specific modality of the text which is the narrative genre. It uses the modality of the medium either print or digital. The last modality which comes into play here is the modality of verbal/visual which is part of the modalities of representation. These modalities can work in different combinations, but segregating them in this way, makes them more visible and shows how each writer can create texts, by manipulating either of these so that the reading process would be affected by the way either of these modalities is brought into play.

Thus, in order to study the he fictional works discussed here, three different but interrelated dimensions of the fictional text have been identified. (1) Physical Organization and Design, (2) Narrative Strategy, and (3) Reading Process. This tripartite model can be used by other scholars for analyzing novels which incorporate linguistic and non-linguistic elements in their narrative(s). In the first dimension, Physical Organization and Design a text is analyzed from the perspective of the use of its physical resources its authorship, and design. Narrative Strategy, the second dimension, is the angle through which a text from the perspective of the use of its physical resources and signifying strategies to create a narrative is analyzed. In the third dimension, the Reading Process, the way a text shapes the experience of the reader is explored.

Novels have always been media forms which lead the reader through them to a world which is the real world or like the real world in its spatial/visual form. These worlds exist beyond the page and the language and materiality of the novel are expected to be effaced during this process. However, the digital novels and media-conscious print novels show resistance toward this self-effacement and by mixing different modes in their narrative and bringing their own materiality into the foreground. The narrative and how it is created through the interplay of different modes in a single work is analyzed in these three novels:

1. Reconstructing Mayakovsky by Illya Szilak. This novel which claims to be the “novel of future” has been published in electronic format in the second volume of ELO in 2011. Later in 2012, a print version of the same novel was published by Revolution Nostalgia Disco Theater. Mayakovsky’s believed that poetry is a mode which can disrupt a fixed narrative and this is exactly what Szilak tries to accomplish in her novel. The narrative in this novel is broken into several modes—or “mechanisms,” as the writer calls them—including text, audio podcasts, video, a live Google image search, etc.
2. Dreamaphage by Jason Nelson. The interfaces of Dreamaphage have been described as “innovative, surprising, alternately whimsical and unnerving” by ELO website and these words can be used to describe the whole narrative of novel as well. Narrative in this novel is presented through different layers of 3D text with several links to the books which the reader has to simulate the act of turning the page (which means clicking the mouse on the bottom right side of the screen where the edge of the book is and move it to the top left, so that the next page appears on screen), and move through pages filled with squares and circle to read some files which their loose connection together forms a narrative.
3. S by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams. This print novel comes in a slip cover which has a book named “Ship of Theseus” which is full of handwritten comments, as well as postcards, newspaper clippings, black and white photos, even a hand-drawn map written on a napkin from a coffee shop, which together create a mysterious narrative. These non-linguistic materials play such a crucial role in the narrative, that at times it becomes impossible to follow the narrative and solve the mystery of the novel without them. S is described a “love letter to the written word,” on its slipcover, however it is through the interaction of the linguistic and non-linguistic elements that this love letter finds its true meaning.