Hyperlink – a Linguistic and Technological Sign (“In the Beginning Was the Word, the Relationship, … the Link”)

Abstract

Hypertext, considered the third dimension of language (M. Bernard) uses as the fundamental concept the hyperlink (link), which is its engine. Without hyperlinks in the text area of Internet the users of electronic texts would be as if with no routes or traffic signs. Online text dynamism is due to the instant click on the link, an operation that establishes connections with other texts, documents, images, videos, etc. In a prospective grammar of the hyperlink, we’ll be talking about syntactic hyperfunction defined by two dimensions: linguistic and technological. The syntax itself is the science of textual relations, while the link will become one of the basic concepts of (inter)net-linguistics.

Keywords

• hypertext
• hyperlink
• click
• syntactic hyperfunction
• (inter)net-linguistic