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<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <Paper uid="W97-1404"> <Title>Hypertext and Deixis</Title> <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="3118" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 4. Relationship Between Place Deictics and </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"/> <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="3118" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> Hypertext </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> Let us now turn to our second question, reprinted here: (2) Given the intuitive &quot;pointing&quot; similarity between place deicfics and hypertext, is there any relationship between the two? Specifically, do authors of the new medium of hypertext tend to use place deictics more frequently inside of hypertext anchors, since hypertext &quot;reminds&quot; them of place deictics? Or, for the same reason, do such authors tend to avoid using place deictics inside of hypertext anchors? To determine this, we need to determine the frequency, or &quot;density&quot;, of place deicfics inside of hypertext anchors versus that outside of hypertext anchors (i.e. in the regular text of the Web page). A digression is needed to motivate my methodology for determining these frequencies. At first blush, the task seems relatively easy. One need simply go through the Web pages and code for each occurrence of a place deictic. Although time-consuming, this can be aided by heuristics such as searching for the most common place deictics: here, there, this, and that. Next, a simple programming script can split apart the Web pages into two files: one file contai ning all the words inside of hypertext anchors, and the other containing all the words outside of the hyper-text anchors. Finally, one can calculate the relative Hypertext and Deixis 33 frequency of the place deicfics in each file, by dividing the number of place deicfics by the number of words in the file.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> There is a problem, however, in determining the frequency of something by dividing by the number of words in a text. As Ball explains: In a word-based frequency analysis, to say that a phenomenon occurs with equal relative frequency in two samples is to say that equal amounts of text, measured in words, will yield the same number of tokens. But relative frequency should be a measure of the number of times something occurs within the number of opportunities for it to occur (emphasis mine) \[1994\].</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> To give an example: If we are comparing the frequency of, say, interrogative sentences in the writing styles of Hemingway and Dostoevski, it would be meaningless to divide the number of interrogatives by the number of words in each author's text. The results of this would be skewed by the length of sentences which each writer produces. Hemingway may pen fully twice the number of sentences in the same number of words as his Russian counterpart. Thus, if both authors had the same absolute number of interrogatives, we would be wrong to conclude that they both favored this form equally. Rather, Hemingway, who produced twice as many sentences, used the interrogative only half as frequently as Dostoevski. The key, then, is to measure a phenomenon against the number of opportunities for the phenomenon to occur, not against raw word count. In this example, the opportunity for an interrogative to occur is a sentence - hence, we must count the number of sentences as well.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> We may now return to our problem of measuring the frequency of place deictics. We must decide what an appropriate opportunity for occurrence for a place deicfic would be. As Ball advises, selecting this category is &quot;crucial and requires considerable thought \[1994\]&quot;, or else our results will be invalid. With this in mind, let us look first at the place dei ctics here and there. Although technically these may be thought of as adverbs (&quot;Come here&quot;), I will argue that they pattern with prepositional phrases (&quot;Come to this place&quot;). As further evidence, consider &quot;Put the book here&quot;. Replacing here with an adverb is ungrammatical (* &quot;Put the book slowly&quot;), while a prepositional phrase is acceptable (&quot;Put the book on the table&quot;). Thus, when an author chooses to use here or there, the author is choosing to use these words instead of using a prepositional phrase.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> Hence, I will consider an opportunity for occurrence of here and there to be a prepositional phrase.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> Although searching for prepositional phrases is timeconsuming, it is certainly doable - and in fact, I did just that for this study. As a heuristic, I started by searching for a list of 50 common prepositions, which I estimate covered at least 90% of all raw occurrences of prepositional phrases (the first six alone accounting for 70%, according to Mindt and Weber&quot; \[1989\], reported in Crystal \[1995\]). I then visually scanned the text for any remaining prepositions. (A more efficient method would be to scan for the 81 prepositions found in both the Brown and LOB corpora, said by Mindt and Weber to account for 99.9% of all raw occurrences).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> We must also consider the other types of place dei ctics. While sometimes acting as determiners, the place deictics this and that can also be (and pattern with) both pronouns (&quot;Look at that&quot;) and adjectives (&quot; This morning&quot;). Unfortunately, this means that an opportunity for an author to use this or that would be a noun phrase or an adjective phrase. While searc hing for prepositions is difficult, it is feasible because prepositions are a finite class. Yet searching for the open classes of nouns and adjectives I judged to be undoably time-consuming for this research. Equally difficult would be considering place deictics occu rring as motion verbs (i.e. come), as that requires searching for all verbs to find opportunities for occu rrence. I have therefore chosen to restrict my study of place deicfics to only here and there. Hence, my research will have nothing to say about other place deictics. A strategy for resolving this dilemma would be to use an automatic parser, which could identify most nouns, adjective, and verbs. I leave that task to future work.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> Having covered the necessary background for comparing the frequency of place deictics inside of and outside of hypertext anchors, I may now present the results in Table 2: inside of and outside of hypertext anchors In percentages, the place deictics here and there occur at a frequency of 7.3% inside of hypertext anchors, versus 2.7% outside hypertext anchors (the difference is significant, per chi-squared with p <= 0.001). For simplicity, I have grouped the edue ational and commercial pages together in this table broken apart, there is no statistically significant difference between them in this regard.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> Thus, based on the place deicfics I've looked at, we can answer our second question: place deicfics do occur more frequently inside of hypertext anchors than in the regular Web page text.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> However, the conclusion that this is so because of the place-deictic quality of hypertext is not so easily reached. It turns out that of the 42 place deictics found in anchors, 41 of them were the word here.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> This abundance is due to the popularity of the hyper-text expression click here. This usage may be a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) issue, in which authors are merely instructing their audience to click a certain button. Furthermore, if authors want their readers to go to some other place there, it is counterintuitive to place deixis to use the word here. Thus, the usage of here in hypertext is probably not due to place deixis, but rather a GUI artifact. 5. Changes in Hypertext Authors' Style as a</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="2" start_page="3118" end_page="3118" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> Function of Experience </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> In answering question (2), we could not prove a relationship between hypertext anchors and place deictics. We did, however, see a relationship between the word here and hypertext anchors. Going with this, let us modify our third question to be: (3) Do writers' preferences for using the word here in hypertext change as a function of experience in this new genre? This question is not unfounded. Many hypertext style guides preach against what has been labeled the &quot;click-here syndrome&quot;. The argument is that the word here has nothing to do with the target of the link, and should be avoided in favor of a more descriptive term. To quote one HTML manual: STYLE TIP: Try to create links that don't muck up the flow of the text .... Your text should stand on its own. You might want to avoid words like &quot;click your mouse on this sentence to read about the history of skyscrapers.&quot; Every Web user knows how to click .... Instead, say something like, &quot;There's an excellent article on the history of skyscrapers by T.O. Tall&quot; - and make the word &quot;skyscraper&quot; your link.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> (Fox and Downing \[1995\]) If this is what is prescribed, it is reasonable to hypothesize that professional writers will try to avoid the click-here syndrome. To test this, we can look at the frequency of the word here within the hypertext anchors of novice writers versus that of professional writers. To this end, I make the following assumption- that college students are less experienced at writing Web pages than those who author comme rcial pages. This is of course a generalization, but given the fact that commercial outfits are concerned about the image they present, and that their Web page authors are most probably paid for their work (and hence professionals), it seems reasonable that they will hire experienced authors. No experience, however, is required for college students' authorship. Table 3 presents the frequency of here in the hyper-text anchors of college student home pages versus commercial home pages.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> for college student home pages versus commercial home pages At first glance, the opposite of our hypothesis seems to be true - that the more experienced commercial authors use here more frequently. However, the difference is not significant (per chi-squared at p <= 0.05), so any discussion is moot. Hence, I cannot confirm or reject the hypothesis bas~ on this data~ Greater quantifies of data may be necessary to determine any real patterns. In addition, future work might also employ a more verifiable method of ide ntifying novice and experienced Web authors than simply generalizing about college students and commercial webmasters.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> 6. Types of Deictics Found in Hypertext Finally, let us turn to our fourth question: (4) Again noting the similarity between place deiedc s and hypertext, are place deicfics the most common form of deixis found within hyper-text anchors? Or are other types, such as person deictics or time deictics, more prevalent? To answer this, I looked at each anchor in the data to see if it contained any deicfics. These deictics were then categorized as one of:</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="3" start_page="3118" end_page="3118" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> Social </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> More than one of the above Some discussion is necessary regarding my coding. First of all, the common Click here. as noted, was classified as a place deictic, as it refers to a physical location in the universe (a spot on a computer screen which may be clicked on). Yet as a sidelight, one could also consider it a discourse deictic, as it refers to the word here itself, which is part of the discourse. This interesting case would be the purest discourse deixis imaginable. Most discourse deixis refers to the text in which the deictic word occurs (this book, the paragraph below). We even have cases where sentences refer to themselves (This sentence is in English). But the deicfic here in click here would be a word which points to itself. Verbally, it is difficult to find an equivalent. One possibility would be, &quot;The word I say now has three letters and rhymes with cow&quot;. Though certainly possible before hyper-text was developed, it is the advent of hypertext which has made this &quot;ultimate discourse deixis&quot; commonplace in language.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> (Note, however, that person deixis has always had this reflective deixis, at least verbally, in the first person. The speaker who says 'T' is referring to herself. Thus, the word here (in a manner somehow reminiscent of Lewis Carroll) is personified, by cal ling attention to itself..) There were cases where here was not used in the click here sense. One example was an anchor labeled The weather here, referring to the weather at Cornell University, the author's home. Another was the following: Here I am in Roslyn, WA, (where Northern Exposure was filmed). The hyperlink brought up a picture of the author in Roslyn, WA.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> This here is not referring to the word here. Nor is it referring to the location in which the author wrote the sentence (at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> Rather, we have a case in which the author has shifted his deictic center mentally, much as Thomas \[1996\] reports that speakers do when giving directions. null In terms of person deixis, I collapsed the addressee 36 D. Loehr and audience types under the latter category.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> Though typically audience refers to others who hear the utterance (in addition to the intended addressee), Web pages are intended for everyone to read, not a specific addressee. Thus, there are no &quot;bystanders&quot; or, more accurately, the bystanders are the addres sees. Thus, for the Web, addressee and audience are the same thing. I have chosen the latter category as more accurately reflecting how the Web works.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> Lyons' notion of deictic and non-deictic uses of words was needed in several cases. For instance, this in Why is this oaee black? is clearly deictic. But in another anchor, Come to Think of It. Who Is ThiC/ Phil Guy?. the same word is not. Rather, it is anaphoric, since Phil has introduced himself at the beginning of the Web page.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> Send an Electronic Postcard. Imperatives imply the second person, as in (You} Send an Electronic Postcard. The second form of implied deicfic was the implied first person possessive, as in Favorite Web Sites. It is probable that the author meant My Favorite Web Sites. However, though both of these types implied a person deictic, the actual deictic lexical item was missing. There were other cases where a deictic word (my) was just outside the anchor, as in My father. In all these instances, since there was no deictic word in the anchor, I did not classify it as containing an ordinary deictic.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> Now, to answer our fourth question. Table 4 lists the distribution of deictics (by number and percentage) found in hypertext anchors.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> Finally, when coding, I resisted the temptation to collect implied deictics. These occurred in two forms. The first was the imperative: an example was (Percentages do not exactly total 100.0, due to rounding) For simplicity, I have again grouped the educational and commercial pages together in this table - broken apart, there is no statistically significant difference between them on this question.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> We can now answer our fourth question. Of those deictics used in hypertext anchors, the majority are not place deictics, but person deictics. And of these, the majority refer to the speaker. Of course, the data for this effort was home pages, and the preponde rante of self-referenc es may reflect the fact that home page authors use their home page as a vehicle to tell the world about themselves. As research into the various genres of Web pages progresses, it will be interesting to see which is the most common type of home page. This data suggests that personal narratives may be the most common.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> Though we have answered our fourth question quant itatively, there remain some interesting qualitative examples to discuss.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> First of all, following Fillmore's sense of come and go as deictic verbs, the common anchor return is also deictic, as in Return to Jane Austen's info oaee. To return implies a starting point - a here - to return from. Though the place we are &quot;going&quot; is specified (Jane Austen's info page), the place we are Hypertext and Deixis 37 &quot;leaving&quot; (here) is not. We can only know where we are returning from by deixis - by knowing the place of utterance. Note that this is another c~ase where the deictic center is mentally shifted. The reader never actually moves anywhere - she is still in her chair before her computer. But mentally, she is traveling to wherever her Web documents are retrieved from. Such is the magic of the World Wide Web.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="12"> Another interesting area has to do with time deictics. There were only three of these found in anchors (two on their own, and one in combination with other deictics). The first rather novel example had a blinking anchor, in the sentence &quot;Click n0w!&quot; Perhaps the author meant for the reader to click at the moment the blinking anchor was lit up. In the second example, the author writes, I may be in the computer lab, in fact, you can check if I'm in the lab right now. When this anchor is selected, a snapshot comes up which is taken from a live video camera in the author's laboratory (the author was not in when this data was collected). Even though the word now is not within this anchor, we can still find time deixis in the tensed verb am. The present tense implies just that -now- and the sentence cannot be evaluated unless one knows the time it is read. Note that both of these examples use decoding time (the time the sentence is read).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="13"> The third, very clever, example is: I'd like to send a special hello to SteDhen Crawford. Why don't you, too? And watch here for a link to his future home page. Then you, too, can meet the greatest trombonist in the world Still watching? His home page isn't future anymore, it's here ! With his final here, this author has scored a deicfic triple play. First, he invokes here as a place deixis, meaning Stephen Crawford's home page is now available from this place here. (Note the sentence above Watch here for a link - this can be taken to mean Watch this place on the Web). Second, he uses the familiar click-here phrase - which, as mentioned, could be thought of as discourse deixis. Finally, the author uses a sense of here which means now, as in It's December 25, and Christmas is here. This invokes the third deixis (time). Note that this example uses encoding time (the time the sentence was written).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="14"> Another interesting point regards gestural place deixis. One may think that gestures (actual pointing) are not possible in a textual medium. Yet Web pages are more than text - they support animation, and many modern pages contain &quot;moving arrows&quot; acting as anchors. Even non-graphical, text-based pages can cream arrows such as these: --> <--.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="15"> However, I concentrated only on textual anchors (avoiding the difficult problem of classifying images), and found no gestural deixis in my data. Yet temptingly close was the sentence Here I am (which brought up a picture of the author). This might be thought of as a presentative, much like the French word voila, which requires a gesture for its use. The words Here I am, by convention, almost seem to imply a gesture -the one of an actor stepping from behind a curtain, sweeping his hands before him and bowing his head in presentation to the audience.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="16"> Note that no occurrences of social deixis were found.</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> class="xml-element"></Paper>