Cognitive coherence relations and hypertext: from cinematic patterns to scholarly discourse

In previous work we argued that cinematic language may provide insights into the construction of narrative coherence in hypertext, and we identified in the shot juxtaposition of rhetorical patterns the source of coherence for cinematic discourse. Here we deepen our analysis, to show how the mechanisms that underpin cinematic rhetorical patterns are the same as those providing coherence in written text. We draw on computational and psycholinguistic analyses of texts which have derived a set of relationships that are termed Cognitive Coherence Relations (CCR). We validate this by re-expressing established cinematic patterns, and relations relevant to scholarly hypertext, in terms of CCR, and with this conceptual bridge in place, present examples to show how cinematic techniques could assist the presentation of scholarly discourse. This theoretical work also informs system design. We describe how an abstract relational layer based on CCR is being implemented as a semantic hypertext system to mediate scholarly discourse.