The study of semantic aspects analyzed semantics of a infographic sign that underlies the semantics of digital text, the question was asked about the importance of aesthetics in the digital environment and how to study digitally figures. The research was conducted in the range of hypertext stories, analyzing various types of hypertext narration and hypertextual capacity of literary narrative structures. The procedures of textualization of a daily experience has been pointed out by the use of an intimacy as an example.
It has been stated that infographic signs (image-text ones) aspire to the strong type of code (U. Eco), also hard type (A. Nalimow). The way they are organized is serving denotation aspects: quality ones – by modeling effectively significant transmissions; and quantity ones – processing a huge number of coded messages (Smaga ). What needs sorting, coding is not meaning but possibility of its transmission. Thus, despite the fact that the basic element of diagram – rectangular cell – is possible to distinguish in the frame of semat, it is not the proper tool of sense-producing transmission. It creates only an element of graphic representation, it is distinguished and defined mostly on the basis of the system in which it operates, that is, the relationship relative to other components.
It has been found that the essential characteristic of a digital message is shaping the meanings already at the stratum of representations (texture) and user actions – the latter means inscription of the discursive factor into the text (Szczęsna ). The meaning and poetics of digital text are created by textualiztion of the text's expression stratum (texture) and creation of meanings as a result of interaction between semantics of verbal layer, mobile semantics and sound system of texture as well as semantics of user actions. Digital meaning-producing strategies – which are designated by the atomization, kinetization and modulation of text – have been characterized.
As a result of research regarding poetics of digital messages (Szczęsna, Pawlicka, Pisarski, Kubiński) it has been stated that the results obtained in the field of digital media are enabling the redefinition of previously developed thinking about the existing structures of the text (especially the literary ones). Interactive, kinetic, multisemiotic figures and interactive, multivariate narration are widening the borders of poetics – they demand description of interactive and kinetic forms (hypertext literature), moreover discursively hybrid (e.g. video games, playable literature, blogs, forums), which create figures in interaction between various levels of transmission.
Studies included description of changes that are taking place in the sphere of figures (Szczęsna): creation of usage metaphors, kinetic transsemiotic metaphor as well as the new group of semiotic figures that are semantic operations on the text's semiotic tissue. Mobility of texture enables the creation of kinetic figures (existing as event, process taking place among the elements of texture), e.g.: atomization (breaking apart), reduction (subtraction, disappearance), adjection (adding), permutation (adjustment). Such operations like kinetization and fonization of word have semantic nature – they are initiating interpretation actions and interact with semantics of verbal stratum, taking part in establishment of text's global meaning. Semantic transformations are also created in the interaction with the user (interactive figures) and the interaction of strata: texture and world created with the verbal semantics (cross-level figures). As an example of cross-level figures the function accumulation should be given (e.g., word is performing its semantic function in a text and tool function – it is a link).
Analysys also included hypertextual nature of literary works published via the medium of a book (e.g. hypernarrations of Calvino, Joyce). It has been stated that semantics of literary hyperfiction is shaped during the process of its reception that include various discourses. The branching structure of a hypertext enables creation of alternative stories, obtains repeatability of events and the feeling of being in a snare. By the use of Marta Dzido's hyperfiction the new types of relations have been studied – those between the textual possible world (presented in the original lexia) and actual textual world (actualized by the recipient by selection of link refering to the secondary lexia) (Pawlicka ).
In the literary hypertext the semantic units are actems (units of action of recipient and code), which modify the classic semantic strategies (already on the level of expression stratum they are multiplying the polisemanticity of text). Their strings and action fields created by them are the backbone of interactive work (Pisarski ). The studies of radical works – on the border between informatics and literature (on the material of Nick Montfort works) allowed us to show how the basic literary categories – such as author, work, book – change. In turn the study of plot creation potential of hypertext structures have proven the influence of digital medium's properties on the genre selection and plot schemes choice in electronic literature. Studies have led to distinguishing categories of digital forms (they have been called communication platforms) in which communication situation changes the story. These are: programmable and generative narrations, hypertext narrations, network and social narrations as well as tracking narratives. The analysis of story types preferred by the authors of hypertexts has shown that the choices are largely dictated by the properties of a medium (e.g. linking promotes the collision and distancing of segments, enforces returns and loops – this in turn encourages the selection of the indicated plot compositions).
It has been found that digital media are participating in the process of personal experience textualization, and even strengthen this process (Kaźmierczak ).This phenomenon was studied on the example of the way how intimacy exists in the social networks where communicating intimacy is made public and transforms it into the subject of collective modeling. Thanks to the use of the latest state of research in this field (works by UA Mejias, A. Lambert, V. Miller, D. Murthi) and the findings known in anthropology, cultural studies and sociology (including the works of E. Goffman) the manifestations of privacy textualization on the Internet have been described. The results enabled us to confirm earlier hypothesis stating that the Internet is not only a tool of interpersonal communication but also a factor shaping everyday life. Thanks to the research conducted in this field it became possible to show the significant cultural changes regarding interpersonal relations mediated in new media and design the evolution of communication attitudes in socio-cultural perspective. Text by Ewa Szczęsna
