Hipertekst a styl

Abstract

The paper verifies a preliminary thesis on technological determination of all media. Taken from McLuhan’s theory of technological determinism, it is a starting point for a discussion on the influence of the Internet technology on the style of a message. A hypertext, being a peculiar form of a word’s appearance on the Net, serves as a basic characteristic of that technology. Detailed questions are discussed, such as: the problem of a text’s authorship, linguistic properties of the Internet word, and on this basis – the place and role of a style in shaping verbal communication in the hypertext structure. In conclusion, the author mentions many features showing an affinity between hypertext information and an oral text, and suggests approaching it as a part of an already familiar concept of secondary orality. Final conclusions cannot be drawn because the hypertext structure is additionally overlapped with a digital nature of a word, being in and of itself a vital technological novum.