Overview Chart of RST


Cn: constraint on Nucleus
Cs: constraint on Satellite
Cc: constraint on combination
E:  intended effect
L:  locus of effect

R reader, W writer
N, S nucleus, satellite

<> the situation in CC.  For many of these the effect is just that R
understand or recognize whatever is in CC

----


Evidence
 Cn: reader does not (sufficiently) believe N
 Cs: reader believes S
 Cc: belief in S increases belief in N
 E: belief in N increased
 L: N

Concesssion
 Cn: W supports S
 Cs: W does not deny S
 Cc: W acknowledges potential or apparemt incompatibility between N and S.
     W believes N and S are in fact compatible
     understanding the compatibility increases R's regard for N
 E:  increase R's regard for N
 L:  N and S


Elaboration
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc: S presents additional detail about the situation or some element of 
     subject matter presented in or inferentially accessible from N.
 E:  R recognizes   R identifies the subject matter for which detail is
     presented.
 L: ns 

examples: set/member, abstract/instance, whole/part, process/step,
object/attribute, generalization/specific


Motivation
 Cn: presents action A where R is actor
 Cs:
 Cc: comprehending S increases R motivation to do A
 E:  R's desire to do A increased.
 L:  n 

Condition
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E:
 L:  

 ?? maybe S is the circumstance under which N may occur ??
 ?? but then what's circumstance ??

Evaluation
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E:
 L:  

Justify
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E: increase acceptance of W's right to present N
 L:  

Circumstance
 Cn: 
 Cs: S presents a situation not unrealized
 Cc: S sets a framework in the subject matter within which R is
     intended to interpret N
 E:  R recognize <>
 L: ns

 Example (p 14)
   N: Cleaning agents on the surface of the ECtype coating actually
      remove build-up from the head
   S: while lubricating it at the same time

 [I don't see how the example works.]


Background
 Cn: R can't understand N without S
 Cs: (R understands S)
 Cc: S increases ability of R to understand N
 E:  R's ability to comprehend N increases
 L:  N


Otherwise
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc: S is prevented by N
 E:
 L:  

Restatement 
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc: S restates N.  S and N of comparable bulk
 E: R recognizes S as a restatement of N
 L:  ns


Anti-thesis (subtype of Contrast)
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E:
 L:  

 ? S is the opposite of N

Solutionhood
 Cn:
 Cs: presents a problem
 Cc: N is a (partial) solution to S
 E: R recognizes that N is a (partial) solution to S
 L: ns 

The scope of "problem" includes questions, requests, conditions that
carry negative values.

Enablement - S enables R to do N
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E:
 L:  

[Volitional     ][Cause]   S causes N
[Non-Volitional ][Result]  S is result of N

Purpose
 Cn: presents an activity
 Cs: presents an unrealized situation
 Cc: S is realized through N
 E: R recognizes <>
 L:  ns

Interpretation - S relates N to some framework
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E:
 L:  

Summary -S restates N, size s less than N
 Cn:
 Cs:
 Cc:
 E:
 L:  

Means
 Cn: presents an action
 Cs: none
 Cc: situation in S tends to make possible or likely the situation in N
 E:  R recognizes <>
 L:  N and S

Note: this is not found in the short list on p 18

--- multinuclear

Sequence
 Cc: a succession relation
 E: R recognizes <>


Contrast
 Cc: no more than two.  the situations are the same in many respects, differing in at least one, compared with respect to those differences
 E: R recognizes <>


Joint
 None.

COMMUNICATIVE ACTS IN HYPERMEDIA VS OTHER PRESENTATION FORMS

Here is a list of non-hypermedia presentation forms roughly in increasing order of complexity

  1. text
  2. speech
  3. text publication layout
  4. comics
  5. graphics
  6. immersive extended spatial display (VR, data viz)
  7. video/film

Hypermedia could be considered the integration of all of these. It would thus inherit communicative acts from all of them, and how they are used for conveying rhetorics. This integration would also bring about new types of communicative acts, and new ways of conveying rhetorics.

Text

Text is the linear progression of written words, perhaps with some degree of formatting. An example is the letter in the T&M leesklub paper. Communicative acts for text, and how these convey rhetorics, has been extensively researched and is well established. Perhaps there has been work on (semi-)automatically generating text from rhetorics as well.

Speech

Speech inherits acts from text, for the most part. It adds voice tone and pausing as communicative acts. Has there been work how these apply to rhetorics? I believe Jim has mentioned that there has been. Speech doesn't inherit formatting from text, of course, but there are probably aural equivalents of all typical text formatting. Work has been done on generated speech from electronic text and meta-data, particularly for the sight-impaired. What's unique about how speech applied to hypermedia is that speech is continuous and temporal. How temporal occurrences in other aspects of the integrated hypermedia is synchronized with components of the continuous speech makes up communicative acts. Automatic generation could generate speech and synchronize components of with the the overall hypermedia presentation.

Text publication layout

Text publication layout is how text and images appear in more complex formatting -- for example, that of a typical magazine publication. This includes references to figures, and the inclusion of sidebars, for nucleus-satellite relations. Where these figures and sidebars appear, and how the text is broken up between pages, can be communicative acts. Thomas Kamps has done work on this, even in the context of the SRM-IMMPSs, I believe. Perhaps this discussion is in terms of communicative acts. Has there been work on conveying rhetorics with layout?

Text publication layout applies well to hypermedia presentation layout. Hypermedia layout has some additional things, and is typically used differently, however. One example is that text publication layout is based on the flow of the integrated text along columns, whereas hypermedia layout is based more on images and captions. Wolfgang [Klaas?] has done publication on hypermedia presentation layout in the context of the SRM-IMMPSs.

Comics

When first mentioning comics, one has to excuse oneself for doing so. Comics have a bad rap, but wrongly so. Comics have been very influential in layout and graphics in general. There has been serious research regarding their use for, among other things, instruction. Jim has mentioned a Scott McCloud publication on the subject. I am email a friend of mine from the comics world how has mentioned seminal and influential comics research done decades ago. While much work has been done on communicative acts in comics, I don't think any has been done on rhetorics. In terms of authoring and generation, comics contribute some to spatial layout and to the design of individual graphic components.

Comics have a left-right, top down flow of content compositioned into boxes. The EPG and space-oriented displays of Fiets inherit from this. Sometimes these boxes in comics are of various sizes. There are rules and guidelines for the laying out of these boxes.

A publication in MM99 discussed the use of these rules for laying out keyframes of video, and how the different types of keyframes were communicated using particular patterns of this layout. This was explicitly comics-based. The system is called Manga, which is the Japanese word for comics.

Graphics

Much work has been done on graphic design and what could be called communicative acts with graphics. I don't think much, if any, has been done regarding rhetorics. Graphics can, of course, be generated. Thomas Kamps has done work with this.

Immersive Extended Spatial Display

Anton EliÎn and Robert van Liere are both doing research in using this type of presentation for convey concepts. This conveyance of concepts could be called communicative acts. Robert's work is mostly in data visualization. The type of information convey is typically that of patterns within very large data collections, or complex 3D phenomonen. This does not lend itself to the types of document information (hyperlink relations) we are interested in.

However, Robert is familiar with the related, but still fledgling, field of information visualization. This uses data visualization techniques to convey information typical of documents. One example is visualizing large scale document structure, such as a navigational chart of a Website. One could extrapolate this to conveying the overall rhetorical structure of a large document. But even so, this is probably of more us to authors than to users. Perhaps there is work in information visualization that presents issues more readily applicable to conveying rhetorics to users.

Anton is building a lab for extended spatial presentation (I just made these words up, they are not his). He is interested in not just recreating real-world walkthroughs, but in useful means of conveying document concepts that are not necessarily based on physical reality. Are there rhetorical techniques here?

Video and Film

We've already discussed this plenty, and have plenty more discussion and research coming. The most important thing introduced with film is the use of time. Speech has time, but film is also visual. Film could be everything hypermedia is, but without navigation. The generation issue with video is that we are not generating video. A system could, however, generate animations along the same principles.


Lloyd Rutledge
Last modified: Fri Mar 3 11:08:58 CET 2000