Paratexts in travel blogs, travel books' hypertextuality, and medial format usage

Abstract

In his article "Paratexts in Travel Blogs, Travel Books' Hypertextuality, and Medial Format Usage" Stefano Calzati compares a number of contemporary travel books and travel blogs. Calzati's objective is to promote a bridging approach between the digital and the analogue that goes beyond their differences. He posits a critique socio-linguistics where online multimodal texts are analyzed by identifying layers of analysis. Against these compositional models, Calzati suggests a double move: on the one hand, he applies Gérard Genette's notion of "paratext" to travel blogs and on the other he extends the concept of "hypertextuality" to travel books. From his analyzis it emerges that in travel blogs hosted on platforms paratextual elements tend to invade the space of the text and challenge the blogger's authority. At the same time, travel books turn out to be more hypertextual than travel blogs hosted on platforms. Calzati's study is complemented by interviews with a selection of travel writers which show that bloggers whose blogs are on platforms have a weak awareness of the potentialities of the medium and that their media-related choices are often arbitrary. Individual bloggers, by contrast, have a deeper understanding of the medium's potential.