French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Saemmer, Rhetoric of the Digital Text
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Bibliographic reference: A. Saemmer, Rhétorique du texte numérique, Presses de l'ENSSIB, "Papiers" series, 2015. EAN13: 9791091281454.

Alexandra Saemmer, Rhétorique du texte numérique

Lyon: Presses de l'ENSSIB, coll. "Papiers", 2015.

EAN 9791091281454

276 p.

Price 38EUR

Publisher's overview:

In the years to come, a vast amount of reading will take place on digital devices, across all fields of activity. Raising awareness of the specific characteristics of digital text is therefore a major challenge for research, reading, and writing alike.

This book aims to analyze how the text prefigures practices and how readers respond by drawing upon their personal imaginations. For the first time in a comprehensive manner, it identifies the rhetorical devices of hyperlinks and textual animation, while offering both tools to defend against certain manipulative effects of digital text and guidelines to help readers discover a renewed pleasure in reading.

The objective of Rhétorique du texte numérique is to make readers, researchers, authors, and publishers aware of the expressive potential of digital text, thereby enabling them to better understand and master its techniques of argumentation, persuasion, narration, metaphorization, and seduction. Familiarity with this range of possibilities will foster the emergence of a new, reflective, and critical culture of interpretation.

Alexandra Saemmer is a University Professor in Information and Communication Sciences at Paris 8 University, within the Center for Studies on Media, Technologies, and Internationalization (CEMTI).

Table of contents:

1. Theoretical foundations of a rhetoric of the
digital text

1.1. Two fundamental characteristics of the digital text

1.2. Rhetoric and reception

1.3. A theory of digital text reception

1.4. Materialities of the text, the screen-page, and the device

1.5. The rhetoric of reception: synthesis of theoretical aspects

2. Figurations of the extra-textual horizon of expectation

2.1. Figurations of digital reading

2.2. Figurations of the device and the network

2.3. Figurations of the hyperlink

2.4. Figurations of media and genres

3. Figures of digital text reading

3.1. Figures of digital text reading in informative and argumentative discourse

3. 1. 1. Model forms of the screen page and the text

3. 1. 2. Figures of hyperlink reading

3. 1. 3. Proposed analysis of a journalistic article

3. 1. 4. Methodological synthesis and perspectives

3. 2. Figures of reading and model forms of the screen page in narrative discourse

3. 2. 1. Model forms of the screen page and the text

3. 2. 2. Figures of hyperlink and textual animation reading

3. 2. 3. Proposed interpretation of a hyperfiction

3. 3. Figures of reading in persuasive discourse

3. 3. 1. Model forms of the animated text

3. 3. 2. Figures of animated text reading

Synthesis and perspectives

Bibliography and online references

Appendix

As reading increasingly shifts to electronic devices across various fields of activity, understanding the specific characteristics of screen-based communication has become a central concern for contemporary scholarship. The study of digital text involves examining how electronic writing prefigures reading practices and how audiences respond through their personal imaginations. Within the broader tradition of media studies and communication sciences, researchers investigate the ways technical devices shape interpretation. Alexandra Saemmer contributes to this ongoing intellectual inquiry by addressing the expressive potential of electronic media and the ways readers navigate screen-based environments.

Specifically, this volume explores how texts on screens employ argumentation, persuasion, narration, metaphorization, and seduction through elements like hyperlinks and textual animation. By identifying these rhetorical devices comprehensively, the work aims to help readers, researchers, authors, and publishers better master digital techniques while fostering a reflective and critical culture of interpretation. Readers interested in the evolution of reading practices and the analysis of electronic discourse may find this publication relevant to their understanding of modern media environments.