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After reading Burbles, I thought about links for EXACTLY one minute. The article used 5 terms...Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche, Hyperbole and Antistasis. These terms were all used to help describe the ways in which links can be used, read and understood.

The best way, for me, to get the most out of the article was to go and find examples of links that relate to each term.

Metaphor: "Web links can be read as metaphors when apparently unrelated textual points are associated..."(Burbles, 111).

So, for example, a website about alcohol abuse might have a link to college dorm life. While the two are seemingly unrelated, drinking is a concern among college dorm residents.

Metonymy: "...an association not by similarity, but by contiguity, relations in practice." (Burbles, 111).

For example,when I go to www.PortlandGuide.com, there is a sidebar with lists of "Google Ad links". These links are related to Portland, OR only in that they are associated with similar topics of each page. For example, in the "Portland Neighborhoods" section, it briefly talks about the growth and population of the city. One of the Ad links is to "Official Census Stats:".This is only related in that the article mentioned Portland population growth.

Synecdoche: "...involves figurations where part of something is used as shorthand for the thing as a whole, or vice versa..."(Burbles, 112).

For example, a site might have a list for "Skin Care" and the links would include pages about lotions, nutrition, supplements, sun exsposure, etc.



Hyperbole:  "...exaggeration for the sake of tropic emphasis...the dynamics of the World Wide Web are essentially hyberbolic (starting with its name): each collection, each archive, each search engine tacitly implies a degree of comprehensiveness beyond its actual scope" (Burbles, 113).

For example, TheOnion.com is a site with fake/satirical news stories, etc. The title of the site, "The Onion" reminds me of the "peeling away of layers" of society and culture.



Antistasis:  "...involves the repetition of a word-the 'same' word in a different context. Many Web links work this way: using a particular word or phrase as a pivot from one context to a very different one. Key-word search engines are based almost entirely on this principle" (Burbles, 113.)

For example, when I type : "weight loss" into the Google search engine, I get sites on how to lose weight through diet, how to lose weight through exercise, popular weight loss supplements, danger of weight loss pills/supplements/procedures and celebrity weight loss stories. 

Work Cited

Burbules, Nicholas. "Rhetorics of the Web: Hyperreading and Critical Reading." Page to Screen: Taking Literacy to the Sea. Ilano Snyder ed. Routledge. New York. Print. 102-122.