Digital language 1

Digital language: A generative grammar

 Digital language 2

Abstract

In this paper, I offer a theoretical reflection on the digital composition of multiple

elements and media which are regarded as a unique digital language, following the idea

of Lev Manovich. Taking this one step further, I reflect on how this new digital

language also functions with a generative or transformational grammar, and discuss the

main elements and traits of transformational digital grammar. Some transformational

operations, such as mapping, metaphor and analogy, and conceptual blending, act to

retrieve universal deep media structures and to produce performances in the dynamic

and creative use and development of the language of the Web. To this end, I consider

some of the main matrices of these creative transformations such as the scalable map,

analogy and metaphor, and conceptual blending.

Keywords

Transformational grammar, digital language, Manovich, Chomsky, metaphor

theories, conceptual blending, mapping, language, Web.

 Digital language 3

Digital language: A generative grammar

Introduction

In this article, my aim is to put forward the idea that the language of new digital

media is a unitary entity, a language of languages that includes the characteristic

mechanisms and processes described half a century ago in the theory of generative

grammar and its transformational mechanisms.

I propose this conception of digital convergence as a new generative language

because its helps to understand the mechanisms of convergence, transcoding and

continuous hybridization of communicative forms originating from many different

languages and prior sign systems, as verbal language does too with the universal forms

of a general semantics. Digital language contains and develops, in a pragmatic structure,

elements of visual, gestural and interpersonal language related to several kinaesthetic

systems, in addition to other forms of expression associated with the use of tools in

different media and communication systems, belonging to very different ages and

periods, all in one sole modular discourse.

As we know, all these sources of expressive forms converge in an emulator

system, with an enormous generative capacity, which constructs a 'meta-medium', a

term coined by Lev Manovich (2005a), and, strictly speaking, a media language, insofar

as any language is necessarily a translator system that encompasses and transforms

other previous languages – the said system constituting their basic core (Lotman, 1988)

– into a second sign system. I will cover these ideas in more detail below.

The first forms of hypertext language, the strong convergence of hypermedia

codes and the very configuration of the 'hypermediated' universe, to use the expression

conceived by Scolari (2008), should be understood as approximations to the idea of a

 Digital language 4

hyperlanguage: a language of languages capable of integrating and glossing, in its

universal grammar, all the previous interfaces and forms of human communication in all

their variations, tools and levels of action. A language, then, that works by transforming

this universal grammar of communication into new structures or modulations, what

have become to be known as 'media species' (Scolari, 2015; Manovich, 2013), which in

turn pragmatically reshape and adapt the deep structures to the superficial ones of

digital communication. What underlies this hypothesis is the Piagetian theory of

cognitive development, in which the integration of actions in environments to form

schemata, symbolizations and, subsequently, formalizations constitutes the basis of

human intelligence. I will also explore these theses in greater depth below.

Remembering transformational grammar

To understand the significance of this hypothesis, it is necessary to return to the

theory of language as a transformational and generative grammar enunciated in the mid-

20th century by Noam Chomsky (1986, 1999). This theory assumes the existence of a

universal grammar of human language associated with the deep semantic foundations

that, whether judged as being innate or externally acquired, constitute the pool of

resources on which language is grounded.

In the case of the language of digital media, universal grammar is made up of all

those communicative grammars that users have at their disposal by the mere fact of

having belonged to the culture of the media, if what is understood by this is the history

of media and the transmission of experiences inherited from earlier times and assumed

and assimilated into their literacy in communication acquired from their education and

everyday life. The depth and breadth of communicative forms – be they mediated,
 Digital language 5

interpersonal or collective – to which citizens of the 21st century have access on the

basis of their culture, constitute the universal grammar of digital media.

According to Chomsky's theory, this universal grammar of language is

transformed into the superficial structures generated by the speaker, using selection,

combination and structural projection rules. The genius of this theory lies in the idea

that it is the practice, performance and implementation of deep structures in their

specific expressive transformations which will in turn modify language. This happens

because every superficial structure, each structural configuration in sentences, texts or

utterances, is a unique creation that arises not only from applying the rules of syntactic

and semantic selection of deep language, but also, and especially for us, from the

violation of rules, deviations and aberrations, the use of analogies and metaphorical

projections, and the partial and modular adaptations that each and every person is

capable of generating, thus transforming the deep structure of language – a thesis

developed by Chomsky in his work entitled Aspects of a Theory of Syntax (1999).

It is not my intention to enter into the controversy between

Internalism/externalism that generated this theory, marked by the unending debate about

the existence of a universal grammar of language, both deep and prevailing, which is

transformed and converted into a generative grammar through the creations, ruptures,

semantic deviations, projections and recombinations in language pragmatics. That

debate is irrelevant since what I do intend to discuss is a language of languages, whose

grammar is constituted by the memory of the media, expressions and communication

technologies of culture as a whole. Nevertheless, the thesis that I am putting forward

here is that such a language of languages operates in exactly the same manner as verbal

language, transforming the said universal memory by means of adaptations, projections,

deviations and structural reconfigurations, thus constituting digital language and its
 Digital language 6

hypermediations. The dynamism, creativity and rapid adaptability of this language can

only be explained if it is seen as a generative transformational grammar.

Software and digital language as a generative grammar

It was Manovich (2005) who rightly dubbed the phenomenon of mass digitization

of cultural content as 'a language of new media.' As the author went on to develop, what

is involved is indeed a new unitary language, although made up of previous fragments

and units, rhetorics and grammars, and glosses and interfaces from almost all earlier

communication languages, in the face of which digital language adopts an emulating

position, to wit, that of translation and mimesis (Manovich, 2013).

As Manovich has recently proposed, the unified encoding and processing of data

generated by different media and language simulations on the Web enables us to unite

all kinds of stylistic and technical resources, together with their associated meanings, in

building blocks. Manovich stresses the idea of the simulation of the said resources. The

basic mechanism needed to generate that structural construction is metaphorical

projection, as we will see below. Digital language is articulated with verbal language

through analogue projections and metaphors of previous languages and media, sharing a

metaphorical central core that facilitates its radial structure.

This is absolutely normal if we adopt Lotman, Vygotsky and Peirce's ideas,

according to which all languages are a secondary set of signs (Lotman, 1988; Peirce,

1931-58; Vygotsky, 2010); a translator system whose ultimate meanings are other signs

that form its basis. Verbal, gestural, media (associated with rhetorics, styles and forms

of media, tools and technologies) and kinaesthetic (associated with the body, gestural

language, and sensory-motor or orientational experiences, to name but a few) languages,

from different cultural pragmatics, which constitute the universal foundation of new
 Digital language 7

media literacy, are translated and simulated, quoted and embedded, in the digital signal

system formed by digital texts as a whole.

The digital language that is generated by the development of management

software for computer and network interfaces is a language of languages, as with all

languages in reality. It is founded on the hybridization of previous languages, and new

practical structures in constant change – digital innovations that modularly hybridize

earlier forms – are obtained from its synthesis by applying transformational operations

such as analogies, projections or violations of the rules of semantic and syntactic

selection.

Manovich (2005) got to the heart of the matter by detecting several of the

transformational operations and macro syntaxes that construct new media texts. The

'modular' nature of digital languages, namely, the fact that the texts and pages are

shaped into structures that can be assembled and embed in one another, is identical to

the structural character of all languages. Precisely, each modular structure allows us to

see and appreciate its specific composition and, at the same time, the rules that have

generated it or that have been adapted for its generation. It also facilitates the creative

combination and adoption of new divisions in the structures. Exactly like verbal

language, its structural nature makes it possible to generate meaning from the infinite

combination of its constituent elements, which, as a result of this combination, also

form new structures on establishing new selection rules (Chomsky, 1999).

The modularity of digital language is identical to the structural nature of verbal

transformational grammar. Through this structuring, it is possible not only to creatively

combine the elements of a universal grammar according to its rules, as does syntax, but

also to break semantic rules and divert meanings to generate new expressions, as is

known from the projective and cognitive theories of language; in particular, the
 Digital language 8

cognitive theory of metaphor which will be addressed shortly (De Bustos, 2000; Black,

1966; Lakoff 2000).

The modularity and assembled and constructed character of a language is closely

related to the ability to perform extremely important cognitive operations that allow

new expression, the pragmatics that transforms language. What can be seen in the

language of digital media is a limitless capacity to make the most of modularity not only

to determine the composition of texts and messages, but also to change it, with the aim

of highlighting their selection rules and breaking them to generate new expressive

phenomena. The hybrid languages and grammars that are constantly generated on

digital screens unceasingly shatter the static foundations of their syntaxes, thanks to the

structural block system, consequently generating new syntaxes and selection rules.

The following example will help to understand this phenomenon to its full extent.

Manovich (2013) explains how the new language of digital media uses materials and

techniques as linguistic components that merge into new 'gestalts' (2013: 167), offering

coherence and structure despite their very different provenance. A digital text, like for

instance a 'transmedia story', can be a modular structure in which forms, such as verbal

written text, 2D or 3D imagery, an illustration, a photo in black and white, or

background music, can be embedded. On trying to understand the multilingual text

underlying this transmedia webpage, there is only one background language that allows,

for instance, what was hitherto a two-dimensional impression to coexist with a sonorous

expression and, in turn, with an abstract symbolization from the alphanumeric world.

Multiple selection rules are broken in the modular configuration of this expressive

structure, such as the rules of interpretation of 2D and 3D imagery, the encoding of flat

images that coexist with the depth-of-field effects in 3D, or the scalability shown by

given elements, which appears alongside the symbolism of medieval uppercase letters
 Digital language 9

or static headlines. But insofar as it is possible to incorporate these elements in a single

text, this can be read, understood and adopted by those who speak the digital language.

With modularity, we can leap from one expressive dimension or previous grammar to

another, and simultaneously maintain a complex unitary set. Every reader that accesses

the transmedia story explores it and learns its modular structure, thereby creating a new

genre, which doubtless will be modified before long when new projected elements are

innovated and introduced into its creative composition.

But it does not only happen in this way. Speakers of the digital language who

access the modular configuration of communicative forms assembled by the appropriate

deviations, projections, analogies and shifts of plane, become literate in this language

and, as a result, its active creators: that is why media language is called 'intuitive',

inasmuch as digital competence enables us to generate new uses and combinations. The

generative grammar of digital language transforms reading and reception into identical

creative operations. And it also demonstrates that use can change the different media

and techniques; i.e., 'performance' can and does affect 'competence' in the language of

new media, as every speaker is its potential creator. In other words, users can be

'produsers', creators of new modulations and digital media structures.

The innovative power of digital language lies in two directions: on the one hand,

artistic creators and innovators, such as video artists, writers of hyperpoetry and

hypertext literature, and others whose fundamental role, as is known since McLuhan, is

to adapt technology so as to strike an ideal sensorial and cultural balance. On the other,

the second line of innovation has to do with mainstream users who, on embracing new

digital media, transform them since they affect their grammar, generating new

constructions and, in turn, objects: just as in verbal language, creation is in part

universal and anonymous, as well as the product of creators and literary artists.
 Digital language 10

Digital language: basic mechanisms

Thus, digital language, as a transformational grammar, adopts the primary form of

a universal structure, comprising techniques, grammars and glossaries of

communicative forms and tools, which is continually transformed into modular

structures of a visible nature whose ease of assembly allows all digital language

speakers to discern and learn its syntax, mapping and selection rules, and, above all,

access its translator and projective mechanism that permits them to generate new

structures.

Therefore, the structure of the constructions from different media and earlier

languages, and the clear reference to their origin in earlier formats and media, should be

seen as a custodian mechanism of hyperlanguage. The simulation, mimesis or emulation

of all prior media, that is, the so-called 're-mediation' phenomenon (Bolter, 2011, 1999),

is an integral part of this language. The recycling of elements is essential in this

translator system, as in all languages. Yet it is also a hypermediated system: it is

necessary to make its glossary visible, and display the construction of its elements, so

that all speakers can access the translations that it carries out in the interface structures

of computers and screens, and even generate their own.

The most fundamental mechanism of all language, as studied in cognitive

linguistics for almost a century, is structural analogy and metaphorical projection

(mapping). In his semantic theory, Chomsky states that in language a constant

adaptation and structuring takes place through the projection of rules in new contexts.

So, children who are learning to speak guess correctly or incorrectly when applying

rules and their successive instrumentation. As guidance, they perform analogies –

specifically, they apply known rules of prior situations to new expressive needs.
 Digital language 11

In the metaphor, language applies rules and significational structures to contexts

differing from the original ones by means of the so-called 'cognitive projection'. As was

discovered through the study of cognitive theories of metaphor (Black, 1966), semantic

projections or mappings are not only a literary or poetic device, but also, as Chomsky

foresaw, form the core of many semantic structures. With metaphors, it is possible to

recognize and conceptualize objects in terms of others, creating language, domain and

lexical subsets in such a way that they constitute the essential core of language and

many sign systems. Such a general idea was arrived at by cognitivists such as Lakoff

and Johnson (2000).

Black (1966) clearly explained how through cognitive projection it is possible to

apply structures and nodes of meanings to different contexts, thus generating new

structures, adapted lexical fields and, consequently, visualizations of abstract or

exceptional contexts. According to the ideas of Chomsky and Black, language is

perpetually adapting linguistic blocks to new contexts, using projective assembly

mechanisms. These mechanisms are the same as those found in the digital multimedia

language of software environments.

The cognitive theory of metaphor, whose corporeal/experiential approach was

developed at a later date (Lakoff and Johnson, 2000), provided the fundamental

mechanism for projecting and establishing structural alignments for mapping, limiting,

and defining new semantic fields. Lakoff added, as projective mechanisms, the

structural domains generated by bodily, spatial and orientational experiences, as well as

those related to tools, containers and media. The projection ceased to be merely verbal

and began to be regarded as a cognitive operation beyond verbal language, which had,

among its most essential metaphorical matrices, kinaesthetic forms, structural tools
 Digital language 12

generated through the visual observation of the environment, and ontological metaphors

associated with objects and processes belonging to very different worlds of experience.

Needless to say, this linguistic mechanism is analogous to that which Piaget

detected in the development of intelligence in children, with the elaboration of schemata

from the interiorization and accommodation of those of action and movement in the

environment, which are slowly but surely introjected to form more complex, abstract or

formalized structures (Piaget, 2000, 1961).

Piaget created the first transformational theory for the development of intelligence,

serving as inspiration to Chomsky. His input is crucial to the thesis that I am putting

forward here, because he saw the transition and continuity between the early stages of a

child's relationship with the environment, with the elaboration of action schemata and

the subsequent transformative development of representations, abstractions and

symbolic developments. In this thesis, digital language is a glaring example of how the

interaction with technologies and previous objects assimilates, accommodates and

transforms these action schemata, constituting a coherent mosaic of elements linked by

a cognitive development similar to that which takes place in a variety of situations, from

actions in the real environment to symbolization and formalization. It is indeed

remarkable that the digital environment reproduces the transformational development

that occurs in cognitive maturation. It is as if, with that transformational grammar,

humans learn to generate an intelligence adapted to the digital environment – which of

course is exactly what happens.

The basic mechanism of digital language is precisely this: the cognitive projection

that makes it possible to assemble a significational structure from an environment

extrinsic to the said language (for example, the structure of the use of visual arrows as

indicators on offline signage so to reach objects or identify them) which is combined

 Digital language 13

with another from a different one (e.g., the prehensile structure of a hand on a three-

dimensional object so as to move and do things with it), from whose conceptual

synthesis, in its two-dimensional visualization on a monitor, the mouse-pointer interface

can emerge. This is also an element of the digital language glossary, which in turn can

be found embedded in multiple ways – even on touch screens as a simple 'quote' or

associated with other actions, such as the animated arrow used for sending messages.

The transmedia or, as Scolari appropriately put it, 'hypermediate' character of the

transformations of digital language is a logical consequence of consistent and

continuous projective mechanisms. Hypermediacy (Scolari, 2008: 113) is 'a process of

exchange, production and symbolic consumption developed in a context with several

users, media and languages technologically interconnected in a reticular way.' This

hypermediacy is the interposition of structures, such as interfaces, which map and

furnish tools, glossaries and lexicons in a communicative process. What is found in

digital language is the universal application of the transformational principle: all

structures generated by all media, tools and languages are interpolable so as to generate

another.

Each text and product of digital language shows the projection and

metaphorization capacity of the communication world with its own components. If, as

McLuhan foresaw, the medium is the message, digital messages generate new media

because they bring about constant hypermediations, increasingly materializing the

unlimited Peircean semiosis.

Of the three grammars – those of text, interaction and page – that Scolari (2004:

105) detected at an early stage interacting in interfaces, the principles of projection that

I am illustrating here allow for a change of plane between them, unifying, separating or

reassembling them in a modular fashion. The reduction of planes generated by

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transformations unites the three grammars, and what belongs to a domain becomes a

structure of another. A medium or element of a medium rids itself of its 'hardware', as

stated by Manovich, to now become an organizational metaphor that facilitates a

broadening of the digital space and its linking with earlier communication spaces.

The development of digital language is a gigantic projective space that works

through the continual generation of innovations by applying analogies, structural

alignments and changes of metaphorical plane from a universal base of precursory

languages and media communication. Just as the universal grammar of language allows

speakers to become deeply literate so that they can carry out their expressive

'performances', the grammar of media and languages provides users with the basic

capacity to interpret and apply the appropriate projections in the intuitive page of a

website or on a screen. This language permits individual creative development, just as

linguistic transformational grammar does. As with verbal language, digital language is

generative and ever-changing, and its tools are the cognitive operations that it can

perform with previous grammars, techniques and media. Its infinite and rapid

development, generating more and more 'transmedia' elements, can only be explained

by the unlimited phenomena of metaphorical projection that are generated in its lexicon,

allowing experiences to be transposed into tools and vice versa.

Another equally essential key is conceptual blending (Fauconnier, 2005), a

cognitive operation that is even more commonplace than metaphorical projection.

Thanks to the structural modularity of language, with conceptual blending it is possible

to assemble disparate and incompatible elements in blocks of meaning and pragmatic

value, in addition to joining multiple planes in a single set. An easily understood

example of this is a desktop operating system, in which elements belonging to very

different planes of meaning and communication contexts coexist in a cognitive fusion

 Digital language 15

naturally accepted by users: a wallpaper or picture, a table or desk of the same size, a

tiny recycling bin, an animated two-dimensional arrow, capital letters that function

autonomously as icons or logos, icons simulating small documents or folders, a giant

image player, a personal photo occupying the background by way of mental imagery,

etc.

The rules of composition involved in the use of a computer's desktop and the

proficiency of the users allow them to transpose to and from other screens and

interfaces: the same language of glosses, involving processes, outputs, tools and

symbols of multiple communication contexts, be they three-dimensional, two-

dimensional and symbolic, abstract or exceptional and specific, is found in other digital

environments.

The conceptual blending that has allowed the recent incorporation of touch screens

and tablet interfaces of all kinds is self-evident. With the software of touch devices, the

digital medium incorporates, projects, and merges tactile kinaesthetic body language, as

well as many of its basic experiential metaphors, with previous metaphorical planes

such as those associated with kinematics, visual illusions, illustrated animation, etc. The

blending of elements in these structures and tools is never-ending. Its universal

grammar is inspired, in this case, by the projective world of bodily, orientational and

kinaesthetic tools that meld seamlessly with effects or illusions of movement and

perspective. The movement of a finger on a touch screen simulates three-dimensional

operations in two-dimensionality, carrying out a projective translation: the elimination

of a file is accomplished by pushing it off the screen, and while we are moving it the file

lights up or resists the movement as if it were magnetized, so that when we 'release' it

by removing our finger from the screen, it jumps back to its original place.
 Digital language 16

It is worth considering the amount of conceptual blending associated with the page

of an online newspaper, where codes, signs and glosses of other media languages – a

comic, the same page in print form, a film image, a static photo, hypertext, etc. – are

recombined in new forms. Each one of the new reconfigurations displays its modulation

rules and allows us to access its pragmatics, its use. A new Web structure for online

newspapers, using a horizontal layout, has recently been introduced, so that news items

can be read by touching and dragging them from left to right. What is involved here is a

metaphorical projection of the mechanism used to turn the page of a print newspaper,

although it also resembles the sequence of a traditional comic strip, and, lastly, copies

the carriage return line breaks, horizontal and from left to right, of the texts of Western

culture.

Last but not least, and just as Manovich (2005) detected and developed early on,

one of the hypergrammatical mechanisms of digital language as a whole is scalable

projection. I will now explain this element of digital universal grammar in depth, since

its cognitive matrix is probably the most essential one of this new and all-encompassing

language.

The metaphorical matrix of digital language: the scalable map

If there is an element that identifies and is present in absolutely all contexts of

digital language, as a vast metaphorical matrix, then that is the scalable map.

As Manovich observed, scalability is a set of cognitive elements from different

key cultural environments in universal communication culture. Maps are curious

devices whose components and operational rules allow us to plan and organize

information, thus permitting the reduction of the cognitive load, since they facilitate the

connection between abstract and detailed encodings. Maps allow us to pass, let us say,
 Digital language 17

from analogue to digital communication, from the infinitesimal and gradual to the

simplified and schematic, and also to change sequentialized plane. This implies that, in

the human mind, maps perform the conceptual blending between the schematic

representation of and access to the object represented in full detail, by virtue of the

interpretive process. This operation of the traditional map, by which this curious,

significant object facilitated analogue and digital merging by means of an adequate

mental projection, has become the major operating symbol of digital language and

intelligence. What is involved is the far-reaching transformational grammar that enables

operations on the Web: as Manovich already stated back in 2005, 'If we want to

describe what new media do, in one word, with all the old media, a good option is the

term "mapping" or projection' (Manovich 2005a).

Scalability, the operation of reducing or enlarging a representation, with the

consequent alteration of the information that it yields, is a cognitive matrix of enormous

importance in culture. Yet even more so in the field of digital language, since in its

essential core abstract digitization reduces the complexity of the analogue and gradual

world, both complex and incomprehensible, to the binary encoding for which the map,

varying from the territory, is the outstanding symbol of the digitized universe.

In the digital environment, numeralization and encoding occur in a unified

technological language. This simple fact, noted by Manovich for its cultural importance,

is the crux of the matter, since digitization creates the means by which to play with on-

screen representations by providing them with an adjustable or scalable dimension. This

lays the foundations for adopting, in the design of many elements and forms on the

Web, a scalable nature, and to enable multiple elements, objects or shapes to be

displayed as maps.
 Digital language 18

On projecting this capacity of digital technology on shapes and styles, a universe

emerges whose basic operation is deployability and retractability, in which there is a

'depth' to explore, and where any message or object, if content, becomes a means by

transmuting into a map.

Scalability has generated a number of essential grammars in the language of the

media. In effect, it is one of its preeminent organizational mechanisms: the way we

associate and rank information in this language is by using projective devices that

deploy or retract it.

The management and deployment of a map connects us to two basic experiences

so as to understand the digital medium. On the one hand, we have experience in

accessing simple projections, of low semantic load, on whose internal consistency,

however, the organization of a great amount of information rests, if we develop the

structural analogy and project the map on the territory, namely, in the digital context,

and if we deploy the map using the links that this shares with the territory, that is, the

universe of data.

Scalability is the operation that illustrates the digitization of any representation in

the new media. In its pragmatics, there is an infinite capacity to emulate binary

language. And in its development, also structural, the composition rules of

representations in the said media can be seen. It is the great indexical practice that

unveils the deep-rooted nature of digital media.

The metaphor of the map is the matrix of hypertext and its structure, where it takes

on new meaning. The links between texts are scalable projections that associate

information in different degrees of detail. In many cases, the links in digital texts, once

activated, are displayed in detailed and full text. So, they transpose the scalability of a

visual map, as printed dictionaries and glossaries already did, although by means of our
 Digital language 19

semantic memory, into the text medium. It is for this reason that hypertexts are said to

be – to continue to generate metaphors – 'three-dimensional texts' (Rodríguez de las

Heras, 1991).

Beyond this simple model, the links between disparate texts also establish

expressive nexuses and configure maps or gestalts of messages, with accents or

expressively dense elements, as in hypertext novels (Pajares, 2015). The union of all

texts through links and encoded and simplified representations enables us to establish

relational structures, reduce the cognitive load of information through its hierarchical

organization on maps, consider the possibility of incessantly projecting and generating

new analogies that order and map contexts, and again play with the concept of a map

not only as an interface, but also as a metaphor that breaks the rules of coherence on

merging different planes of representation.

In the hypertext language, scalability enables us to unite the macrosemantics of

verbal language – general structures, long-term memory, the massive and universal

organization of data – with episodic information and the detailed and specific structures

where the links appear. Each scalable link activates the possible access to semantic

memory information by displaying data when texts are browsed. But unlike the pre-

digital process, in which memory access was entirely intrapersonal, psychological and

impalpable, here it is possible to exteriorize and materialize it. It is therefore a

transposition, a materialization of the process of accessing the knowledge represented

by the scalable link.

What digital maps do is to materialize the process of abstraction, or in reverse, of

gradual, infinitesimal development towards the analogue medium. Furthermore, the

reversal of this process allows us to visualize the encrypting and encoding of memory in

simple representations. Unlike traditional print reading, the digital hypertextual form of
 Digital language 20

reading uses the working and long-term memory very differently. The use of the

extensive, semantic memory of large structures is less necessary. The semantic memory

is materialized in hypertextual browsing, in the midst of scalable links. However, the

demands on the short-term, working memory are much greater because of the need to

handle huge amounts of instant, ever-changing information that is difficult to grasp.

Projections allow us to take into account both cognitive loads, in addition to

metaphorizing their alternation. The metaphor that guides us and makes us literate in

this continuous process is that of the map.

As already mentioned, scalable maps support projective reversibility; to wit, they

can develop from the simplistic and abstract to the complex and detailed, or vice versa,

by abstracting elements, be generated as an association of simplified elements. The Web

constantly generates both processes, and reverses them, as an organizational and

experiential metaphor of its universal grammar. One element, symbol, word, image or

text link is always a node of a map, be it an existing one or one in process of being

created, which is generated by reading or browsing. The way in which information is

accumulated or developed always follows the projective protocol of the map. It is

possible to generate infinite digital navigation paths, and thereby generate maps that

create new cognitive territories.

Any digital element, by virtue of the configuration of its own image generated

from digital language, can become navigable, that is, on a map. Similarly, as indicated

above, all messages generate a structure that can become a map on which to navigate,

each new map being transformed by digital language.

Metaphors, projections and blending of digital universal grammar

 Digital language 21

To descend to a more specific level and illustrate this theory, on the basis of the

prior work of Manovich and Scolari on digital media, and above all the cognitive and

linguistic theories of Chomsky, Black and Lakoff, I will now provide examples of some

of the basic resources of digital universal grammar. Soon it will be clear that this

grammar contains elements and selective devices from very different symbolic

communication subuniverses:

Basic metaphors

- Container metaphors (orientational, experiencial, ontological), a discovery made

by Lakoff. This vast organizational matrix mapped the first organizations of computer

data, and today is an important semantic key and rule of analogy in digital language. A

link, a designated object, is always a container of information. And a common way of

accessing a web space is by examining its containers. Basic literacy in any interface

requires knowledge of the structure of containers, which may be multiple and recurrent.

The "Windows" windowing system and the MSDos folder and file system are

organizations based on the metaphor of the container. This is an ontological metaphor

that lies at the root of our primary life experience.

- Metaphors of the scalable map (metacognitive, ontological), arising from the

research of Max Black and Mary Hesse. The map that links analogue and digital

dimensions, which supports different semantic loads according to its deployment or

stowing, and which introduces and develops projective dynamics in any object, is a

grammatical matrix on the Web which reveals its emulating character. All elements

have been converted into the scalable kind and illustrate the hyperconnected character

of all data.

- Kinetic and kinematic metaphors (movements of objects, shifts, rhetorics of

movement), widely studied by Manovich, have been essential matrices in the

 Digital language 22

assimilation and creation of analogy structures in digital spaces. Kinetic metaphors also

generate space, temporalize communication and are vital in new narrative styles. They

are not only closely related to cultural experiences associated with cinematographic

images, movement systems, the operation of wheeled devices, etc., but lately also with

expressions of movement simulating touch, rotating objects, etc.

- Kinaesthetic and tactile metaphors (experiential, corporeal, spatial) stemming

from the ideas of Lakoff and Johnson. The metaphorical matrices of tactile, bodily and

kinaesthetic experiences organize the basic projective rules of new digital interfaces

(touch, throw, move, grip, poke) in multiple two-dimensional, three-dimensional, etc.,

glosses. The incorporation of this metaphorical matrix in digital language shows the

extent to which its language assembly mechanism and previous tools are diverse and

hybrid. The trans-dimensional space generated in digital language is possible because it

is a structured, modular and generative transformational language. As studied by Piaget,

this capacity of digital language reproduces in its environment basic cognitive processes

of introjection, assimilation and accommodation of action schemata with objects that

occur in the formation of intelligence. This process is 'glossed' and emulated in digital

language.

- Orientational/spatial metaphors (Lakoff), very essential in projecting the web

space, on the basis of the map concept, and especially in the spatial/temporal blends that

organize narratives, information sequencing and even complex structures such as the

construction of the 3D space, illusion created from a theatrical perspective and tricks

using panels or models. The custodian use of these metaphors and their always hybrid

configuration with other planes of meaning is central to the Web.

- Construction metaphors (experiential, corporeal, Piagetian), stemming from the

ideas of Lakoff and Piaget, are responsible for the grammar of modularity that allows us
 Digital language 23

to assemble elements in structures so as to generate new associations and broaden

selection rules. Paradoxically, it is the key to the development of the conceptual blends

that superpose and syncretize messages and media, tools and content, rhetorics and

episodes. Many online games for children or adolescents include modular construction

metaphors (Minecraft), as well as multidimensional, kinetic, etc., spaces. It is important

to note that this vast fundamental metaphor is analogous to the structural nature of

language, and is the one that permits its generativity and expansive creativity. It is also

what lends the digital medium aspects of illusion, visible structures and theatricality that

reveal its assembled character.

Basic projections

- Media projections: languages, patterns and styles from all previous media are,

wholly or partially, simulated in and projected on digital language: the 'quote' of film

language, the 'gloss' of theatrical perspective, the incorporation of the linear storybook

style, or the emulation of a modular newspaper page constitute a universal media pool

that is constantly projected on and merged with the Web.

- Projections of techniques: the fragments or totalities of all kinds of techniques

related to communication in broad cultural settings, from the return key of a typewriter

to the button featuring an arrow on a video player, from the 'smiley' face of hippie or

psychedelic culture to the headset of a traditional landline telephone. Very partial

technical elements can be assembled in other texts and function perfectly: this is the

case of the simulating arrow of a video player on a digital image, or the change of

colour for item selection integrated in touch screens, which comes from photo

composition techniques. Techniques and tools also become words and cognitive

sequences of digital language.

 Digital language 24

- Projections of non-digital spatial structures: they map and structure major areas

of action, organizations like houses, gardens, oceans, seas or the celestial universe.

Metaphors and cognitive projections of offline experiences are vital to understanding

and developing the digital parallel space.

Conceptual blending

- Indefinite and multiple hybridizations in which emulated media, languages and

technologies blend by means of modular structures, and on the basis of analogue

projection. The key to this blending is that all media can be embedded in one another if

in this way information is accessed. Multimetaphors and projections on projections are

the basic expression of digital language. It is sufficient to recognize and assemble, using

projective modulation, these forms originating from other structures so as to take the

lead in digital language.

Conclusions

The conception of digital language as a generative grammar enables us to

understand the rapid evolution of its transformations.

These transformations are caused by the application of a number of possible

generative operations thanks to the modular structure of digital language, which in its

development incorporates glossaries, the rules of selection and combination of a

universal grammar of communication and its techniques. But, above all, digital

language allows the application of deep cognitive operations, as well as those of

projection, conceptual blending, and semantic deviation, using fundamental

metaphorical matrices identical to those operating in verbal language.

As in transformational grammar, digital language transforms the universe of

languages, generated by all the tools and techniques of communication, from gestural
 Digital language 25

interpersonal communication to theatrical language, from the language of linear

perspective to the GPS map, by breaking its own rules of selective coherence. Open to

the change created by use, that is, by performance, digital language is more creative

than any previous medium because it not only benefits from individual creative use, but

also from that of artistic creators and technology developers who cooperate with all

users.

There are artistic and creative environments specializing in extending indefinitely

the range of versatilities of this generative language. The hypertext novel and

hyperpoetry are examples of artistic expressions in which the ultimate goal is the new

definition of structures, communication protocols and hybridized languages. The whole

purpose of creation is precisely to rebalance the technological extension in order to

discover its best use. The artistic pioneers of this language are always creating new

experiences to be recycled in it. The scalable sitemap supports a quantum version in

which it creates a territory itself: the operations of digital language consistently recreate

and extend it. But verbal language also functions in the same way, as we know from the

theory of Chomsky.

The interface concept is central to understanding how to establish digital language

as a bridge between such different levels of the communication universe, as are tools

and content. Any content in digital universal grammar can become an interface, namely,

a bridge that gives us access to other content via a scalable structure. The ability to use

the tools, material expressions, as essential metaphors of speech, or as glosses that give

us access to operations or new presentations of elements, is an example of the versatility

and transformative capacity of this language.

In digital language, all expressive resources, be they tools or content, signifier or

meaning, are components. The illusionism, theatricality and visible building blocks of
 Digital language 26

its construction are artificial and manufactured because it should reveal its

configuration, encourage generative composition, and even show the operations of

analogy, cognitive deviation, and the breaking of rules of selection or consistency,

guiding the user to learn its structure in continual development.

Digital language perpetually reconstructs its general grammar because it builds on

its own elements, innovating and expanding its projections and metaphorizations. Its

final structures are always provisional, in steady evolution. This has meant that the users

of this language become accustomed to regularly innovating forms and interfaces on the

basis of recoveries of memory of preceding media, languages and pragmatics.

With each new user interface, the translator system of this language proposes a

new interpretation of the universal grammar of communication and its cultural tools.

There is a profound analogy between media and languages. Digital language obliges us

to constantly resume that analogy, making experience and cognition a device that offers

the possibility of managing all transcoded data in a computer system. Simulations of

this language, as Manovich (2013: 200) states, have freed media creation and interaction

from their respective programmes of origin, from their basic technologies. By turning

them into metaphors, and embedding them in a broader discourse, digital language

converses with all communication traditions, converting them into resources of its

glossary. And from this dialogue expeditiously varied and innovative creative forms

arise.

Conventional language and human thought have always projected and transposed

experiences from different contexts to shape ideas, inject the flow of words with energy,

and direct the activity of human consciousness.

Digital language materializes and exteriorizes even more that essential projective

capacity and sets it in motion to facilitate and promote communication, leading to a

 Digital language 27

flood of innovations in the communication medium that is also developing and driving

human creativity.
 Digital language 28

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