Script in new media: an approach from language theory

Abstract

Inherent to interactive narratives in digital mediums, the database form, described by L. Manovich, challenges the concept of script itself in the way it was conceived from models founded in Aristotelian drama. In this context, we defend that a better comprehension of the language functioning, based on the linguistic theory of L. Hjelmslev, can help to rethink script writing in new media. The objective is to show how, nowadays, in the two elements that organize language – syntagmatic (combinations) and paradigmatic (selections) – there is a prevalence of the last over the first one, causing an inversion of the hierarchy observed on linear and sequential narratives, and a transformation in the strategies by which we think stories. By approximating Hjelmslev and Manovich, the idea is to show how language functions as a heuristic instrument, to then think of a modus operandi of script writing in database formats, assuming interchangeability as its fundamental property.