[1] See also Berge 1993(b),
where the author defines the function of textual norms as follows:
" From my
point of view the most important task of a norm system is to produce tokens or
utterance texts that are the means whereby a specific goal in a specific
situation is reached. A situation here is defined in terms of a social field. A
social field (cf. Bourdieau [1986, my addition, PJC]) is defined as a scene
where the communicators are striving towards a specific goal. The goal is
symbolic capital, for instance the right to decide what a goal adequate text
is.
The goal is
socially accepted and conventionalised, and so is the communicative function
which relates the textual norm system to the goal. The norm system than
prescribes both the communicative function and how the text tokens of the system
should normally be structured if the desired goal is to be attained.
What is implied
here is the hypothesis that there exists an internal non-contingent causal
relation between the normalised communicative goal G in the social field S, the
communicative functions F which are normalised to reach G in S, and those
textual norm systems N which are normalised as the means of F to reach G in S.
These textual norms qualify the utterance text as a coherent semiotic object
both at the expression plane and the content plane. This proposed causal
relation can be expressed in the following way:
Gs -> Fs ->
Ns" (Berge 1993(b), p. 10)
See also Coppock 1994 for a discussion of some problems
with this model, especially those related to the notions of continuity and goal
negotiation.
[2] The server technology
used at the point of distribution limits the number of simultaneous links to
any given document, but on high capacity systems there can be several hundred
"hits" or "visits" to any given page simultaneously.
[3] See Coppock (in press)
for a broader discussion of the concept of novice in this connection.