Genette's Hypertextuality as an approach in visual texts reading(Case study: the logo of Islamic Republic of Iran Airline)

Texts reading reveals their multiple meaning layers and informs audience from the connotation of the text. For this purpose, in the last hundred years, different text reading approaches have been developed; from formalist reading in early twentieth century to new historicism in its late years. The origin of most of these theories is verbal semiotic system, but art critics have used them as an approach to read visual texts. The main issue of the present article is to explain the implementation process of hypertextuality reading visual texts; a theory which has verbal origin and is used to read visual texts. To answer the question of how a visual text is read by hypertextuality, the logo of Islamic Republic of Iran Airline was chosen as study body and hypertextuality as reading approach. In this approach, by following the intertwined relations of text networks, the meanings of the text are revealed and different layers of implicit meanings are explained. Gerard Genette is from the generation of intertextual reformers; a theory previously proposed by Julia Kristeva. According to intertextuality there is no text without hypotext; so every text is in fact a combination of different texts. Genette theory in intertextuality is known as transtextuality. Genette describes transtextuality as all that sets the text in a relationship whether obvious or concealed, with other texts. Transtextuality include a varieties types of text relationships: Intertextuality, Paratextuality, Metatextuality, Architextuality and Hypertextuality. Intertextuality is as a relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts. As said in this kind of text relationship, copresence is the main condition of intertextuality. It means in this text relationship some elements from text A will be in text B, but this copresence is not basic but partial. A tittle, a subtitle, intertitles, prefaces, postfaces, notices, forewords and etc. are Paratext. In this type of relationship, in fact, the paratexts contains the main text and help to produce new meaning in texts. For instance the title of a book is its paratext.  Metatextuality is the relationship most often labeled commentary. There is two types of metatextuality: to criticize and interpret. In first one the text is criticized but in second one the text only interpreted and will be explained as we see about holy texts. By Architextuality Genette means the entire set of general or transcendent categories types of discourse, modes of enunciation, literary geners from which emerges each singular text. Although architextuality itself is not a text, it contains many texts. For instance Dada is an architextuality that contains all art works which they are made in Dada style. The focus of the present article is on the fifth type of text relations was proposed by Genette. He calls it Hypertextuality. In this approach, the transcendence of the text is a derivation of hypotext. Genette in Palimpsests: Literature in Second Degree explains in detail about this type of relationship and its different types. His examples in this book are often selected from the written text while in this article it is explained using a text body. As usual theorists often propose the basic concepts of a theory, and it is the critics who must derive the implementation process of the theory from the basic concepts. In this paper, a six-step process for reading visual texts based on Genette hypertextuality is suggested as follows:- Investigating the hypertextual relations of the study body: At this stage, the hypertextual relationship of the study body is examined. If the hypertextuality relationship of the study bodies is confirmed, we will enter the next stage. - Study body analysis: At this stage, the study body is analysed into its constituent elements. -  Description of hypertextual relationships: In this step, according to Genette’s hypertextuality the relationships of study bodies are described. - Explain meaning significations: At this stage, the meaning significations of study body are explained by following intertextual and hypertextual relationships. - Technical tips: At this stage, regardless of the hypertextual theory and also based on the cognition that the hypertextual reading has provided to the critic, points should be made about the visual text. - Conclusion In this step, the contents of the previous steps are summarized with general statements. This article is descriptive-analytical in terms of method that its data were gathered by documentary method. The results of the article showed that hypertextuality is one of the practical approaches in reading visual texts and in this regard, a six-step process was presented.