Hipertextualidade: uma abordagem enunciativa de hipertextos

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the criteria by which hypertext is defined and verify if the criteria are applied to hypertext or to hypertextuality, expressions that are puzzled in the literature about the subject, above all in Textual Linguistics scope. We verified that the definition of hypertext is based on a single criterion sometimes, and on an excessive number of criteria at other times, which are more relative to the hypertextual support than to the enunciative material. The definitions analyzed by us do not consider the functional heterogeneity of hypertexts, which makes us observe that the hypertextuality category contemplates such diversity. To reach this aim, the investigation, of theoretical nature, is inscribed in the epistemological base of Bakhtin’s ([1953] 1997) theoretical and philosophical formulations, relative to the concepts of enunciation process, enunciation and genres. Our theoretical and methodological course is composed, at first, by one discussion about the non-linear criterion, which we support not being enough to the definition of hypertext, especially in the reading perspective or the meaning-makers perspective. Then, we discuss the other characteristics indicated to be defining to hypertext and select the multilinearity, the hypermodality and the interactivity as necessary characteristics to the redefinition of hypertextuality. This practice of analysis and reflection authorized us to propose one hypertexts-enunciative approach which considers that the hypertext only allows itself to be defined based on the manifestations that are displayed in hypertextual genres, whereas the hypertextuality allows itself to be defined ontologically, in a more general way. Besides that, we could conclude that the defining criteria of hypertext are applied much more to the hypertextuality than to the hypertext itself, which is always part of the hypertextuality and not a synonym, as it has been assumed.