An Intertextual Analysis On English Abstract Of Pragmatics

English abstract, as an important part of scientific thesis, plays the role of agent between the international exchange of science and technology, and it is of great significance as it can directly influence whether the research findings can be world-widely spread and exchanged. Some important international research organizations will judge if a research paper can be embodied into their database through reading its English abstract. Meanwhile, English abstracts of scientific thesis are concise, informative and full of academic terms, they often be misunderstood by readers. So, this paper is aimed to explore intertextuality in scientific abstract writing in English, especially abstract of pragmatics. The primary goal of this research is to explore the manifest and constitutive intertextuality applied in English abstract of pragmatics and tries to provide analogous discourse analysis with a new method. Furthermore, this thesis also come up with some techniques for and facilitate the understanding and producing of English abstract of pragmatics.According to intertextual theory,"every text is constructed as a mosaic of citations; every text is an absorption and transformation of other texts"(Kristeva,1986). Thus, the meaning of a text is not presupposed by the author but is open to the reader's consciousness of its relation and reaction to its inter-texts. By detailed study in the way of intertextual criticism, the thesis states that the meaning of the text is produced through the text's inter-action to its three inter-texts. Base on these viewpoints, this thesis adopts a theoretical model based on the typology proposed by Hatim and Mason, and identifies eight types of manifest intertextuality and six types of constitutive intertextuality. Manifest intertextuality signifies intertextual elements such as presupposition, negation, parody, irony, etc. Constitutive intertextuality signifies the interrelationship of discursive features in a text, such as structure, form, or genre and is also referred to interdiscursivity. With the help of manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality, we could command the using of intertextuality in English abstract of pragmatics.The approach adopted in the study is referred to as a combination of case study and comparative study. First, the author set out to analyze a sample English abstract of Prof. He Ziran, in probing of the application of manifest and constitutive intertextuality in it. Then, a corpus of 40 English abstracts for scientific papers of pragmatics, half from Journal of Pragmatics written by native writers and the other half from Wanfang Thesis Databank website by Chinese writers, have been chosen by random selection and set as samples for analysis. Detailed information of the application of intertextuality is acquired by contrasting and comparing these selected samples from both the language's surface and deep structures. Based on analysis results of intertextuality in abstracts, most of the 40 abstracts written Chinese writers and native writers are found to be featured by abundant use of different intertextuality in the level of style, genre, structure, theme, content and function, etc., as a result of achieving objectivity and reliability of abstracts.Therefore, the following techniques for understanding of abstract have been concluded and suggested on the above analysis and discussion: 1)Have comprehensive knowledge of types and common structures of abstract, and make use of constitutive intertextuality to grasp the essential information of abstract. 2) Be familiar with pragmatics system info and some correlative theories and terms, to acquire the common characteristics of language usage in English abstracts of pragmatics, and make use of manifest intertextuality to acquire the necessary information. The mastery of intertextuality and relative techniques in English abstracts of pragmatics is help to reader's comprehensive and accurate understanding of abstract as well as to writer's proper writing.The selected material in this paper is truthful and reliable, for the abstracts of native writer were randomly selected from Journal of Pragmatics, and of Chinese writer, form Wanfang Thesis Databank website. The authority and availability of analysis data were guaranteed. What is new in this paper is that, combined with demonstrative case study, it is the first time to conduct an empirical study on contrasting and comparing a great number of scientific abstracts in English written by native and Chinese writers; and then intertextuality theories are applied to explain and interpret the study results. Compared with the previous studies of abstracts, abstract texts are studied in this paper to acquire guidance and suggestions in understanding of abstract. The preciseness of conclusion was guaranteed the following research process: a primary conclusion was made from quantitative analysis firstly and was tested and affirmed by qualitative analysis.