A Study Of Intertextuality In Tourist Information Texts

Tourism, as one of the pillar industries, has played a growingly important role in Chinese economic development. The boom of travel industry has, in turn, created the need to communicate with people of various cultural backgrounds. As a kind of public discourse, tourist information texts are supposed to answer this need.The present study, targeted at intertextuality in tourist information texts, is an analysis with the aim of finding out the intertextual representations and relations among the texts, providing the tourist information texts producers and translators with proper strategies in their future translation and creation. According to the theory of Intertextuality, texts exist in a network of already established meanings. Authors would assemble already available meanings rather than produce new ones. From the aspect of the readers, the understanding of the text relies heavily on the knowledge of the preexisted texts. Though tourist information texts emphasize much on novelty and uniqueness, there is no tourist information text isolated absolutely from other existed texts.Based on the model proposed by Hatim & Mason, a new subclass of intertextuality—"cultural intertextuality" is added. The study shows that all the relationships mentioned in the model can be traced in Chinese or English tourist information texts. Different intertextual relationships have diverse impacts on the interpretation and creation of the two kinds of tourist information texts. Moreover, the frequency of some intertextual relationships appeared in Chinese and English tourist information texts is obtained from the study as well.It is expected that the present study can shed some light on understanding the intertextual theory and developing the skills of using intertextuality in many other fields.