| The term intertextuality is coined by Julia Kristeva, the French semiotician and representative of post-structuralism, in her essay entitled "Word, Dialogue and Novel" (1966). In her another essay "The Bounded Text" (1967), she gives the clear definition of intertextuality:a text absorbs some parts of other texts. The coinage of the term intertextuality shows the influence of M. M. Bakhtin, a Russian literary critic, on Kristeva. Bakhtin believes intertextuality is the feature of all languages, "any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations and any text is the absorption and transformation of another" (Kristeva,1986, p37). Since the term came into being, it has been extensively studied by various scholars, mainly on literary criticism and translation. It refers to the dialogic relationship between the authors, the readers and characters in fiction works. It also means the functional relations among different texts. However in the non-literary field, study on intertextuality has not drawn enough attention from scholars.Based on the theory of intertextuality, the aim of this study is to broaden our current understanding of the theory and to analyze news reports in how intertextuality contributes to the meaning of news discourse. By this way, we will find out the application mechanism of intertextuality in news reports and also reveal the explicit meaning and ideology which intertextuality brings to discourse. The whole study is carried on two levels:1) We try to catch the realization of intertextuality in news reports;2) We try to reveal the critical significance that intertextuality brings to news discourse from the perspective of CDA.Having studied intertextuality in the selected sample news articles from The New York Times and Washington Post, News discourse, we believe, is typical discourse type having close relation with intertextuality. There are both the specific intertextuality whose origin is easily dated and the generic intertextuality caused by various genres in the same text. Speech reporting is the most obvious illustration of the specific intertextuality. It is realized in many forms, such as direct speech, indirect speech, free indirect speech and the narrative report of speech act. The mixture of different features of genres creates generic intertextuality in news, which takes on features of other genres, such as story-telling and encyclopedia. Compared the two kind of intertextuality, we believe that the specific intertextuality is better used in news discourse.Intertextuality brings critical significance to news discourse from the perspective of CDA. The present study shows how news texts draw on, echo, and bring together different intertextual resources realized in the forms of discourse, style and genres and how the circulations and combination in particular contexts construct specific interpretation of press position. Different presses take different standing positions by their reports on even the same event. Choosing particular focus of intertextuality, we may find the divergence implied in news.By reviewing the origin, development and the present status of intertextuality, this study is very helpful in the application research of the theory of intertextuality for learners. It is also a useful toll in critical discourse analysis. In addition, the study provides us with a different way of reading and comprehending news in media and suggests us to cultivate critical language awareness in order to be able to find the real purpose and ideology concealed by western media.
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