| Intertextuality, proposed by Kristeva in1969, means that any text interweaves withother texts and that every text is the absorption and transformation of another. Ever sinceit came into the academic field, intertextuality has been studied mainly in literarycriticism. Linguists’ acceptance of intertextuality only began in1981when Beaugrandeand Dressler introduced it into text linguistics; however, scholars mainly make researchon intertextuality in critical linguistics and analyze such discourses as political texts,news reports, and advertisements. This thesis tries to analyze the phenomenon ofintertextuality in Chinese festival blessing short messages (BSMs) that are collected fromthe Internet, books, periodicals and personal festival BSMs from the perspective ofmemetic-adaptation.Memetics is a relatively new theory in pragmatics, and it can be defined as thetheoretical and empirical science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes. In terms of memetics, intertextuality is realized via the assimilation of sourcetexts, retention of intertextual memes, expression of intertextual memes and transmissionof intertextual texts. Besides, the different transmission modes of memes result indifferent forms of intertextuality. But not all memes can help the realization ofintertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs, only those that have the features ofcopy-fidelity, fecundity and longevity, or strong memes (strong genotype memes andstrong phenotype memes) can do. Besides, adaptation theory is used to analyze themotivations when people employ intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs, that is to say,intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs has to adapt to its living environments, which isthe mental world, social world and physical world of the senders and the receivers.Based on the perspective of memetic-adaptation, this thesis is carried out as aqualitative study with the support of a quantitative method. The aim of the former one isto analyze the interrelations of intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs and linguisticmemes with specific samples, while the latter one is to find out the frequency of differentforms of intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs and people’s attitudes towards thephenomenon.After the analyses of intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs, the author gets thefollowing findings. First, intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs is realized through thereplication and transmission of linguistic memes. And memetic theory can explain thephenomenon of intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs which extends the researchscope of memetics in pragmatics. Second, the motivations of employing different formsof intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs are the adaptation to the mental world, socialworld and physical world of the senders and the receivers. Third, the statistics shows thatpeople of different ages use different forms of intertextuality in Chinese festival BSMsand that people generally take the neutral attitude towards the phenomenon ofintertextuality in Chinese festival BSMs though people of different ages have slightlydifferent views. |
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