A Contrastive Analysis Of Intertextuality In Discourse Of Chinese And English University Prospectuses

Originated from literary criticism, the theory of intertextuality has been applied to linguistics, especially to critical discourse analysis (CDA) since 1970s. Intertextuality is a basic property of any text and it is important in text production and interpretation. In the field of CDA, Fairclough treats intertextual analysis as an important complement to discourse analysis and relates intertextuality to social changes.The present study employs intertextuality to analyze four samples of university prospectuses from two universities in China and two in Britain. The study aims to reveal the ideological meanings of intertextuality in discourse of prospectus. Specifically, it attempts to answer the following two questions:1. What are the major subcategories of specific intertextuality in Chinese and English university prospectuses respectively and how to explain their ideological functions concerning the institutional and social contexts in China and Britain?2. How is generic intertextuality presented in the prospectuses and how to explain the ideological functions and power relations concerning the institutional and social contexts in China and Britain?The study adopts Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the analytic framework, but three dimensions of description, interpretation and explanation are not clear-cut in the analysis, especially for the first two dimensions which are intertwined. Furthermore, Xin Bin’s distinction of specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality are adopted for intertextual analysis but with an adaptation in specific intertextuality, since this category proposed by Xin Bin is mainly based on his research into speech reporting in news and not applicable to the present study. In the analysis of specific intertextuality, the number and percentage of three subcategories: reference, cliche and quotation in the prospectuses are counted and calculated. For each subcategory, specific examples in the samples are given to analyze and discuss the ideological meanings. For analyzing generic intertextuality which refers to the phenomenon that some other genres or discourse types are mixed in a text, four types of discourse in the prospectuses are focused on in this study and they are educational discourse, advertising discourse, technological discourse and counselling discourse. Examples of each type are extracted from the samples for the interpretation of the ideological function of generic intertextuality. Furthermore, tentative explanations on the employment of both specific and generic intertextuality are given in terms of institutional and social contexts in the process of analysis.The results exhibit that both specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality are widely distributed in the samples, but there are some differences between Chinese and English prospectuses. First, in terms of specific intertextuality, reference and quotation are employed in both Chinese and English prospectuses. However, in the Chinese samples, reference to people, reference to honors and reference to thoughts are all included, while in the English samples, there is no reference to thoughts; in the Chinese samples, there is no quotation from authorities and in the English samples, there is not any quotation from leaders. As for cliches, they are easy to recognize in the Chinese samples, making the discourse of prospectuses professional and authoritative, but corresponding cliches cannot be found in the English samples, making the discourse less stereotyped than that of Chinese prospectuses. The employment of all these subcategories of specific intertextuality in the prospectuses can not only provide information for readers, but also serve the ideological function of persuasion and promotion.Second, in terms of generic intertextuality, advertising discourse, technological discourse and counselling discourse are intermingled with the educational discourse of university prospectuses, making both Chinese and English texts of prospectuses interdiscursive. However, the educational discourse itself in the English samples is less formal than that in the Chinese samples because of the frequent occurrence of personal pronouns. Generic intertextuality, realized by other discourse types penetrating into the educational genre reflects the ideological tendency of consumerism and the change of power relations:the universities’power is transferred to potential students as a result of the shift of identity from authority to promoter.This study contributes to cultivating readers’ critical awareness in reading and interpreting any genre of discourses and also sheds light on the application of CDA in a wider range of discourse types.