A Study Of Generic Intertextuality In English Commercial Advertisements

Intertextuality, as one of the basic features of discourse, first appeared inlinguistics theories in the20thcentury, especially in structural linguistic theoryprovided by the Swiss linguist Saussure. But soon intertextuality obtained a widerdevelopment from the theory that language discourse existed in a specific socialsituation. The Bakhtin Dialogism was an apparent example in this period. Bakhtinalso mentions the concept of intertextuality in his study of dialogue theory; hence, thelinguists admit his dialogue theory in the past twenty years which extends the study ofintertextuality into other fields besides literary field. In the1960s the work Semioticswritten by the French critic Julia Kristeva under the influence of Bakhtin Dialogismalso brought the concept of intertextuality. Later it becomes one of the hottest wordsand research focus both in the fields of literary theory and cultural studies.Intertextuality was introduced in text linguistics by Beaugrande and Dressler in1981,and the definition of it is that intertextuality is the “ways in which the production andreception of a given text depends on the participants’ knowledge of other texts”(Beaugrande and Dressler,1981). At the same time, they regard intertextuality as oneof the seven standards of text study which then provide a new research direction forthe intertextual linguistic study.Generic intertextuality, as a hot topic discussed by the scholars and professors,has been explained and defined in different perspectives. Fairclough and Bhatia treatit as “interdiscursivity” or heterogeneity of the text. Bahktin pours a great manyefforts into generic intertextuality in his subsequent studies and he calls it asheteroglossia.The thesis focuses on the study of English commercial advertisements, and applies the methods of qualitative, quantitative and critical discourse analysis toindicate the broad application of generic intertextuality in English commercialadvertisements by means of analyzing the advertising discourse of different genres. Itattempts to answer the following questions:(1) How is the generic intertextualityrealized in English commercial advertising discourse?(2) What interpersonalmeanings does the generic intertextuality serve in English commercial advertisingdiscourse? The thesis discusses the intertextuality, genre, and the related informationabout commercial advertisements, such as the notion, and its purpose is to reveal theadvertisers’ final target aim of introducing the products with the help of applyingvarious types of genres in advertising discourse to the potential consumers in order topersuade them to purchase the products.Almost any literary or non-literary discourses have the feature of genericintertextuality, while as a parasitic discourse, advertisement can take advantage of allkinds of genres to realize its diverse forms, and consequently it adds the complexityamong the discourses and achieves the aim of persuading the consumers to purchasethe goods. The significance of this thesis are listed as follows. Firstly, according to theanalysis and comprehension of the generic intertextuality of the commercial ads, itcan objectively be seen in theory that the use of generic intertextuality is the practiceand development of linguistic knowledge. It creates and recreates the discourse ofadvertisements and is a kind of resource to innovate the commercial ads discourse.Secondly, the parasitism and disguise of the commercial ads provide the ad creatorswith a massive way to the potential consumers. Some concepts appear in the cognitiveconstruction of the potential consumers quietly in the process of the development ofadvertisements and they are approved and accepted by the customers, which may leadto the blind pursuit of the additional cultural value of the brand and the overpropaganda of some consumption concepts.At last, the research is beneficial for the college English teaching andconsumers’ reasonable consumption. On the one hand, it helps students have a betterunderstanding about how and why the linguistic skills are used for particular purposes.In addition, students will grasp more about the relationship between linguistic features and communicative purposes. On the other hand, it reminds the customers ofconsuming properly so as to avoid the influence of language skills employed by theadvertisers. Hence, this thesis possesses both theoretical and practical significance.