A Study Of Intertextuality In English Public Service Advertising From The Perspective Of Memetics

In 1969,Julia Kristeva proposed the term “intertextuality” which is used to express the relation between a text and other texts.Since it was put forward,many scholars have widely applied it to literary texts.With the deepening of research on intertextuality,many a scholar argues that intertextuality also abundantly exists in non-literary texts,such as advertisement texts.Profound and positive meanings in the understanding and creation of advertising can be achieved through the studies on intertextuality in advertising,which can help the public accept and understand the information in advertising better.However,there are still some limitations.They mainly pay attention to the forms and functions of intertextuality in various advertisements and few have focused on analyzing the operating mechanism.This thesis tries to make further exploration about it so as to understand the realization of intertextuality in English public service advertising(hereafter PSA)better.Fortunately,the proposition of memetics provides a new explanation to this question.Based on Darwin's Theory of Evolution,Richard Dawkins coined the new theory in 1976 to reveal the rule of cultural transmission.In his opinion,meme is the unit of culture transmission and like genes,it also complies with the principle of survival of the fittest.In a board sense,meme can be information of any form,such as old sayings,idioms,popular melody,etc.By citing the figure about the relationship between meme and intertextuality presented by Chen Tian,it obviously shows that meme is the basis of intertextuality.Based on memetics,the author tries to study intertextuality in English PSAs.The author collects 30 typical English PSAs from Internet and a lot of well-known English magazines and newspapers,such as The Wall Street Journal,New York Times,Fortune and National Geography.The themes of the materials include caring others,energy conservation,environment protection,water conservation and so on.Through citing the clarification of intertextuality provided by Professor Xin Bin and the qualitative analysis of the data,the author finds that intertextuality in English PSAs is also realized by memes.In the process of realization,memes spread by meansof various intertextual techniques,such as presupposition,genres,quotation,allusion,and parody.What's more,admen usually choose strong memes which win in the competition to realize the intertextual connections and frequently use famous figures,popular songs,proverbs,history events and well-accepted generic patterns such as narration,poetry,expository writing,billboard and so forth.Moreover,these strong memes possess the traits of longevity,fecundity and copy-fidelity which could ensure to achieve intertextual effect.This study could provide some enlightenment in the angle of memetics and intertextuality for the creation and appreciation of English and Chinese PSAs.Admen can choose the memes with properties of simplicity,novelty and adaptation.They also can focus on the popular culture and make full use of the advantages of native language.Meantime,it could enable the public to better understand intertextuality of English PSAs.