The Intertextuality Of Prospectuses

With the development of globalization in economics,politics and culture,there has also appeared an unmistakable tendency of globalization in the field of higher education.More and more people go abroad to seek the best education available on the global market of education.The overall educational environment,the quality of teaching and preferential policies are usually of the greatest concern for students planning to study abroad.Both to deal with the growing competition on the global market of higher education and to attract more international students,universities around the world have been driven to formulate more attractive policies,in the process of which international prospectuses have played an indispensable role.University prospectus belongs to the category of educational discourse.In addition to providing information about subjects and disciplines,it has developed to include non-educational information,which is usually interwoven with advertising discourse.For this reason,a study of the specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality in prospectuses will reveal not only the essential features of the educational discourse of prospectuses but also the social ideology contained within them.This thesis,by focusing on international prospectuses from China and UK universities,will make a case study of prospectus within the theoretical framework of Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Xin Bin's theory of generic intertextuality and specific intertextuality to examine the types of discourses as well as the interaction prominent in these prospectuses between educational discourse and advertising discourse.Altogether 18 samples,of which 9 international prospectuses are form universities in China and 9 from UK,will be analyzed in-depth for that purpose.The difference in terms of intertextuality between Chinese and British international prospectuses will also be identified both to pin down the features of international prospectuses and to discover the gaps between Chinese and British universities.The focus of this study includes:(1)Major subcategories of specific intertextuality found in the international prospectuses examined in this study,as well as the differences between Chinese and British international prospectuses;(2)Major subcategories of generic intertextuality revealed in the samples and the difference between Chinese and British international prospectuses in terms of generic intertextuality,as well as the interaction between discourse and the changes in social ideology;(3)The effect of generic intertextuality upon the realization of communicative purpose of the international prospectuses.Various examples taken from the samples will be analyzed to discuss the subcategories of specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality so as to illustrate the interaction between discourse and social ideology.It is found that specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality are widely distributed in university prospectus.Both vertical and horizontal comparisons have been made in this study to examine the differences and gaps between Chinese and British university prospectuses for overseas students.In terms of generic intertextuality,the presence of commodified discourse has also been found in large quantities in educational discourse.Generic intertextuality reflects the mixture of advertising discourse,educational discourse and authority discourse in both Chinese and British prospectuses for international students.Besides,generic intertextuality also tells of the marketization of educational discourse and the shift of power relations.This study has two significances.Theoretically,after an in-depth analysis of the types of discourses as well as the prominent interaction in the prospectuses between educational discourse and advertising discourse,this study will help innovate the discourse analysis and perfect the methodology for the study of educational discourse in China.In terms of praxis,the comparison between international prospectuses form China and UK will help illuminate the possible defects in international prospectuses from universities in China and suggestions will be given on how to improve them.