Analyzing Interdiscursivity: Complexities And Tendencies In Contemporary Chinese Public Discourse

The present dissertation is an analysis of interdiscursivity, which is defined as the mixing of diverse genres, discourses, or styles associated with institutional and social meanings in a single text. It mainly belongs to a qualitative study based upon the data collected from the contemporary Chinese public discourse. In essence, it attempts to work out a theoretical framework on the basis of Verschueren's (1999) Linguistic Adaptation Theory and make use of this framework to scrutinize the mechanism, adaptability, and functionality of interdiscursivity.The mechanism of interdiscursivity accounts for how this linguistic phenomenon is produced and interpreted. In the present study, we consider the production of interdiscursivity as the outcome of choice making, dynamic negotiation and linguistic adaptation, and this process usually involves the recontextualization or transformation of social practices (and language) associated with certain 'orders of discourse'. We also think that interdiscursivity can be better interpreted by tracing the specific ways of meaning generation from the four focal points, i.e. context, structure, dynamics, and salience. In this interpretative process, the variability of interdiscursivity should be taken into account since different kinds of interdiscursivity may need somewhat different interpretative endeavors.The motivations behind the choices of interdiscursivity are revealed in the analysis of the adaptability of interdiscursivity. It is found that the objects to which the choices of interdiscursivity get adapted can be classified into three categories: variables of the physical world, variables of the social world, and variables of the mental world. The choices of interdiscursivity as adaptation to...