Types And Functions Of Intertextuality In Chinese Sports News Comments (CSNCs)

It is Julia Kristeva, the French semiotician, who produced the first articulation of the term intertextuality in the late 1960s. To Kristeva, "any text is constructed of a mosaic of quotations, any text is the absorption and transformation of other texts". (Kristeva, 1986:37) Since then, intertextuality has become a catchword and also one of the central research issues in literary theory and cultural studies. Over the past twenty years, expanded studies on intertextuality by linguists make its connotation bulge considerably. In 1981, Beaugrande and Dressier brought the notion of intertextuality into text linguistics, defined it as the "ways in which the production and reception of a given text depends upon the participants' knowledge of other texts" (Beaugrande & Dressier, 1981:182) and treated it as one of the seven standards of textuality that a text must meet, which breaks a new ground for the linguistic study of intertextuality.Previous studies manifest a fact: intertextuality is the fundamental nature of all texts, it is ubiquitous not only in literary works but also in non-literary works. Therefore, recent years have witnessed extensive studies of intertextuality not only in literary texts but also in some non-literary texts. However, it must be pointed that the study of intertextuality in non-literary discourse is mainly conducted in advertising and news reporting, and is only at its infant stage. It is found that most researches equate the study of intertextuality in a text with source study.It is held that the linguistic study of intertextuality should not be confined to advertising and news reporting. Sports news comment, as a subtype of news discourse free to air one's opinions on major sports events, sports results, etc., is also abundant with intertextuality and should be given attention to. It is based on this recognition that we intend to venture into researching intertextuality in Chinese sports news comments (CSNCs).However, our research not only attempts to explore types but also functions of intertextuality in CSNCs. We first describe two types of intertextuality, namely, specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality based on Xin Bin's model on typology of intertextuality, then try to explore functions of intertextuality being used in CSNCs under the theoretical basis of relevance theory (RT). In light of RT, intertextuality is ostensive stimulus to the reader that attracts the reader's atttention on one hand and helps the reader proceed towards optimal relevance on the other hand. Intertextuality also helps to provide intertextual context to boost the reader's inferential process. It is the reader's inferential process associated with the intertextual context that the commentator's communicative intention is fulfilled. In this sense, it is more a common strategy used by the commentator than merely a feature of a text. Therefore, intertextuality in CSNC performs three functions, namely, claming the reader's attention, facilitating the reader's inferential process and fulfilling the commentator's communicative intention.This study suggests that intertextuality is crucial for textual communication. In textual communication, text producers and receivers are influenced or constrained by intertextuality directly or indirectly. Intertextuality is not simply a feature or a property between texts and other texts but also serves as a strategy in a text to achieve certain communicative intention. The present study will also have profound implications on our foreign language teaching. It is hoped that the present study will shed light on our deeper understanding of types and functions of intertextuality in a text.