An Exploration Into The Pragmatic Functions Of Intertextuality In Recruitment Handbooks

The intertextual theory has been mainly studied since 1960s in the field of literature and literary criticism. However, in 1970s, it began to attract the attention of Critical Discourse Analysis (shortened for CDA). According to the leading scholars of CDA such as Fairclough, the intertextual analysis, as the important complement to linguistics analysis, will show the changes in language and language practice caused by the social and cultural changes and the linguistic representations of the social and cultural changes. That is why intertextuality has recently got wide attention.At present intertextual analyses in CDA are mainly done from two aspects, speech reporting and interdiscursivity (or specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality). The contents of the intertextual analyses are mainly public discourses such as news reports, official documents, advertisement plus limited amount of educational discourses. The scholars who are engaged in intertextual research in the range of CDA both abroad and at home are Fairclough, van Dijk, Wodak and Xin Bin etc. Their findings on the one hand uncover the hidden relations between language, power and ideologies and on the other hand disclose the influences on discourses caused by social changes and the linguistic representations of the social changes in discourses.As is known to all, great changes have taken place in China since the adoption of the opening up and reform policy. These changes must be reflected in discourses and must influence our language and language practice. But we find that no research is carried out on the intertextual patterns of Chinese educational discourses and the pragmatic functions they help realize and thus investigates the influences caused by social changes upon educational discourses. Our research just intends to make such a tentative exploration in this aspect. So we just choose one of the subgenres of educational discourses, recruitment handbooks as our research content, hoping to find out the intertextual patterns in the discourses and the pragmatic functions they help realize. We draw on Fairclough's three dimensional framework of critical discourse analysis and combine Xin Bin's analytical framework with part of Hatim and Mason's theory of typology of intertextuality. Our exploration reveals that in the selected data both specific and generic intertextual relations exist simultaneously in each discourse only with the differences in intertextual types and degrees. These specific and generic intertextual relations help realize the purposes of informing, advertising and persuading. Our research also finds that the recruitment discourses have taken on the main tendencies of commodification, democratization and technologization. This can find explanations in the social and cultural changes taking place in China. Firstly, we maintain that the adoption of the opening up and reform policy and the practice of market economy have caused great changes which have influenced and changed people's way of thinking, life style and behaviors and thus have resulted in the changes in language and language practice. The presence of commodified vocabulary in educational discourse is just a case in point. Secondly, there have been severe competitions among universities for more and better social resources since the universities have expanded their enrollment rates. That is why many approaches usually employed in advertising are used in recruitment handbooks. Our research can provide some reference to the text producers and readers of this kind of discourse types. For example, help the text producer employ more appropriate intertextual strategies to better realize the purpose of informing, advertising, persuading and obtaining more and better social resources and at the same time help the potential readers have a critical and correct understanding of the similar text types.