| The inaugural addresses of American presidents are noted for precise words, refined contents and elegant language. Intertextuality is a normal phenomenon that occurs constantly in a direct or indirect way in these inaugural addresses. Through these intertextual relationships, presidents try to persuade the public to accept and support their ideas and achieve their purpose. This paper attempts to focus on the issue of the protection of the Constitution in different American presidential inaugural addresses. In so doing, the present paper adopts and extends the theoretical model based on the theories proposed by Fairclough (1992) and Derrida (2009), summarizing four types of explicit intertextuality and four types of implicit intertextuality which often occur in the American presidential inaugural addresses. Detailed arguments and analyses reveal that there are many common points about the protection of the Constitution in different presidential inaugural addresses. This use of intertextuality in presidential inaugurals, on the one hand, can help newly-elected presidents achieve and enhance authoritative and persuasive effects in their speeches so as to win more support of their countrymen; on the other hand, the analysis of the intertextuality for the protection of the Constitution in the U.S. presidential inaugural addresses contributes to reflecting American presidents' view of the Constitution and the significance of maturity of constitutional system in the development of America. In a word, the purpose of analyzing intertextuality for the constitutional protection in the U.S. presidential inaugural addresses is to know more about the influence of the constitutional system in the American history. It is also hoped that this study will broaden the scope of the intertextuality study, and stimulate further studies in this field. |
