The Intertextual Study Of Reported Speech In English News Discourse

Based on the theory of intertextuality in discourse analysis and the relevant theories of critical discourse analysis, this paper made an intertextual study on the reported speech in English news discourse. The study focused on the news source, the reporting modes and the reporting verbs of the reported speeches appeared in the ten news reports about Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, five from New York Times of the United States and five from Guardian of Britain. Through the contrastive analysis and the study on the intertextual positioning, the author drew the following conclusion:in English news discourse, strong intertextuality can be found in reported speech; a reporter can make use of reported speech to conduct the ideological control to his news report; the stronger his ideological control is, the weaker the intertextuality will be. Therefore, in reading English news discourse, a reader should take a critical attitude, and pay close attention to the ideological meaning behind the discourse, so that the reader could achieve a more objective and comprehensive understanding of the news event.