An Empirical Study Of The Intertextuality Of English Netnews Commentaries

Intertextuality is put forward by French semiotician Julia Kristeva in1969and itis one of the keywords in literary domain since its appearance. In the past two decades,intertextuality has been accepted by linguists from literary research to linguistic study.It has been a period of time in researching intertextuality in literary, but it is still wellworth exploring the application of intertextuality in linguistic study considering itsshort time of switching into linguistics. Meanwhile, Internet has become anindispensable part of modern life and personal views of news event could beexpressed on the Internet immediately. The netnews commentary has a higher degreeof freedom than common news reports, so it includes multi-angles andmulti-viewpoints of the writer with varying degree and forms of intertextuality.Therefore，it is meaningful to study the intertextuality in netnews commentary.The present study selects100commentaries of English news which focus on hotissues in of some mainstream oiffcial websites. They date from2012with a totalnumber of63,767words and built the corpus. It adopts qualitative study as the mainmethodology with assistance of quantitative study aiming to ifnd out the realization ofintertextuality in netnews commentaries. Based on Xin Bin’s framework ofintertextuality and meme theory in analyzing causes of intertextuality, it also exploreshow to strengthen the functions of intertextuality in English netnews commentaries.Centering on these three questions proposed in the study, it concludes thefollowing ifndings:1) Intertextualtiy in ENCs is realized by two forms: the speciifcintertextulity and the generic intertextuality. The reporting verbs, allusion and parodyare typical phenomenon in speciifc intertextuality. In generic intertextualilty, readingposition and subject position as well as hegemony and colonization present genericfeatures.2) In the realization of intertextulality in ENCs, different forms of meme likegenotype and phenotype of replication involving their subtypes form theintertextuality. Intertextuality is the manifestation of meme and meme is the essenceof intertextuality.3) Intertextuality strengthens functions of ENCs. On the one side,data and authority are the subjects of intertextual contents by utilizing reporting verbs.It reinforces their authenticity and authority. On the other side，it creates context fornetnews commentary. The presupposing and transforming context intensify therelations with readers who are much more willing to accept the viewpoints ofcommentary.Based on the above research ifndings，the study discusses implications of intertextuality on the side of teaching reading and writing. In addition, it also pointsout the limitations and suggestions.