Intertextuality In Chinese Popular Electronic Discourse

The rapid development of Internet has completely changed our way of life and means of social communication. People often communicate via Internet, which is faster, cheaper and more convenient. At the same time, the emerging Internet language has become an important part of social language as well as the main carrier of public information spreading. Internet language is a kind of open-ended Internet text and full of intertextual features due to its special style. As an important part of Internet language, electronic discourse has been widely used in different kinds of Internet communication platforms such as QQ, Wechat, weibo and BBS. Because electronic discourse is the freshest Internet text with few intertextual studies on it, the thesis took the popular electronic discourse as the research subject and employed the theory of intertextuality to analyze it.This thesis analyzed the intertextual categories and intertextual functions of popular electronic discourse by applying XIN Bin’s specific intertextuality and interdiscursivity as the theoretical basis and Hatim & Mason’s typology of intertextuality as the classifying criterion. The research on intertextuality of electronic discourse has both theoretical and practical significances. On one hand, it can help us understand the spreading of popular electronic discourse clearly and drive the further development of intertextuality positively; on the other hand, this research can help individuals to send and receive information more efficiently in social network communication and promote the healthy development of Internet culture.This thesis firstly introduced the background, significance, research approaches and rules on data selection. Secondly, it summarized the origin, definition and classification of intertextuality. Thirdly, it reviewed the previous studies on intertextuality. Fourthly, it analyzed in great detail 20 carefully-selected examples such as “Taobao style”, emoticon, Wechat blessing messages from the perspectives of intertextual function, relationship and significance. In addition, those examples were classified into 7 types of intertextual phenomenon: parody, code switching, embedding, quotation, genre, function and structure. Finally, the thesis pointed out that utilization of intertextuality in electronic discourse can enhance the effectiveness of communication, achieve sense of humor, and provide more flexible alternatives for participators to arrange their words and demonstrate their individualities.