A Systemic-Functional Study Of Intertextuality In "Zang Hua Yin"

The theory of intertextuality was born in the early 19th century. The term "intertextuality" was coined by Eurpoean semiologist Kristeva when introducing ideologist Bakhtin’s dialogism. She defines intertextuality as "each discourse can be a joint of different quotations, each discourse is the result of absorbing and transition from other discourses". Since the presence of this theory, every school of researchers combined it with their own theories, came up with different comprehensions, interpretations, development and practice, which makes the concept of intertextuality more intricate than before."Zang Hua Yin" is the poem sang by Lin Daiyu in the 27th chapter of "A Dream in Red Mansions". As one of the most beautiful and talented girl in the novel, Lin Daiyu’s poems and stories with Jia Baoyu are always made subjects by scholars. Among the researches to the poems, highlights are attached to the analysis of the words or verses, or to the relations between Lin Daiyu’s life experience and the poems. She has a tone like that of a poet, which produces a wide array of information including idioms, allusions, allegories which are signs of target discourse of intertextual study.This thesis relies on the the theory of system-functional linguistics, based on the register theory, combined with the metafunctions and social semiotic formation, double threefold model of intertextuality has also been added, to analyze "Zang Hua Yin" in an all-round way. The first threefold refers to the copresentational, coorientational and coorganizational pattern of intertextuality. The second threefold means each of the patterns having three levels of realization. For example, ideational metafunction:field:theme formation; interpersonal metafunction:tenor:value formation; textual metafunction:mode:rhetoric-genric formation. The "double" means there are two angles of view, which refers to the traditional social functional one and critical one. The pattern combines them together, takes advantage of social function angle of view to analyze the construction of meanings by language resources, and also takes advantage of critical angle of view to study the construction of value by language resources.This thesis undertakes how to recognize the intertextual relations between "Zang Hua Yin" and other discourses. To be more specific, what is the language features, social functions and significance of the intertextual relations. This thesis also probes into the influences that context which includes context of situation, cultural context and context of co-text gave to the intertextual relations with other discourses. Then, the thesis undertakes the intertextual characters of poems through analyzing the relations between "Zang Hua Yin" and other discourses, and the language functions and social functions they have. A distinction needs to be made between intertextuality and etymology. Intertextuality concerns more about the course of reading instead of targeting the specific intertextual discourses. This recognition makes neither the starting point nor the purpose of intertextual analysis. The intertextual discourses are seldom implanted into a discourse, but recreated according to the logical relations and semantic structures of the target discourse. Therefore, the key point of intertextual analysis is to find out the semantic functions of intertextual discourses in the target discourse, and their combination’s patterns and degree of harmony.