The notion of intertextuality can be said to have a long history embedded in literary criticism, linguistics and biblical research (Shuart-Farris & Bloome 2004; Taylor & Willis1999). However, Shaurt-Farris and Bloome (2004) acknowledge that some reviews attribute the origin of the
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notion to Plato and Aristotle or Saussarian linguistics and Bakhtinian literary criticism. Nevertheless, in as much as the concept of intertextuality has a long historical past, the actual term is said to have been first used by Julia Kristeva between 1966 and 1974 as the term intertextualité in her essays on Mikhail Bakhtin. Specifically, Kristeva (1986) introduced the term intertextuality in her essay titled “word, dialogue and novel” in which the term was used to describe the interdependence of literary texts, in that each text is “a mosaic of quotations” (O’Donohoe 1997:1). Ever since, the term has been developed and transformed several times. In this respect, the notion has mainly been used in literary criticism (Julian 2008; Shaurt-Farris & Bloome 2004 O’Donohoe 1997). However, the term has found its way in many areas that include education (in the teaching of English and language arts and composition studies) (Shuart- Farris & Bloome 2004), media discourses (O’Donohoe 1997), political philosophy and psychoanalysis (Worton & Still 1990). In this study, the notion of intertextuality has been used to analyse media texts such as advertisements and music.
4.5.1. The meaning of intertextuality
One of the obvious views of intertextuality is the presence of actual elements of other texts within a text, for example, quotations (Fairclough 2003; Moody 2007). However, the inherent semantic properties of the term intertextuality relates to how texts are built out of fragments of other texts or how texts borrow from prior text. Thus the notion is about how the meaning of one text is continually shaped by other texts. The notion of intertextuality has aptly been defined by Shuart-Farris and Bloome (2004:3) who state that: “...Every text, the discourse of every occasion, makes its social meanings against the background of other texts, and the discourses of other occasions”. This means that no text is independent of other texts. Every text lives by other texts and consequently, there is no ‘original’ text in the true sense of the word (Fairclough 2003). It is thus fundamental that in order to interpret a given text, one has to appreciate the plurality from which that text has been made. From this point of view, intertextuality makes a text not a “reproduction” but “productivity” (Barthes 1977).
The ideal text is said to be made up of various codes interacting without one being superior to the rest. Each code is a voice and the text is woven or braided from the convergence of codes.
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Barthes (1977) thus calls upon a critic to read a text not only as a first reading but also as a re- reading. In this vein, Thibault (1991) argues that intertextuality draws attention to the dependence of text upon society and history in the form of resource made available within the order of discourses (genre, discourses, and so on). Intertextuality thus demonstrates that any text depends on the existence of other texts. A text has an identity but that identity is always “relational to other texts” (Webster 1990:98).
The term has also been used to refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of prior text or the reader’s referencing one text in reading another. In such instances, there is attribution of people who wrote or thought the ideas. However, there are situations when elements of other texts may be incorporated without necessarily attributing them to anyone (Fairclough 2003) and this is more so in media texts such as advertisements and popular music (lyrics and videos) that the study analyses. Therefore, intertextuality is a notion that has become relevant in recent times when exploring media texts. In this regard, the notion becomes relevant to the study which analyses some media texts. Much of the increased use of the notion are influenced by theories of postmodernism in thinking about and analyzing modern media products (Taylor & Willis 1999). However, not all approaches that use the notion of intertextuality are founded within the framework of postmodernism.
Fiske’s (1987) views on intertextuality relate closely to the field of semiotics and attribute it as key contributor to the ways in which media texts make meanings culturally. His main argument is that texts relate to other texts which are both similar and different and in the process make meanings for audiences. Thus, he views intertextuality as operating on two levels, namely horizontal and vertical.
On the horizontal level, intertextuality operates through factors such as genre, character and content. In this type of intertextuality, the link between texts is clear or explicit. For example, an audiences’ understanding of a given product will relate to their knowledge and understanding of other products of a similar type.
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Fiske second level of intertextuality is the vertical one. Vertical intertextuality refers to the ways in which texts refer specifically to other texts. He places the notion of intertextuality in an economic context by arguing that vertical intertextuality is most clearly present when the text explicitly promotes another, for example, the publicity of material that surrounds the release of a new music album. In this case, secondary texts such as advertisements, posters and journalistic reviews work to mobilize and promote the preferred meaning of the preferred text.
Furthermore, Fiske (1989a, 1989b) argues that popular culture is especially intertextual. He describes texts as having “leaking boundaries”, flowing into each other and everyday life and incapable of being understood without this context. It is in this regard, that ads and other popular texts do not stand alone (Wernick 1991). He continues by arguing that in ads and other genres such as music, signs, conventions and values are drawn from a common pool which exists in society at particular points in time. That “these may also be reworked by advertising and fed back in other cultural forms, a process facilitated by the increasing institutional ties between advertising, commercial media and mass entertainment” (Wernick 1991:3). From this perspective, intertextuality closely relates to notions of resemiotization and remediation (discussed above).
4.5.2. Intertextuality and advertising
The notion of intertextuality within the media is clearly seen in advertisements, especially in postmodern times. Advertising campaigns in the postmodern era make reference to films and other forms of popular culture such as music and television. As advertising become more pervasive, it is gets recognized as a point of cultural reference in its own right (Wernick 1991). That is, it allows ads to draw on and make explicit reference to other ads (and social experiences) so that their meanings become interdependent among themselves, and thus the process of communication in advertising becomes self-conscious and self-referencing. Due to this privileged process of “intertextual inbreeding”, advertisers may choose to attack the signs associated with their competitors rather than their products or services (Goldman & Papson 1994). In this vein, Cook (1992) distinguishes between intra and inter-discoursal allusion in advertising, in that ads frequently assume knowledge of other discourse types and films. This
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notion therefore, as expounded from a postmodern point of view becomes relevant to the study in the analysis of media texts.
Additionally, apart from seeking to sell a product, ads seek to entertain in an intertextual manner. Intertextuality of advertising campaigns offers audiences enormous pleasure because they allow them to celebrate and share their cultural knowledge (Taylor & Willis 1999). They further state that whatever the cultural source of intertextuality present in many ads, it undoubtedly offers a wide range of pleasures, and in doing so create meaning in a number of ways.
Referencing other texts is not the only way in which contemporary advertisements may be thought as intertextual. It is possible to have ads building on and using the audience’s knowledge not only of the product being advertised but also of previous products, ideas or campaigns employed to promote it. In such campaigns characters or ideas reappear and events unfold across a number of linked ads (Taylor & Willis 1999). I find this useful in analyzing Zambian advertisements.
It is also possible to argue that the ability of an audience to read intertextuality is a prerequisite to understanding of these types of campaigns, and pays a testament to the sophistication of the contemporary consumer’s ability to operate across Fiske’s horizontal dimension when reading advertisements (Taylor & Willis 1999).
4.5.3. Intertextuality and popular music
As pointed out, postmodern media images may be considered intertextual because they continually reference other texts and images. Taylor and Willis (1999) argue that meaning does not only reside within the sound of a piece of popular music. It also creates meaning through the forms in which recorded music is distributed (LP, CD, and MP3. DVD), the television, and magazine images that help promote it and the references to other music and media that performers include in their work. It is thus the increasing level of reference to other performers and texts, its intertextuality, that other critics have concluded that the contemporary music scene is postmodern. This is supported by the fact that so much of the promotional work undertaken in
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the music industry pays homage to earlier popular cultural images. Popular cultural references are thus common and can be found in many other popular videos by different artists. Thus, they argue, that all postmodern texts do is superficially reproduce earlier images and ideas.
Therefore, intertextuality is an important feature of the way people use language in social communities. The meanings that people make and the way they make them is always dependent on the currency in their communities of other texts they recognize as having certain definite kinds of relationships with one another. People can make relations through the relations between two texts; meanings that cannot be realized with any single text (Shuart-Farris & Bloome 2004). This study uses intertextuality as an analytical tool to understand how meanings are made. In particular, I use it to trace the intertextual references made in the texts and further demonstrate how they create new meanings in the process. Thus intertextuality affords the researcher a necessary analytical tool to unravel the meanings embedded in media texts such as ads and music genres that are a ‘blend’ of other semiotics.
Likewise, in analyzing linguistic choices speakers make during their daily encounters to negotiate meaning and enact different social roles and role structure, conversation analysis henceforth CA, and face negotiation theory are discussed below.