互文性视角下的商务广告翻译研究(3)
1.1.1 Origin of intertextuality
At the very first time, the formation of intertextuality gained its connotation from Saussure’s sign system.
Then Bakhtin further developed it. Bakhtin was extremely excellent in the field of humance science of the 20th century. He was a great Soviet thinker and a literary theorist. In Bakhtin's view, an expression (termed a "word" or "utterance"）in a living context of exchange is the main unit of meaning. It is not abstract sentences out of context that counts, the expression is formed through a speaker's relation to Otherness. Otherness refers to someone else, others' words, or something happened in other places or at a different time. He claims that every level of expression from live conversational dialog to complex cultural expression in other genres and art works is an ongoing chain or a network of statement, responses, repetitions and quotations, in which new statements presuppose earlier statements and anticipate future responses.
1.1.2 The establishment of intertextuality
In 1967, Kristeva published her essay “Word, Dialogue and Novel” in a magazine and put forward the word of intertextuality for the first time. She got the idea when she was writing a commentary on Bakhtin’s work. During the writing, she felt it was time to moving beyond structuralism. Bakhtin’s opinion on “dialogism” and “carnival” gave her inspiration. At that time, theorists and practitioners were finding their way to get rid of the rigid forms and ideas. Her publication of the article called “Word, Dialogue and Novel” also bring inspiration to theorists at that time. The term “intertextuality” was introduced into literary theory. She privileged the term “Text”, in her viewpoint, the subject is composed of discourses, created by a signifying system. The “text” is not a point where meaning is fixed. It kind of like an intersection of textual surfaces. She argued that every text is made up of a mosaic of quotation, and every text is the absorption and transformation of another. Kristeva applied the word “text” in a broad sense. She concluded that every word or text can be a recurrence of other word or text.
1.1.3 The development of intertextuality
Since the 1970s, some scholars began to understand this concept in a new perspective. The researches based on poems and literary rhetoric appeared. Since the late 70s, French scholars gradually focuses on various relationships between the text on the definition, identification, classification and analysis. From a very large extent, the concept of intertextuality changed its form and its influence and importance have been enlarged
Gérard Genette, a French literary theorist, gave his opinion on Intertextuality which refers to shape a text's meaning by another text. Intertextual figures include allusion, quotation, parody and so on. Intertextuality is a literary device, it can help people find related understanding in separate works. These references are made to influence readers. Gérard Genette defined transtextuality as “all that sets the text in relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other “texts” and it "covers all aspects of a particular text".
Jacques Derrida, one of the most important French thinkers in the late 20th century. He was the founder of deconstruction. He was opposed to the notion of the independent author or unique authorship. He argued that the activity of writing should be regarded as a kind of rewriting. Writing can be seen as an explicit interpretation of or commentary on the works of earlier writers. If a reader doesn’t have access to get some knowledge about a literary tradition in the aspects of reading or writing, then he or she cannot read. As Derrida put it, a writer can only write on the condition that he or she has already gain relevant experiences. No matter it is to write or to paint or to build something, the writer, artist or the builder definitely will use a large quantity of already readable texts that can be learned from. These texts are quotable or readable, people can get the inspirations from these old texts.