Abstract: At the end of the 20th century, with the rapid development of science and technology, which is based on the information technology, network technology and communication technology as well, a new media--the Internet was born and developed at the historic moment. As the traditional media, the Internet has established a set of symbol system and discourse system of their own in the process of its development. Under such background, the web news commentary comes into our lives. Unlike all the traditional media, the web news commentary is much more intertextually related. The intertextuality in web news commentary is an important concept of western intertextuality theory in the 20th century. The Internet age provides the text in web news commentary with much deeper connotation and a new larger space to develop. Studying the intertextuality in web news commentary can not only play a positive role of sublating, absorbing or developing the western culture, but also exert important significance in exploring the rule of the spread of web news commentary and constructing the theory of web news transmission.
Intertextuality is generally divided into manifest intertextuality and constructive intertextuality. This paper is intended to analyze the intertextuality used in web news commentary so as to enhancing people’s understanding of discourse strategies used in this newly–born media. With the analysis of web news corpora, we find both manifest intertextuality and constructive intertextuality are used in this type of discourse. Among the manifest intertextuality, quotations of the authoritative voice and data are most frequently adopted, while in constructive intertextuality, utilizing pictures is an important way of illustrating the new commentary. It is indicated that intertextuality analysis offers us great insights both of in producing or comprehending web news. Further study could be on the the exploration of new methods to develop intertextuality in the multi-modality world.
Key Words: Intertextuality; Web News Commentary; Manifest Intertextuality; Constitutive Intertextuality
