к.ф.н. Шингарева М.Ю., магистрант Жунисбаева Б.И.

Региональный социально-инновационный университет

Intertextuality in linguitic studies

The term intertextuality was first coined by Julia Kristeva in the late 1960s, but the concept stems from the works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Roland Barthes. The introduction of intertextuality as a concept is often referred to as the death of the author as postulated in Barthes's essay ("Death of the Author") in 1967. The implication is that meaning is now constructed by the reader of texts rather than from relying on the meaning construed by the author alone.

A further implication is that texts are no longer read as autonomous works of imaginative creation. All works are seen as the products of previous works, whether by direct or indirect inferences. Intertextuality therefore shifted the focus from concrete authored text to the meaning-making process in the reader, but only on a surface textual (or linguistic) level, without explaining the complex underlying cognitive processes in either the reading

Kristeva's exposition of the concept of intertextuality draws from the works of Roland Barthes and Mikhail Bakhtin. In the post-structuralist tradition, Barthes and Bakhtin questioned the structuralist semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure which studies texts solely as autonomous entities. The internal structures of texts, such as the morphology and syntax, are the focus of study, and the meaning of the text is derived exclusively from these factors. Human experience is not accounted for in this model and for Saussure, the sign (language is considered an abstract system of signs) reigns supreme. "Abstract objectivism treats language as a pure system of laws governing all phonetic, grammatical, and lexical forms that confront individual speakers as inviolable norms over which they have no control" (Holquist 1990: 42).

Intertextuality refers to the fact that texts cannot be seen as autonomous works that exist and function in isolation of other texts. The reason for this is two-fold as described by Worton and Still (1990: 1-2):

Firstly, the writer is a reader of texts (in the broadest sense) before s/he is a creator of texts, and therefore the work of art is inevitably shot through with references, quotations and influences of every kind ... Secondly, a text is available only through some process of reading; what is produced at the moment of reading is due to the cross-fertilisation of the packaged textual material (say, a book) by all the texts which the reader bring to it. A delicate allusion to a work unknown to the reader, which therefore goes unnoticed, will have a dormant existence in that reading. On the other hand, the reader's experience of some practice or theory unknown to the author may lead to a fresh interpretation ... Both axes of intertextuality, texts entering via authors (who are, first, readers) and texts entering via readers (co-producers), are, we would argue, emotionally and politically charged .

We can surmise then, that every text is layered with social, cultural, racial, emotional, and many other tensions that are not necessarily the same for authors and various readers. As such, the author writes with all the knowledge s/he possesses and the reader interprets the text with all the knowledge s/he possesses, creating a mosaic of meanings. Intertextuality is thus very closely linked to the meaning-making process and though it reveals the linguistic intricacies of texts and the interpretation of texts, it does not actually reveal the fundamental unconscious mental activity that takes place to interpret all the meanings perceived by the reader and embedded in the text by the author. This is a complex phenomenon as a number of meanings may be shared by different readers of the text, whereas others may be individual interpretations that are not even recognised by some readers of the same text. Thus, every reading of a text supplements, and as such changes, the original in some way. Worton and Still (1990: 11) write that "every quotation distorts and redefines the 'primary' utterance by relocating it within another linguistic and cultural context". It is important to understand that these changes do not occur spontaneously, but are the results of an enormous amount of underlying cognitive and imaginative work which is then manifested in the texts. The creativity of the interpretations by individual readers should not be regarded lightly as it reflects the ingrained thought patterns of not only individuals, but also the socio-economic, cultural, political, religious and other views of specific societies, time periods and countries.

To summarise, Worton and Still (1990: 45-46) propose some (there are many more) of the following important notions concerning intertextuality:

• The notion of intertextuality should be understood as "differential and historical", rather than as an autonomous construction. As a result, texts are fashioned by the interplay of opposing temporal realities.

• Texts are thus "not structures of presence but traces and tracings of otherness" which means that they are created by the duplication (for example, the many versions of the fairytale Cinderella) and reinterpretation of other texts.

• Consequently, these other texts (or intertexts) inform and limit the new texts in specific ways, for example, in terms of the framework or the content.

• Intertextual texts range from "the explicit to the implicit" and may be specific or general in terms of certain customs and conventions which may vary according to different cultures and societies.

• The recognition of an intertext is "an act of interpretation" and as such, a reconstruction of meaning.

• The actual recognition of an intertext is less important than the recognition of the "more general discursive structure (genre, discursive formation, ideology) to which it belongs" because academic capability is less important than the ability to understand and reinterpret the cultural symbolism which is contained, and often disputed, in these texts.

According to Worton and Still (1990: 75) "intertextuality exists only when two texts interact ... There cannot be an intertext without our awareness of it." I would argue that the intertext does in fact exist as it is physically present within a specific text but that it fails to function as an intertext and that a level of meaning is lost. Related to this is the fact that some readers may have awareness of an intertext only as an existing piece of text and may not actually have any real knowledge or experience of it (as readers who previously read or studied the intertext would have). The type of knowledge a reader has of the intertext will, as a result, also influence the meaning-making processes. Another significant contribution to the meaning-making process is the readers' background knowledge of the social, cultural and historical conditions of the text(s) as this greatly influences the way in which we construct and ascribe meaning to texts.

A further important point is that many of the sources on intertextuality refer to the textual(or surface) level of the intertexts, but I will refer to this level as the linguistic level. This is the level of the text (thus, the first level) which is then interpreted and given meaning by readers through meaning-making processes which rely on cognitive structures (the second level). Worton and Still (1990: 47) note that intertextuality, in its early version by theorists such as Kristeva and Barthes (among others) "was not restricted to particular textual manifestations of signifying systems but was used, rather, to designate the way in which a culture is structured as a complex network of codes with heterogeneous and dispersed forms of textual realisation." In other words, these theorists started looking beyond the first level to the second level, but failed to describe these processes as cognitive functions.

Theorists such as Bakhtin and Barthes questioned this formalist view of the use of language, and in doing so, lay the groundwork for Kristeva's theory of intertextuality. In order to understand the concept of intertextuality more clearly, the works of Bakhtin, Barthes and Kristeva will be examined and explained.

• Intertextuality is, however, not explained from a cognitive perspective by these theorists, which leaves a gap in our knowledge.

The result of these analyses therefore suggests that intertextuality, which was initially conceived as a purely literary and linguistic device, can be explained as a cognitive process, i.e. (literary) intertextuality can be reinterpreted as a cognitive process that not only relies on cognitive functions, but is in fact an essential part of our conceptual structure, i.e. we think intertextually in the same way as we think metaphorically.

Literature:

1. Holquist, Michael. 1990. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge.

2. Worton, Michael and Judith Still (eds). 1990. Intertextuality: theories and practices. Manchester: Manchester University Press.