Citation

Juan Li . Discourse Soc. 2009; 20(1): 85-121.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0957926508097096

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As one of the most important sites in which and through which national agenda is articulated and disseminated, national newspapers play particularly important roles in creating national identities. Drawing on Norman Fairclough's (1992, 1995a, 2003) approach of intertextual analysis of news discourse within the paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study examines the effects of intertextuality on the discursive construction of national identities in the press. It does so by comparing how two daily newspapers in the United States and China employ specific discursive strategies to construct national identities and positions in their discourse of two particular events that represent moments of crisis and conflict in US—China relations. Focusing on discourse, style, and genre, which are respectively associated with representational, identificational, and actional meanings of discourse (Fairclough, 2003), this study aims to show how news texts draw on, echo, and bring together different intertextual resources realized in the forms of discourses, styles, and genres, and how the circulations and combinations of these intertextual relations in particular contexts construct specific understandings of national identities and positions.