INTERACTION AND

INTERTEXTUALITY
 Introduction

 REMEMBER
 the Reciprocity Principle applies to writing as
well as speaking. Writing, like talking face to
face, is a form of interaction. It applies to
academic writing, writing software
documentation, memos or advertisements.
Expert writers in these fields say they think of
some particular reader, so they don’t fall into
repeating bland, impersonal formulae
 Modality

 Modality refers to speaker or writer commitment to

propositions.
 Given some proposition about the world , such as
‘the earth is round’, one may categorically assert it
(‘the earth is round) or deny it (‘the earth is not
round), but there are also available various less
categorical assertions, such as ‘the earth may be/is
probably/possibly/s sort of…’. Modality shows the
speaker’s or writer’s ‘affinity’ (Hodge and Kress,
1988:123) to the statement made, so any utterance
has the property of ‘modality’ or is ‘modalised’. In
other words, modality is the indication of certainty or
uncertainty of statements.
 Affinity with the proposition

 Hodge and Kress also speak about the producer of a

statement indicating a degree of ‘affinity’ with the
proposition. They speak of
 low affinity, when the producer is not very certain
about the truth of the statement (consequently,
modalises the statement), and
 high affinity, when the producer is certain and
committed to the proposition (using present tense)
 Showing modality

 adverbs (possibly, certainly, maybe), with their

equivalent adjectives (‘it’s likely, probable, possible,
certain)
 present tense is another way of realising a
categorical modality, vs. past tense, which shows
distance form the proposition.
 Beyond these possibilities, there is a further,
somewhat diffuse range of ways of manifesting
various degrees of affinity (Fairclough, 1995)
 hedges (‘sort of’, ‘a bit’, ‘or something’)
 speaking hesitantly
 intonation patterns
 Types of modality
 subjective modality – in the sense that the subjective basis for the degree
of affinity is made explicit, as in the following example:
 I think/suspect/doubt that the earth is flat.
 b) objective modality - where this subjective basis is left implicit, as in the
example:
 The earth may be/is probably flat.
 In this latter case, it may be not clear whose perspective is being represented
– whether the speaker is projecting his/her own perspective as a universal
one, or acting as a vehicle for a perspective of some other individual or
group. The use of objective modality often implies some sort of power.
 Modality may be achieved a several ways in one and the same utterance, as
in the example below:
 I think she was a little upset, wasn’t she?
 In this example, low affinity is expressed in the subjective modality marker (‘I
think’), hedging (‘a bit’), and the addition of a tag question to the assertion
(‘wasn’t she?)
Affinity/solidarity with interactants

 Another way of looking at modality is to see it as a way of

showing the producer’s sense of affinity or solidarity with the
interactants, rather than the proposition.
 a) She is beautiful, isn’t she.
 b)Isn’t she beautiful?
 Utterances a) and b) in the example above are ways of
expressing high affinity with the proposition ‘she is beautiful’,
but also ways of expressing solidarity with the person he/she is
talking to, since they presuppose that high affinity with the
proposition is shared between the speaker and the hearer,
because the questions presuppose an affirmative answer.
 Conclusion

 Modality is a major dimension of discourse, and

more central and pervasive than it has traditionally
been taken to be. Modality is not simply a set of
choices available to the speaker or writer, but it is
also imposed on particular discourse types. For
example, in academic writing, in a familiar Anglo-
Saxon tradition, avoidance of categorical modality is
a fundamental principle. This is rather for rhetorical
reasons than because of low affinity with
propositions.
 Intertextuality

 Talking about the intertextuality of a text is

highlighting its dependence upon other texts, types
of texts, and discourses. Bakhtin (1950/1986)
considers that all utterances, both spoken and
written, from the briefest of turns in a conversation to
a scientific paper, are demarcated by a change of
speaker (writer), and are oriented retrospectively to
the utterances of previous speakers and
prospectively to the anticipated utterances of the
next speaker.
 Fairclough (1992:101-136) makes the distinction
between a) manifest intertextuality and b)
interdiscursivity.
 Manifest intertextuality

 Manifest intertextuality is where one text explicitly

invokes another text. In its turn, manifest
intertextuality can be of several types:
 Direct representation of discourse, when the text of
another may be clearly set off from the rest of the
text by quotation marks and reporting verbs
 Indirect representation of discourse, where a text
relies on presupposed and implied statements. For
example, ‘Consider for a moment why diplomats
and company directors the world over choose to
travel by first class’, presupposes that diplomats
and company directors do travel by first class.
 Formulations, or repeating one’s own version of what
someone else has just said
 Manifest intertextuality

 Metadiscourse, i.e. a text’s comment on its own use

of language (‘a so-called x’, or ‘what one might call
an x’)
 Irony: an ironic utterance has been explained by
Sperber and Wilson (1986) as ‘echoing’ someone
else’s utterance. For example, suppose you say ‘It’s
a lovely day for a picnic’. We go for a picnic, it rains,
and then I say ‘It’s a lovely day for a picnic’. My
utterance would be ironic, in that it echoes your
utterance, but there is a disparity between the
meaning I am voicing, and the real function of my
utterance, which is to express some negative
attitude towards your utterance
 Interdiscursivity

 Fairclough (1992) speaks of interdiscursivity where one text

draws implicitly on others for its interpretability. For example,
the adaptation and mixing of genres, as when university
documents use business language, advertisements use
scientific forms of illustration, commercials parody soap operas,
cartoon style teaching materials, mixing cartoons with teaching.
 Intertextuality entails an emphasis upon the heterogeneity of
texts. Texts vary a great deal in their degrees of heterogeneity,
depending whether their intertextual relations are complex or
simple. Texts also differ in the extent to which their
heterogenous elements are integrated, and so in the extent to
which their heterogeneity is evident on the surface of the text.