Intertextuality as Discourse Strategy:The Case of No-Confidence Debates in Thailand
by
Savitri Gadavanij
School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration
The discourse of Thai parliamentary no-confidence debates is intended to be formal in nature, and is defined as such by the constitution and relevant parliamentary regulations. However, the reality of this parliamentary discourse does not always meet this idea. There is evidence of mixed genres and the combination of the language users (henceforth S) voice and others throughout the discourse of the debate. The combination of genres and voices in the discourse represents two levels of intertextuality (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999 : 49).
This paper argues that intertextuality is part of the in-built structure of the no-confidence debate discourse which operates in the face of three competing conjunctures: the debates purpose, its multiple audiences and its code of behaviour. Intertextuality reflects the struggle of the members of the Thai parliament ot balance three purposes: the desire of highly partisan debaters to cause maximum damage to the opposing side, there need to seek public support and the need to stay within the parliamentary codes of behaviour. In this light, intertextuality can be seen as a strategy enabling MPs to produce a kind of discourse that can serve these competing social and political purposes, and to do so within the constraints of its three conjunctures.
Introduction
This paper tries to analyse the role of intertextuality in Thai no-confidence debate discourse. It adopts
Chouliaraki and Faircloughs 2-level definition of intertextuality; the combination of genre and the combination of voices within the discourse. It argues that this can be used as a strategy to produce the most effective discourse within that particular context. This hypothesis is based on the concept of genre as a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular social practice (Fairclough, 1995 : 14) such as interview genre, narrative genre, parliamentary genre and the concept of voice as an indication of who the participants of the discourse are and what identity they assume. This paper adopts discourse analysiss assumption that language has dialectical relationship with the society. Therefore, since genre and voice are the textual representation of the interface between
discourse and society, the changing articulation of genre and the use of more than one voice may have the potential to redefine the context within which the discourse takes place. In this light, it can also be seen as a discourse strategy.
We begin section 2 with some background on Thai no-confidence debates to enable the reader to appreciate the role of these debaters within Thai society. Also we move on to the linguistic literature in an attempt to define the term intertextuality. Section 3 describes the data used in the analysis and the scope of our study. Section 4 to Section 6 are the intertextual analysis. We adopt Chouliaraki and Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999 : 60) to analyse no-confidence debates discourse. This framework is used in order to detect intertextuality in the discourse and how it works. The analytical framework starts with the analysis of conjunctures in Section 4, the analysis of the relevant social practices in Section 5 and the analysis of the discourse in Section 6. The overall outcome of the CDA analysis is discussed in Section 7.
Background
No-confidence debates are among the most exciting political events in Thailand. The debate is always
at the centre of public attention. The period leading up to the debate, the debate session and the follow-up after the debate appear to mesmerise the nation. Unlike other discourses in the same field of discourse (parliament) (Bernstein 1990, 1996), no-confidence debates are the form of parliamentary discourse which attracts the widest audience by far and engages most media and public attention.
No-confidence debate discourse stands out from other parliamentary discourse in terms of its style, and
the level of public and media attention it receives. The discourse of no-confidence debate departs from the appropriate (Fairclough 1995 : 245) form of parliamentary discourse regulated by the parliamentary code of behaviour.2 Instead of conforming to moderation, most of the debates feature outrageous styles of discourse. Not only does the discourse not adhere to the parliamentary code of behaviour, it is also internally inconsistent. It shows intertextuality, linguistic heterogeneity and hybridisation (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999) of public written discourse and private conversational
discourse.
According to philosophers and critical linguists such as, M.M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, discourse does not have a self-contained meaning (Fairclough 1995; Allen 2000). It takes on meaning in its own context. The meaning of discourse has historical as well as sociocultural qualities built into it. Language acquires its meaning in relation to outside forces and factors: context, previous texts and culture (Allen 2000 : 44). The inter-relational quality of discourse prevents it from being interpreted literally. Some linguists and language philosophers term this dependency relationship between meaning of discourse and its history and context intertextuality. In this case, intertextual analysis is an attempt to find the traces society has in discourse and how discourse is designed to interact with society.
However, intertextuality is a critical term which is variously defined (Allen 2000 : 2). Definitions vary
according to what aspect of discourse theorists find related to the society, for example, intertextuality is most commonly understood to mean the dependency of discourses meaning on a text which was produced earlier. However, this paper adopts Faircloughs definition of intertextuality (Fairclough 1995, 2000a, 2000b; Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999).
Fairclough defines intertextuality as the changing articulation of genres. For Fairclough, society not only manifests itself in the meaning of discourse, but also through the form of discourse such as its genre. Genre is a kind of text configured by text type which has been developed and conventionalised (Fairclough 1995). Genre is the production of social practice, as well as of the society within which the social interaction takes place (Fairclough 2000a). He believes that text does not directly initiate genre; text can manifest complex mixed genres. The recurring pattern of complex mixed genres occurs in the same order of discourse (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999 : 59). These ordered sets of discursive practices are associated with particular social domains of institutions. The particular domain within which discourse takes place is termed its field of discourse (Bernstein 1990, 1996). This existence of different genres in the same discourse is called intertextuality. Intertextual analysis aims to describe the intertextual configuration of text: uncovering how several text types may be drawn upon and combined simultaneously and what social purposes that formulae of mixed genre may serve.
Parliamentary discourse is a field of discourse where there is evidence of intertextuality. It is one of
the fields where the demarcation of the order of discourse becomes blurred. No-confidence discourse is not always tightly controlled in terms of political relevance. This loose topical control is typical of informal conversation. It features varieties associating with quite different sorts of context and purpose. The boundaries between varieties in the sociolinguistic order are complex; they merge and overlap.
Intertextuality can be understood on two levels:
1. It is the combination in discourse of different genres of different discourses (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999 : 49).
2. It is the presence in my discourse of the specific words of the other mixed with my words as for
instance reported speech (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999 : 49).
The no-confidence debate discourse shows evidences of intertextuality at both levels. It draws upon reported speech and employs a variety of genres demonstrated by the use of different discourse-type choices. The choices
indicate different genres, for example, a choice indicating a conversational genre appears in the form of reported speech. Therefore it is justified to say that a Thai no-confidence debate has mixed intertextuality which means that even a single clause may be multi-generic (Fairclough 1995 : 15). Multi-generic clause means a clause which demonstrates more than one genre.
The proliferation of intertextuality in the no-confidence debate discourse could be seen as a product of
the configurations of the discourse in this parliamentary field, most especially in the no-confidence debates. It shows the effort of S to produce discourse in relation to the conjunctures in a given context. By conjuncture, Chouliaraki and Fairclough mean a specification of the configuration of practices which the discourse in focus is located within (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999 : 61). The form of the no-confidence debate discourse is the product of its context: its rationale, its purpose and the regulations it has to abide by. Intertextuality can be considered a linguistic strategy used by S in the context of the no-confidence debate to successfully communicate within the constraints of that particular context.
This paper is an attempt to analyse two aspects of no-confidence debate:
1. The conjunctures surrounding no-confidence debates.
2. Evidence of intertextuality in no-confidence debate discourse.
The conjunctures surrounding no-confidence debates will be analysed in order to find out whether the
proliferation of intertextuality is evidence that discourse does interact dialectically with its society; and whether it is possible to categorise intertextuality as one of the linguistic strategies.
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