INTERTEXTUALITY IN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY OF WEST AFRICAN STATES (ECOWAS) AGREEMENT DISCOURSE

Abstract

The paper examines the concept of intertextuality as a theoretical and a methodological strategy in the analysis of ECOWAS Peacekeeping Agreement Discourse (EPKA). The study, which is based on Norman Fairclough model of intertextuality, adheres to the principle of Kristeva (1986) and Bakhtin (1986) that every text is dialogical, in the sense that it gains its meaning in relation to other texts. The corpus of the study consists of ten purposively selected ECOWAS peacekeeping agreements which were analysed based on the frameworks of intertextuality of Fairclough (1995 a,b) and Bazerman (2010). The findings of the analysis reveal that intertextual relations were frequently expressed in the EPKA texts through the devices of paraphrase and citation. The study further reveals that intertextuality functions in the EPKA discourse to signal textual authority, to reveal the nature of the legal relationship that holds between two texts and to provide terminological definitions and explanations. Intertextuality in EPKA discourse is further used to signal textual coherence to the reader that text must be interpreted in the context of something expressed elsewhere; within or outside the text. The paper concludes that intertextuality in the data occurs at a relatively localised level; as such it is not concerned with the broader social voices, but rather with what Fairclough (1992a, p.104) termed manifest intertextuality.