Manifest Intertextuality and Readability in SLA Handbooks

Abstract

It is argued that meaning has no originatory source and is the outcome of relationships between texts, or intertextuality, the manifest type of which is cued by concrete references to the works of others in direct or indirect forms. The present research, then, is an attempt to illustrate how intertextual networks are set up in SLA handbooks; manifest intertextuality is in the next phase mapped onto a diachronic axis to see if there is any meaningful pattern regulating intertextuality in the corpus of the study. The obtained results revealed a far greater reliance on contemporary works which may be justified in the light of the constant development of our knowledge of the field. Intertextuality is then examined in the framework of relevance theory to show the possible connections between the intertextual quality of a text and its readability. Since many SLA handbooks serve as textbooks for graduate students, the results of this study can help with measuring the degree of readability of handbooks and their optimality for given students.