Manipulative Potential of Intertextual References in Business Discourse: Functional Analysis of Business Documents

Intertextuality has become a characteristic feature of postmodern texts, in which, in addition to updated information about contemporary or historical events, communicative and pragmatic guidelines are especially clearly visible. The effect is achieved by so-called linguistic and stylistic resources, which would be distinguished by the corresponding potential. Intertextual references are also actively used in business discourse (both oral and written). However, the field of business discourse has not been studied much from the point of view of the theory of intertextuality. By foreign and Russian scholars, intertextuality is mainly analyzed in relation to fiction texts and journalism (media texts). Nevertheless, the practice to use intertextual connections is rather frequent in the process of drafting, conducting negotiations, and conducting business correspondence pursuing the aim to manipulate business partners. Within the framework of this study, these specific aspects of intertextual references in various text types of business discourse as well as their function in the texts under study are highlighted and their manipulative potential is studied. Business documents functional analysis proved that in most cases intertexts were used to establish more credibility and engage partners in the business process as well as provide some guidance. Thus it proved our hypothesis that intertextual references in business documents can possess some manipulative potential.