A Canary in a Coalmine: Intertextuality of Newspaper Headlines

The article, first of all, addresses the issue of the role and importance of intertextuality in verbal and visual texts in general. In particular, the focus is on the mass media, namely, newspaper headlines which are treated as texts interacting both with the article texts and the surrounding world, established in the reader’s schemata. Headlines, consequently, fulfil a multipurpose function: convey the information, contained in the article, set the tone of the newspaper, reflect various emotions etc. British quality and compact newspapers, The Daily Express, The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Observer, and The Daily Telegraph, served as the object of this research. The aim was to show the functioning of intertextual links and point to the domains of their reference. Such approaches as content analysis, critical discourse analysis and discourse analysis were used to prove the importance of intertextuality in developing the reader’s critical reading activities. The analysis prompted that intertextual links function intertextually (endophorically) and intratextually (exophorically). The sphere of their referencing is wide and heterogeneous; it includes the royal family, events in other countries, politics, literature, art, military sphere, language.