Exploring intertextuality: Young people reading alcohol advertising

This paper explores the use of intertextuality in advertising texts. It identifies that there are two distinctive methods of researching meanings found in and around advertisements. The two methods are textual strategy and interpretive practice. The results of a phenomenological study of the interpretive practices are shown. The empirical study was completed with young people from the United Kingdom who used interpretive practices to form meaning from an alcohol advertisement. The study reveals that young audiences draw on intertexts, from a very wide variety of sources, both in and around themselves. There are, however, common intertextual themes. The intertextual themes will be categorised into taxonomies for analysis, which extends the current process for analysing advertisements.