Intertextuality and the Discourse Community

James E. Porter introduces this article by telling us about The Name of the Rose by Eco. Porter describes that at the end of this book, the mok goes into "the burned abbey, where he finds in the ruins scraps of parchment" (34). Adso then starts collecting pieces of book, he then tries to put them together, but at the end they don't mean anything. Porter then compares Adso with the writer, and the burned abbey with the writing process. "The writer in this image is a collector of fragments, an archeologist creating an order, building a framework, from remnants of the past" (34). He then states that books and texts depend on each other in order to provide a meaning. And this is what's called Intertextuality, "the web of meaning" (34), or also called "logos" (34). Intertextuality "means looking for "traces," the bits and pieces of Text which writers or speakers borrow and sew together to create a discourse" (34). Intertextuality focuses on the sources and social texts that the writer uses to make his point. Porter states that the "writer is simply a part of a discourse tradition, a member of a team, and a participant in a community of discourse that creates its own collective meaning" (35).

The theory of intertextuality associates with structuralism and poststructuralism. He states that a text has many things in comon with other texts. There are two types of intertextuality: iterability and presupposition. Iterability means repeating a text in order to create a meaning. On the other hand, "presupposition refers to assumptions a text makes about its referent, its readers, and its context" (35). In other words, assuming something that's not really there. Texts refer to and contain many other texts. To show this argument, Peter gives up three different examples: The Declaration of Independence, a Pepsi commercial, and an article on the incident of 1972 in Kent State. "Each of the three texts examined contains phrases or images familiar to its audience or presupposes certain audience attitudes" (38). The intertext is shown as the audience's expectation, which creates discourse.

The point that Porter is trying to make here is that authors aren't original, because they're getting their ideas from other texts. And that people whould learn to write to discourse communities, in a way in which instead of just coping other's ideas, they should just change and alter them.

Synthesis:

I agree with Porter in that texts refer to and contain many other texts. For example, I could be reading two different books about the American Revolution. They might not have everything writen word by word. But the content is the same, as well as the idea, and the claims. I personally can say that use intertextuality. One way or another, I always see myself using ideas or context from other texts. Although this is true, I also believe that there are some people that are able to originate their own ideas, without having to use other texts.