Reading Response 8

Porter – “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”

Summary

In his article, “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” Porter attempts to show the reader that plagiarism as defined in popular culture isn’t in fact what happens. He argues for intertextuality, which states that “all writing and speech – indeed, all signs – arise from a single network.” (88)

Synthesis

This is a lot like Klein’s work, because not only is he supporting his idea that is a much broader context than many would think to apply to writing, it is most obviously written towards a more scholarly community, as shown by the spinning of my head after reading it. The vocabulary and rhetoric he uses is definitely not meant for anyone without a Phd.

Pre-reading

I get a lot of help from writing, by asking friends for advice, having others proofread, even by relying on spell check frequently. I have even participated in my fair share of collaborative writings, voluntary and otherwise. Anything I do in life can also have an influence on my ideas that I’m working on, even if they have no correlation.

QD

4. I’ve always evaluated writing on whether or not I like it, and whether it fits the criteria I set out to accomplish. Most of the ways my writing has been evaluated before fits with my own idea, although I may be less knowledgeable about all of the grammar rules that my judges.

5. His work reflects on his principles, because he keeps bringing other people’s ideas into his article not only to show his point, but to make it as well. He is obviously not the first to think about this, because there are already a large number of people on both sides of the fence over the issue.

A&E

1. There are many different texts in it, shown in all of the different ways of displaying comfort and there are homages back to the tried and true, as they are trying to make money off of it. The cultural intertext is the constant use of not only women, but of different racial mixes to try and show that all types of people will look good as a result of said product, making it more universally accepted.

MM

No, he hasn’t changed my mind as all, because I know in my writings I’ve relied heavily on the assistance of others; his declaration of it merely confirmed my suspicions. I don’t think I’ll change the way I right at all, because I think that by using outside sources I also push myself to be more creative so I don’t feel as though I’m not contributing to my own writing.

Thoughts

I did not enjoy this text at all, it was long and hard, and the concept not overly surprising or interesting. That it was obviously written for people over my level of comprehension didn’t help at all, and makes the concept that much harder to grasp.