James porter intertextuality and the discourse community pdf

Intertextuality and the Discourse Community JAMES E. PORTER

• Porter, James E. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community." Rhetoric Rcuieio 5.] (1986): 34-47. Print.

Framing the Reading

two of the deepest conceptions of writing that our culture holds are (1) that writing must lit' original and (2) that if a writer "borrows" ideas from other writing without acknowledg- 1I1tj that borrowing, the writer is plagiarizing. In the following study, James Porter argues 111.11these common ideas about originality and plagiarism don't account for how texts ole tually work and how writers actually write. Porter calls into question how original writers r.m actually be in constructing texts and, following from that question, also wonders how WI' should define plagiarism if true originality is so difficult to find.

The principle Porter explores in asking these questions is intertextuality-that is, the ulea that all texts contain "traces" of other texts and that there can be no text that does not draw on some ideas from some other texts. You may rightly be skeptical of a claim so lnoad. so follow along carefully as Porter explains why he thinks this is true. You may 1)(· P,lI ticularly interested in the section in which Porter demonstrates his argument by look 1119 at how the Declaration of Independence was written, as he claims, collaboratively, hy ,1 number of different authors.

The implications of Porter's study are significant for how you understand writing and how you understand yourself as a writer. Most of us have been taught that writers are ,)(Jtonomous-that is, that they're free do to whatever they want with their texts, and .ilso that they're solely responsible for what's in those texts. Porter's research on actual writing and writers challenges this construct. If Porter is correct, then we need a different construct of the author, one that acknowledges the extent to which communities shape what a writer chooses to say; the extent to which writers say things that have already been said (even When they believe they're being original); and the extent to which texts Me constructed by many different people along the way, as readers feed ideas back to the writer.

Getting Ready to Read

Before you read, do at least one of the following activities:

• Write a paragraph on what, in your mind, the difference between an author and a writer is. When would you choose the first term to describe the persorvpooplc behind a text, and when would you choose the second?

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• Make a list of all the waysyou get "help," of any kmd, II) your Wlltll1CJWlwn'till you get ideas, advice, feedback, and assistance?

• Findone or two friends or familymembers who write a great deal, clthcl Iot cI IIV ing, as a major part of their jobs, or as a hobby. Interviewthem about who or wlldl they see contributing to their writing. Towhat extent do they see themselves (1011111 their writing "on their own"?

As you read, consider the followingquestions:

• Watch for how Porter poses questions about writers' autonomy and originality: Does he finallydecide that autonomy and originalityare impossible?

• Do you think Porter iscriticizing the Declaration of Independence? Thomas Jefferson? Explainyour answer.

• Ifyou haven't seen the Pepsicommercial that Porter discusses, try to find a verslon of it to watch online. Does Porter's reading of the commercial match yours, or do you understand it differently?

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At the conclusion of Eco's The Name of the Rose, the monk Adso III IMelk returns to the burned abbey, where he finds in the ruins scraps (II parchment, the only remnants from one of the great libraries in all Christen dom. He spends a day collecting the charred fragments, hoping to discover some meaning in the scattered pieces of books. He assembles his own "lcssc. library ... of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated sturups of books" (500). To Adso, these random shards are "an immense acrostic [h.1I says and repeats nothing" (501). Yet they are significant to him as ao attempt to order experience.

We might well derive our own order from this scene. We might see Adso II~ representing the writer, and his desperate activity at the burned abbey as a model for the writing process. The writer in this image is a collector of fragments, ;111 archaeologist creating an order, building a framework, from remnants of till' past. Insofar as the collected fragments help Adso recaU other, lost texts, his ex perience affirms a principle he learned from his master, William of Baskerville, "Not infrequently books speak of books" (286). Not infrequently, and perhaps ever and always, texts refer to other texts and in fact rely on them for their meaning. All texts are interdependent: We un- derstand a text only insofar as we understand its precursors.

This is the principle we know as intertextuaJity, the principle lhllt nil wl'it ing and speech-indeed, all signs-arise from :l single network: whl1l Vygolsky called "the web of meaning"; wh::lt post~trlfctlll'i1lists I:lbel 'I'('XI (II' Wl'il ing (Barthcs, ecritlf1'e); and whnl ;1 mort' di~lnlll :11\(: pl'l hnp~ klll'W ,IN /IIJ.:I/\.

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All texts are interdependent: We understand a text only insofar as we

understand its precursors. .............................. 0"." ............... ,...

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.Fx.uu in mg texts "iutcru-vt u.rlly" menus looking for "truces," tlH' 11I1x :nul pll'll'~or Text which writer .. or speakers borrow and sew together to <'1(',11\' IH'Wdiscourse.' The most mundane manifestation of intertcxtuality is cxplu n lit ntion, but intertextuality animates all discourse and goes beyond 111('11' cu.uion. For the intertextual critics, lntertext is Text-a great seamless tcxtu.rl t.ibric. And, as they like to intone solemnly, no text escapes intertext.

lntcrtextuality provides rhetoric with an important perspective, one cut rvnt ly neglected, I believe. The prevailing composition pedagogies by and l;1r~l' cultivate the romantic image of writer as free, unin.hibited spirit, as indcpcn dent, creative genius. By identifying and stressing the intertextual nature of discourse, however, we shift our attention away from the writer as individual .md focus more 0.0 the sources and social contexts from which the writer's d iscou rse arises. According to this view, authorial intention is less signi FicaIII than social context; the writer is simply a part of a discourse tradition, a rnern bl'r of a team, and a participant in a community of discourse that creates il'. own collective meaning. Thus the intertext constrains writing.

My aim here is to demonstrate the significance of this theory to rhetorn , ii, ~ explaining intertextualiry, its connection to the notion of "discourse couunu lilly," and its pedagogical implications for composition.

The Presence of Intertext lnrcrtextualiry has been associated with both structuralism and posrstruc " rurnlisrn, with theorists Like Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Dcrridu, I layden White, Harold Bloom, Michel Foucault, and Michael Riffaterrc. (01 course, the theory is most often applied in literary analysis.) The central ;1~ vurnption of these critics has been described by Vincent Leitch: "The text i~ not an autonomous or unified object, but a set of relations with other ICXI~. lh system of language, its grammar, its lexicon, drag along numerous 1~1t, "lid pieces-traces-of history so that the text resembles a Cultural SaIV<1IHIIl Army Outlet with unaccountable collections of incompatible ideas, beliefs, :llld -.tllirces" (59). It is these "unaccountable collections" that intertextual crit irv locus on, not the text as autonomous entity. In fact, these critics have rcdcfiu.xl Ilw notion of "text": Text is intertext, or simply Text. The traditional notion III the text as the single work of a given author, and even the very notions III .uuhor and reader, are regarded as simply convenient fictions for domcsucati.u: .lrvcourse. The old borders that we used to rope off discourse, proclaim IlwM' \ IIIics, a re no longer useful.

We can distinguish between two types of intertextuality: iterability and pre 1 ~lfpposirion. Tterability refers to the "repeatability" of certain textual frngml'lIllo, 10 l'it:1tion in its broadest sense to include not only explicit allusions, rcfCrcflu ...., 11I1t!quotatiol1s within a discou.rse) but also unannounccd SOllrces :1IId inllu 1'lll'l'S,c1ichcs

l phrases in the air, and traditions. That is to say, every diSLOlllql'

I~ lOlllposcd of "traces," pieces of other texts that help eOllstitutl' its tll('l1flilll\' (I will di!'oClf~S this IlNIWlluf iIlICf"It'xiunlit y in lI1y annlysis of 1Ill' I)l'd,1 f'llllllll III Ifldt·Pl·11dl·IICl·.)Jlfl'~lfI'PIlNIIIOIIf·dl·f·...10 :1~"lIl1lpti()I)., n tl'XI 111.1"1'",11111111II~

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referent, its readers, and its conlext-to portions of the [(.'xt which .irc re.ul, hili which arc not explicitly "there." For example, as Jonathan Culler dl~t'II~"'l'~, till phrase "John married Fred's sister" is an assertion that logically preSIIPpo ...r: ... that John exists, that Fred exists, and that Fred has a sister. "Open the dOll! .. contains a practical presupposition, assuming the presence of a decoder whu I'. capable of being addressed and who is better able to open the door than till' ru coder. "Once upon a time" is a trace rich in rhetorical presupposition, sign.Ii!!I)\ to even the youngest reader the opening of a fictional narrative. Texts nOI ollh refer to but in fact contain other texts.'

An examination of three sample texts will illustrate the various facers III intertextuality, The first, the Declaration of Independence, is popularly viewer] as the work of Thomas Jefferson. Yet if we examine the text closely in ii', rhetorical milieu, we see that Jefferson was author only in the very IOnS(· ..., of senses. A number of historians and at least two composition researcher-, (Kinneavy, Theory 393-49; Maimon, Readings 6-32) have analyzed 1111 Declaration, with interesting results. Their work suggests that Jefferson W," by no means an original framer or a creative genius, as some like to suppose Jefferson was a skilled writer, to be sure, but chiefly because he was an effccuvi borrower of traces.

To produce his original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson seems to h,1\'1 borrowed, either consciously or unconsciously, from his culture's Text. M ll~II has been made ofJefferson's reliance on Locke's social colltract thcory (Beck"I) Locke's theory influenced colonial political philosophy, emerging in vari()l1~ pamphlets and newspaper articles of the times, and served as the foundarioll for the opening section of the Declaration. The Declaration contains 111,111\ traces that can be found in other, earlier documents. There are traces froll' " First Continental Congress resolution, a Massachusetts Counci.l deciaratioll. George Mason's "Declaration of Rights for Virginia," a political pamphl('1 of James Otis, and a variety of other sources, including a colonial play, '1'111' overall form of the Declaration (theoretical argument followed by lisl 01 grievances) strongly resembles, ironically, the English Bill of Rights of 16H'), in which Parliament lists the abuses of James II and declares new powers f(1I itself. Several of the abuses in the Declaration seem to have been taken mOil', or less verbatim, from a Pennsylvania Evening Post article. And the mml memorable phrases in the Declaration seem to be least jefferson's: "Thal ,til men are created equal" is a sentiment from Euripides which Jefferson copil,t! in his literary commonplace book as a boy; "Life, Liberty, and thc pursuil of Happiness" was a cuche of the times, appearing in numerous polil ir," documents (Dumbauld),

Though Jefferson's draft of the Declaration can hardly be considered Ill', '" in any exclusive sense of authorship, the document underwent still i11011' expropriation at the hands of Congress, who made eighty-six ch:lng(· ... (Kinneavy, Theory 438). They cut the dra.ft frolp 211 lines to 147. They did considerable editing to temper what they saw liS .Jefferson'S cl1lotionnl ~Iyl(': For example, Jefferson's phrase "s~lcred & untk'ninhl('" wn'l Ch'"1gl'd 10 ilH' more restrained "self-cvidcnt." Ccmgrl'''S l'Xl'IM·t!lllllil tlYI·"'I.'I P,I"~:lg('~. ~IH II

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.1" Il'Ilnsol1\ condcmu.u ruu oj slavery. ThLl~1WI' .. hould lilld il III,tl III IIV\' tn 1141ll', jefferson's lew ,Ittl'lllpts at original expression were "lOW il-,'~I Illl'pe,lble to Congress.

II jefferson submitted the Declaration for a college writing class ,lS hIS 11\\ II II writ ing, he might well be charged with plagiarism.' The idea of .lCHc..·NIII.....,III thor IS but convenient shorthand. Actually, the Declaration arose ou: 01 ,I l "I rur.il and rhetorical milieu, was composed of traces-and was, in effect, Il',1I1I written. Jefferson deserves credit for bringing disparate traces together. 1111 lu-lping to mold and articulate the milieu, for creating the all-important dr."t. k-llcrson's skill as a writer was his ability to borrow traces effectively nnd III lilld appropriate contexts for them, As Michael Halliday says, "[Clreariveuev- docs not consist in producing new sentences, The newness of a sentence I~ ,I quire unimportant-and unascertainable-property and 'creativity' in 1:111 fllI:1gc lies in the speaker's ability to create new meanings: to realize the PUI('" tiality of language for the indefinite extension of its resources to new context ... III situation .... Our most 'creative' acts may be precisely among those thai :11t' rv.ilizcd through highly repetitive forms of behaviour" (Explorations 42). TIlt' creative writer is the creative borrower, in other words.

Intcrtextualiry can be seen working similarly in contemporary forum- Rcca II this scene from a recent Pepsi commercial: A young boy in jeans jal "l'l, ,H;companied by dog, stands in some desolate plains crossroads next to :1 g,'" '('lliOI1, next to whjch is a soft drink machine. An alien spacecraft, rcscl11hlllll', till' one in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, appears oVl'rh( ,Id Ii) the boy's joyful amazement, the spaceship hovers over the vending 111:llllIlll ,IIIlI begins sucking Pepsi cans into the ship. It takes only Pepsis, then CVl'lIlllitlh IlIke~ the entire machine. The ad closes with a graphic: "Pepsi. The CI II II( I I II ,I New Generation."

Clearly, tbe commercial presupposes familiarity with Spielberg'S l11()vil' 111,.11 I k:l'il, with his pacific vis.ion of alien spacecraft. We see several American lli~111~, wl'lI-worn signs from the Depression era: the desolate plains, the general SLOI'(',1111 pop machine, the country boy with dog. These distinctively American 11,11 \ .... III't' juxtaposed against images from science fiction and the sixties catchp""I'~I' "IH.'W generation" in the coda. In this array of signs, we have tradition ,,,,,I lountcr-tradition harmonized. Pepsi squeezes itself in the middle, and Ihll~ hn;()l11cs the great American conciliator. The ad's use of irony may scrVl' In 11,-;1 ract viewers momentarily from noticing how Pepsi achieves its purpos(' h) .I~sij!,ning itself an exalted role through use of the intertext.

We find an interesting example of practical presupposition in .lohn Kilt"" \ , Nt'llI York Times headline article reporting on the Kent State incidcnt of I ()70:

FOllr srudents at Kent State Unjversiry, two of them women, were shot 10 dellih Ihis nfiernoon by a volley of National Guard gunfire. At least g othcr ~",d~'llt~ wI'r~'wounded.

Til,' burst of glll1fil'l.: 1:1111W "hout 20 minutes :lftcr the gunrdsnwil hl'Oi-1' "P 11 n01ll1 ndly lin rht· ClII1l11UlIIS, ,I ~rI1ssy Cnl11pll~WHheril1!4~pOl, by I()bhitl~ Il',1 I' I',,,~ ,II ,I ~Iowd of :lbOIlI I ,(Hit) y"IIII".IWOpll',

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From one perspective, the phrase "two of them women" is a simple Slnll!Ill('1I1 I of fact; however, it presupposes a certain attitude-that the event hOI'I'lilll enough as it was, is more significant because two of the persons killed \WI I w~men, It might be going too far to say that the phrase presupposes a 'l''\I\I attitude ("women aren't supposed to be killed in battles"), but can we il11.1glll1 the phrase "two of them men" in this context? Though equally factual, till, wording woul~ have been considered odd in 1970 {and probably today .IS well} because It presupposes a cultural mind set alien from the one dornin.un at the ti~e. "Two of them women" is shocking (and hence it was reported) because It upsets the sense of order of the readers, in this case the Arncricuu public.

Additionally (and more than a little ironically), the text contains a ruun I ber of traces which have the effect of blunting the shock of the event. NQII~I that the students were not shot by National Guardsmen, but were shot "h) .1 volley of ... gunfire"; the tear gas was "lobbed"; and the event occurred ,II II "~rassy cam~us gathering spot." "Volley" and "lobbed" are military terms, hili ~Ith. connecnons to sport as well; "grassy campus gathering spot" suggcsr» .. prcmc, "burst" can recall the glorious sight of bombs "bursting" in "The SI.II Spangled Banner." This pastiche of signs casts the text into a certa in contr xI making it distinctively American. We might say that the turbulent milieu of lilt' sixties provided a distinctive array of signs from which John Kifner borrowed to produce his article.

Each of the three texts examined contains phrases or images familiar to ", I audience or presupposes certain audience attitudes. Thus the interrexr cx('tI, its influ~nce partly in the form of audience expectation. We might then say Ih,'1 th~ audience .of each of these texts is as responsible for its production as rill writer, That, m essence, readers, not writers, create discourse,

The Power of Discourse Community And, indeed, this is what some poststructuralist critics suggest, those who pu: I fer a broader conception of intertext or who look beyond the intertext 10 till social framework regulating textual production: to what Michel Foucault c.::lll~ "the discursive formation," what Stanley Fish calls "the interpretive COI11I1lI1 nity," and what Patricia Bizzell calls "the discourse community." . A "discourse community" is a group of individuals bound by a com mOil I I ulterest who communicate through approved channels and whose d iSCOlIlNI is regulate~. An individual may belong to several professiona.l, Pllblic, 01 personal dlscomse communities. Examples would include the comnlllllily of engineers whose research area is fluid mechanics; alumni of rhe LJllivl'I' sity of Michigan; Magl1a~ox employees; tbe members of the PoneI' (.ll1lil),. and members of the IndIana Teachers of Writing. The apprc)ved c.:htllllH'l~ we can ~all "forums." ~ach forum has :\ distinct history and ru](o~~()Vl'I'lllllg appropnarcncss to whIch mcmbers :)1'(, obligl'd 100<111('1'1', Thl'sl' rllk'H 1I1,lyhI' Ill()r~' or less :lpparl'l1l, lHort' or k~<; ill~litllli()Il,I1I1I'd. IIlOll' 01 Il'~~ 'IWldl~ III l';)~h lOl1llllllllil)" F\;lll1pilo;; or (OI'IIIIIS IIlliluh- 11IIIk~~1I11111111I1h"l,nlllll~ ilk,.

JAMES I> PORIER Intertextuality and the Discourse Community 401

Nhc/oric Review, English Journal, and Creative Computing; public media Ilk" Nciosioeek and Runner's World; professional conferences (the annual meeting of fluid power engineers, the 4C's); company board meetings; family ~illIll'r tables; and the monthly meeting of the Indiana chapter of the Izaak W.IItOI1 League,

A discourse community shares assumptions about what objects are appro I" uuc for examination and discussion, what operating functions are performed 1111 those objects, what constitutes "evidence" and "validity," and what f~rl11al conventions are fol.lowed. A discourse community may have a well-established "tlllls; or it may have competing factions and indefinite boundaries. It may Ill' 111 a "pre-paradigm" state (Kuhn), that is, having an ill-defined regular tll~ system and no clear leadership. Some discourse communitie.s are firmly rM.lblished, such as the scientific community, the medical profession, and the [uvticc system, to cite a few from Foucault's list. In these discourse communi Ill''', as Leitch says, "a speaker must be 'qualified' to talk; he has to belong 10 I community of scholarship; and he is required to possess a prescribed body III knowledge (doctrine} ... , [This system] operates to constrain discourse, II l...t.rblishes limits and regularities .... who may speak, what may be spoken, ,lIld how it is to be said; in addition [rules] prescribe what is true and fl1l~I'. what is reasonable and what foolish, and what is meant and what not, Fin,lll). they work to deny the material existence of discourse itself" (145).

A text is "acceptable" within a forum only insofar as it reflects the cornmu nh y cpisterne (to use Foucault's term). On a simple level, this mea~ls that (01 n m.muscript to be accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied PSYc/J()/ II.11V, it must follow certain formatting conventions: It must have the expe.ctl'd ..ucinl science sections (i.e., review of literature, methods, results, discussion), ,1 III I it must use the journal's version of APA documentation. However, these .111' on Iy superficialfeatures of the forum, On a more essential level, the manu ..~ript must reveal certain characteristics, have an ethos (in the broadest pm "hie sense) conforming to the standards of the discourse community: It 1l1Ll;1 .h-mcnstrace (or at least claim) that it contributes knowledge to the field, It must demonstrate familiarity with the work of previous researchers in IIU' licld, it must use a scientific method in analyzing its results (showing accep i.mcc of the truth-value of statistical demonstration), it must meet standards fOI' test design and analysis of results, it must adhere to standards dell'!' lIIilling degrce of accuracy. The expectation:;, conventions, and attitudes of thi, discourse community-the readers, writers, and publishers of lOIlYl/tll 11/ Applied Psychology-will influence aspiring psycholog.y r~searcl1el:S, sh:'i1 IIIVonOI only how they write but also their character wlthlll that dISCI)llr~l' IOllll1l11niry.