Response to "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community"

            In his article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community”, James Porter tries to show readers how “all texts contain ‘traces’ of other texts” (86). He argues that plagiarism is harder to define than it is usually defined and that originality is hard to find due to all the ‘traces’ in writing.

            This article is related to the articles “Argument as Conversation” and “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries”. “Argument as Conversation” has a concept very similar to Porter’s ‘traces’ idea. This is the idea that all arguments stem from previous arguments. “Voice in Writing Again…” is also similar to the ‘trace’ concept because the traces you use can be used to relate to cultural events and subjects in a way that will help persuade readers to swat one way or another. This is shown when Porter describes the Pepsi commercial relating to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

            This was a very informative and interesting article in that it really makes you think about what you are reading. Where did the idea for X come and how do I as a reader view this subject with my previous knowledge. It kind of gives you an insight into the psychology aspect of writing for persuasion. The more I read in this class the more my view on writers and writing changes.

Before you Read

            What is the difference between an author and a writer? A writer is someone who puts information down on paper and articulates the information to be understandable. An author is the person who originally comes up with the idea that the writer writes about. An author can also be a writer, but one does not necessarily have to be the other. I would call someone an author when they create something and I would call someone a writer when they put something (not necessarily their own) down on paper.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

4.)

            I did not think about the specific communities before I read this article. It makes more sense this way though, that writing should be evaluated in a community that has knowledge of the traces used in it. Most of my past writings were evaluated from a community that had knowledge of my subject prior to reading my writing. This is mainly because most of my writings have been for classes in which most of the students wrote about the same 3-4 topics.

5.)

            His own work reflects the principles he’s writing about quite well. He uses quotes and cites other articles that demonstrate the purpose that his article is demonstrating. I’m sure if I went through his multitude of sources he has cited in his reference page and read them that it would be very obvious that his work is reflecting his principles.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

2.)

            I think that plagiarism is looked at as oversimplified but in reality that is just the shorthand version that teachers and professors tell us. Plagiarism is using someone else’s work and calling it your own. This is basically the same as the typical school definition, but I think people are just worried that being ‘unoriginal’ is the same as plagiarism and that is where the confusion takes place.

Meta Moment

            Porter’s study has changed the way I imagine writers and writing in a way that I now see writers as having more of a logically based way of doing things. The more they read/write the more information they add to their arsenal of writing tools. Now writing seems more of a science than just sitting down and scrawling letters onto paper. It also made me think of the psychology behind choosing how and what to write in order to get people to see things certain ways.