'Intertextuality And The Discourse Community'

Nowadays, it’s a little more difficult to speak your mind without your words being plagiarized. James Porter in “Intersexuality and the discourse community” from Writing about Writing, argues “that these common ideas about authorship, originality and plagiarism don’t account for how texts actually work and how writers actually write.” What this is basically saying is that if a writer borrows ideas from other writing without acknowledging that borrowing, that is considered plagiarizing. My question is, so how do we make sure what we’re genuinely writing hasn’t already been said before? Genuine originality is difficult because there’s so much that has already been said. However, it isn’t impossible. Following the same pattern, comes intertextuality.

This is when one traces pieces and sews or borrows them together to create something out of it. Or as they note in the Writing about writing, “ Discourse is composed of traces, pieces and bits other texts that help construct the actual meaning.” However, texts won’t always refer to the texts even if they actually did refer to them. An example given is the Declaration of Indepence, the claim is that Thomas Jefferson traced and borrowed when writing it and it was not original. It mentions that it contains traces that could be found in different documents, an example being in the Bill of Rights of 1689. But what if jefferson wanted to emphasize something? We should not be too quick to say something is plagiarized without knowing the intention before. In a realistic view, this is even a way fake news could be started. It can contain echoes of something we know is legit and manipulate it differently but still portraying some truth to make us believe it’s not fake. Moving along, we can also create discourse as a community. Porter says “A discourse community is a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated.” To break it down, it’s having a conversation with other writers through writing. An example of this that comes to mind is when you first join a party, you’re obviously not just going to begin talking, you will first listen and see what anyone hasn’t said yet and then you elaborate. It’s the same with this concept, you’re having a conversation but it probably wouldn't be smart to repeat something someone has already said. Our goal should be to effect change and initiate our own individuality within our discourse