9-17-12 Porter Assignment

Greg Warman   

9-17-12

English 1510

James E. Porter Assignment

Summary:

                In James E. Porter’s article, “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” he argues the point that our culture holds two common conceptions about writing: 1) writing must be original, and 2) if a writer borrows ideas from another writer without acknowledging them, it’s plagiarism. Porter then explains how these common conceptions are actually misconceptions, because of his theory of Intertextuality.  Intertextuality, in Porter’s words, is the idea that all texts contain “traces” of other texts making it that no text can be created without drawing something from some other text. Basically, James’ article is challenging the common idea that writers are autonomous.

Synthesis:

                Porter’s argument in this article is very controversial.  With the claims he makes about Intertextuality, his writing greatly contradicts that of Elbow.  Elbow talks about how using voice can help personalize your writing and give it an original context.  But Porter says that no matter what or how you write, you’re basically deriving, one way or another, your words and writing from a writing of someone else.

Reflection:

                Porter is bringing up a valid point with his argument about Intertextuality.  What the real issue is with the idea of Intertextuality is whether or not the writer is consciously creating their own writing out of someone else’s.  For example, a writer that comes up with a new writing about a common topic may exploit certain points or facts that have already been established in other writings.  But if this writer had written their paper without reading the other writing, their work should still be considered original. I do agree with his idea of culture and environment inspiring our writing. The article in general was extremely drawn out and dry and I found it very hard to sit down and read.

QDJ Answers:

4) I’ve always judged a reading by how it personally affects me as I read it and once I’ve finished reading it, not how the people around me feel about it. My writings have always been based on a certain format about a certain subject.  My writings have been graded on how well I incorporated information along with using correct grammar and citing sources.  Usually the evaluation focuses more on grammatical structure than the actual information I’ve inserted into my writing.

5) His paper both hurts and helps his argument in Intertextuality.  If he is correct about it being true, then indeed, his paper is written by an autonomous author.  This reflects the idea that Intertextuality is correct.  But with that being said, Porter can’t say that the idea of Intertextuality was his idea or that his paper is original because the whole purpose of his paper is saying how no writing is original due to the fact that the writing contains something from a past writing.

AEI Answers:

2) If Porter’s theory is correct, there would be no working way of re-writing the plagiarism policy.  The only way one could re-write it would be to change the policy to saying “if you KNOWINGLY use/copy/quote someone in your writing, you must cite them.” Even this would leave a gray area as to whether or not you can prove the student knowingly copied another writer or if they coincidently said exactly what someone else had already said in a previous writing as Porter’s theory about intertextuality explains.

Meta Moment:

                Porter’s theory opened my eyes about how a lot of writers’ work may indeed be branched off of what others have already written before, but I do not agree that this should take away the originality of their work.  The integrity of the writer expressing their own ideas in the paper is enough to declare their work original even if it does bare resemblance to past writings stating the same ideas.