Week 5

In his article Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, James Porter attempts to explain that every text that we read is technically “plagiarism”. He argues that writers have done this for decades it is not their fault. Most of the time writers can often not be themselves because they are in a discourse community. This means that the writer has a set of rules or regulations they must follow in their writings. He explains that students need to understand this concept before they are able to write an acceptable piece.

 

This is different from what I assumed because I was unaware that writers had a discourse community to adhere to. I would have thought writing should be evaluated by the content and writing style, while also considering the validity of the information. Porter explains that this is not the case, or at least not the number one way writings are evaluated. In the past, my writing has been evaluated, or graded, on different things depending on the teachers’ requirements. This could range anywhere from just simple spelling and grammar to citations and making sure not to plagiarize.

 

I have recently seen a Dodge Ram commercial and in the commercial they talk about the typical farmer. This idea has been used over and over again in many different types of media including commercials, movies, television shows, and books. This is intertextuality because the idea of “the farmer” has been used before. The commercial even uses the tone a viewer would expect to hear from a farmer’s mouth. This is also cultural because farming and the American Farmer is a big part of our history and shows how far we have come.

 

I thought this article was very interesting because I thought there was only one typical definition of plagiarism. I learned this was not the case and many authors and media writers use it in their everyday writing. I also thought it was unexpected that Thomas Jefferson “plagiarized” the Declaration of Independence. By using a style of writing or certain requirement for our writing over and over again, Porter says this is generally a type of plagiarism.