James Porter, "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community"

IWA: 2/13/13

Summary: In his article "Intertextualiy and the Discourse Community”, James Porter attempts to tell his audience, students and professional writers, that plagiarism is not really a thing because all writers use somebody else’s form of writing in some way or another. He argues his point through the idea of discourse community, a belief that people sort of “bounce ideas” off of each other in an indirect way to form their argument. He furthers this point with the Declaration of Independence and pop culture saying that people use other’s ideas to promote their own.

Synthesis: This article does not make me think of any other articles we have read because it focuses more on plagiarism rather than the writing process. I guess in a way it makes me think of “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” because both mention the use of advertisements and how companies use techniques to attract people’s attention.

QD 4: To me I love to write and I’ve always sort of felt whatever it is I’m writing needs to be accepted by a vast majority of people if I ever want to make it big. So for me the thought of my writing being “acceptable” is not a new concept. However this is different than the way it was graded in my past because my writing was evaluated by teachers who would tear it apart if my opinion differed from their own as opposed to being accepted by the rest of the class/community.

QD 5: I believe what he is writing follows his argument that nobody’s work is original. To show his point he used examples such as a commercial and the Declaration of Independence meaning he was using somebody else’s work. This goes to show that nobody can be completely original.

AE 2: The new definition would include the term discourse community and citation. Porter believes that the use of these two things would not make our papers plagiarized. Basically the only way the two definitions would differ would be the new one includes discourse community to make it okay.

MM: To me it has made me realize that nobody has original work anymore and that idea is a very frustrating thought. I think it would be a good idea to adopt Porter’s ideas but it probably would not change my style, views, or overall writing since we already are technically plagiarizing.

Afterthoughts: I think this article brought up a good point about how none of us really use our own work when you break it down enough. I never really thought of it like that before and this put everything into a whole new perspective. It also gave me the inspiration to possibly write project two on my new belief that nobody really has an original work.