Summary Porter, James. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Writing About Writing: A College Reader.Boston.Bedford/St.Martins. 2011. 86-97.

Print. The Intertextuality and Discourse Community text written by James E. Porter brought a new perspective on the term plagiarism. The purpose of this article is to propose the idea that nothing that anybody writes is completely original. Porter criticizes everything from the Declaration of Independence to criticizing the whole scientific community. Just using those two examples, Porter calls out Jefferson by saying that he borrowed lines from Lockes social contract theory and that Jefferson should not be considered the framer of this document. As far as the scientific community goes, Porter states that no scientist will be given creditability unless he reviews the past scientists work. The most important thing that I got out of this article was that the discourse community that you belongs to have a lot of influence on what you can and cannot write. He uses Gregor Mendel as a perfect example. Even though Mendels experiments and findings turned out to be right, he was excluded from the scientific community because his ideas were unknown to everyone in his time period.

Analysis 10/15/2012 How can anything be called plagiarism when everything is plagiarized? Thats a concept that boggles my mind. More importantly, pages 91-93 contain the topic that I really want to analyze. Porter makes a powerful statement when he says that the discourse community that you belong to has powerful effect on what you can and cannot say. Looking from an inner perspective, I find this statement to be valid. For example, the text that I use when Im writing to my friends would not be accepted by my English teacher. There are many constraints when it comes to writing in an academic community. I cant use slang, make up words, or write incomplete sentences. Due to these reasons, my creative side is often stifled and censored.