Shiva Annareddy 1

Shivakiran Annareddy

Professor Gardiakos

ENC1102

15 September 2020

Reading Response 2

After reading the James Porter article on “Intertextuality and the Discourse

Community”, the concepts of intertextuality and discourse community seem to

have been well-defined in the writing world. They seem to play a critical part of

every writers’ piece of work as all the thoughts a writer puts into his essay or

novel is influenced by these concepts. Even though a writer may try to keep his

works as original as possible, there will always be the influences of intertextuality

and the discourse community as they exemplify the basis of the way his or her

brain functions. Intertextuality is basically the principle that all writing, speech

and thoughts arise from or are derived from a single big network or thought

system. A discourse community is the concept that demonstrates the idea of a

group of people being together due to a common area of interest and

communicating through approved channels that are regulated. The conversations

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are stimulated by the common area of interest within those group of individuals.

As implied through the definitions of these concepts and implied by James

Porter’s article, the concepts of intertextuality and the discourse community are

very related in the writing world and world in general. Personally, I feel that

intertextuality is the cause of the formation of the discourse community and the

discourse community is the effect in this implied cause-and-effect relationship.

Intertextuality influences the way people think and talk, because the thoughts or

ideas that people obtain or are acknowledged of are communicated in a way in

which they only will understand. This form of communication eventually forms

the single big network or thought system that is epitomized by the concept of

intertextuality. The people that extract a common interest from this thought

system eventually would want to talk to each other about that specific topic and

they would naturally formulate ideas and beliefs that they agree on through their

discussions related to that area of interest. These individuals involved in that

discussion would have formed the implied concept known as discourse

community. I believe intertextuality and discourse community being interwoven

into a natural chain with intertextuality being at the middle of the chain and
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discourse community being located at the end of the chain. The ideas that cause

the big network system to be formed should be at the beginning of the chain as

they would lead to intertextuality which leads up to the creation of a discourse

community.

James Porter’s own work fails to reflect the principles that he’s writing

about in the respective article. Porter feels that there should be originality in what

a person is writing and he or she should write it as an “autonomous individual”.

However, these thoughts seem to not be original and intertextuality seems to

have played a role in this piece of work also, because the ideas that Porter

explains in the article definitely came from or are related to ideas in other texts.

Porter would have had to read other texts in order to learn about the principles of

intertextuality and discourse community, so the ideas and information in those

texts definitely would have played a role through the ideas Porter placed into this

article and how he described them. Those articles or texts that Porter must have

got his information from could have also affected his thoughts on intertextuality

and originality, so there does not seem to be a lot of originality in this article. I

feel it is very hard to find originality, because any new theory, law, or concept
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formed would have to be derived from information that is obtained from another

source.

Besides just in pieces of writing, intertextual elements and discourse

communities can be seen around in daily lives. In the artistic discourse

community, there are a lot of intertextual elements that play a role in the

products that come out from there. For example, a very famous franchise in the

movie industry is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is always mentioned that the

movies there are made based on the Marvel Comics, which were written around

the 1940’s. Therefore, the intertextual elements present in this cinematic

universe come from the comics, which were written a long time ago. However, an

implied intertextual element involved in the products from this universe comes

from the directors and the people who watch the movies. The directors making

these films make sure it is an adaptation of the comics, but some stuff that

happens in the comics does not occur in the movies, because the directors decide

to change it in order to better suit the taste of the audience and they want the

movie to be the kind that is preferred by the audience. Since the comics were

written all the way back in the 1940’s, the directors alter certain events from the
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comics through the movies in order to make it seem like a modern-day film. They

try to better suit the audience’s taste by finding out through other kinds of movies

what kind of scenes the audiences have a liking for or are interested in. All these

intertextual elements affect many products in the artistic discourse community in

a lot of other ways possible.

To sum it all up, it is very hard to have or make an ‘original’ piece in the

modern-day world. The principles of intertextuality and discourse communities

exemplify why it is very tough to create one. Intertextuality explains how

everything comes from one big network or thought system. The ‘discourse

community’ explains how a group of people are brought together due to shared

interest and beliefs are formed as a whole through their discussions. Even though

people seem to think they have formed their original beliefs, the information or

ideas they have obtained to form that belief would make it unoriginal. It can be

formulated that it is nearly impossible to create ‘original’ works.

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Bibliography

1. Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.”

Williamwolff.org, Taylor & Francis, Ltd.