Reading Response 2

Arellano 1
Audrey Arellano
Professor Gardiakos
ENC1102
9 September 2022
Reading Response 2
In James Porter’s Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, intertextuality is the idea
that everything, as in every text, is derived from previous texts; that to create another piece of
writing, elements need to be influenced or referenced from different texts. Porter often uses
historical documentations for good examples in this reading. He claims that even though Thomas
Jefferson drafted and “wrote” the Declaration of Independence, little or none of his ideas
presented were original to him. There are traces of John Locke’s social contract theory,
“Declaration of Rights for Virginia”, a colonial play, and many more. Whether Thomas Jefferson
intentionally or unintentionally decided to borrow from existing texts, the fact is that he already
did it.
As previously discussed, a discourse community is a group of people that are formed
from similar interests and goals, who communicate with each other via specialized genres and
languages in order to learn, better their understanding as individuals, and grow as a community.
Porter suggests that intertextuality is a good way for discourse communities to develop similar
mindsets in the way they read and write their information. They are related in a sense that there
is a specific genre and way of expression that flows through naturally within the discourse
community and the way intertextuality shapes writing to express information in a certain way.
Due to the nature of intertextuality in writing, with all these pieces embedded into that
text, there is a sense of credibility that is created. An easy way to understand this is seeing a
Arellano 2
research paper with works cited from previous platforms that have high reputation and are
known for putting trusted factual information. This allows the reader or the discourse audience
the author intended to reach to easily accept this writing since it is seemingly more reliable
because the author sourced previous trustworthy resources. This concept actually allows both
intertextuality and discourse communities to use each other for their own benefit. When forming
arguments or making rhetorical solutions, discourse communities are able to make the decision
to accept whether they are going to use such text to support their ideas and opinions. With this,
and with enough support from a discourse community, they have the authority to grant that
certain text even more credibility since there are multiple people supporting and referencing it.
Even though “borrowing” someone else's thoughts or ideas seems problematic when
writing your own works, Porter never paints it to be a negative concept. Intertextuality is not
inherently a bad thing, it is present in every writing out there, even in his. Much like every other
piece that was mentioned, Intertextuality and the Discourse Community by James Porter contains
intertextuality. None of what he was saying were his individual thoughts and opinions, he
definitely had to do some research prior to writing this journal, however these are his own words.
The article is original to him, the topic is original to something else. In this day and age, you will
never find a work that was written from an “autonomous individual”. The entire reading of
Porter’s writing is filled with straight up references and examples of other authors and writing
that use other people’s writing. In addition to that, he even includes a work cited page at the end,
further proving that this was a well researched, academic paper that used references to support
his claims. The intertextuality is right in front of us so I believe it is plausible to say that Porter is
following the principles he writes about.

Arellano 3
As a student with experience in English, language, and literature classes, I have been
conditioned to know how to break down multiple media and understand why and how a certain
piece of text is formatted. After reading James Porter, I see now that with the countless essays,
journals, poems, and plays I have read, intertextuality is the basis of everything that I have
learned in these classes. From the author's diction, choice of language, limitations within
choosing a genre, types of writing styles throughout the eras, plot lines, stereotypes, they are all
connected.
Arellano 4
Works Cited
Porter, J. E. (n.d.). Intertextuality and the discourse community - JSTOR. JSTOR. Retrieved
September 9, 2022, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/466015

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Arellano 1

As previously discussed, a discourse community is a group of people that are formed

following the principles he writes about.

September 9, 2022, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/466015

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