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Professor Sisary Poemape Heredia
ENGL 102-08
23 September 2023
A Comprehensive Blueprint for Empowering Student Writers: The Role of Intertextuality,
Discourse Community, and Proficiency in ‘Copying’, Structuring, Linking, and Expressing.
As a college student writer, I appreciate the profound influence of intertextuality and
discourse community concepts I have encountered in composition class and understand that
writing or language, the bridge connecting people's thoughts and the world, holds immense
power. Nevertheless, as I delve into linguistics and its practical application, two distinguished
scholars, James Paul Gee and James E. Porter, urge me to broaden my perspective. In a world
where words are woven into the entire fabric of society, they challenge me to go beyond
grammar books and not be too concentrated on pursuing free, independent, and creative writing
(Porter,34). In addition, they urge me to truly explore the profound positive impact and power of
writing in shaping who I am and how writing is adopted and significantly influenced by the
social context while also making an impact on the community's discourse value.
Most importantly, recognizing and valuing the significance of intertextuality, becoming
effect borrowers of different texts and resources, and cultivating proficiency through practices
are the keys to success in writing. In this paper, I aim to emphasize the power of intertextuality
and the importance of considering discourse, especially from the reader’s perspective and within
the context of the discourse community. Moreover, I intend to provide and share specific steps
, 2
that cultivate me to become a more efficient, confident, and successful writer, which can further
benefit and contribute meaningfully to my academic learning journey.
Significance of Intertextuality
Intertextuality plays a significant role in writing in many ways. It provides writers with
more insights, creates a handful of texts that can be used, and eliminates overwhelming
experiences that most college writers often encounter. Majority of people believe that a good
writer is someone who create original ideas, however, Porter does not agree with it and I believe
he is true. Porter insists that even though people concentrate more on pursuing freedom,
independence, and creative writing now, there is still an interconnection between other texts and
ideas (Porter, 34). Those texts are not isolated, self-contained entities. Instead, they form a web
of relationships with other texts; as Vincent Leitch also indicates, "The text is not an autonomous
or separated object, but a set of relations with other texts", yes, indeed all the pieces people view
as disparate contents indeed web together to create a great whole, a whole that can also be
creative and ordinary in writing. Porter also indicates that "Every new text has the potential to
alter the Text in some way" (Porter, 41), a view that I wholeheartedly agree with. I firmly believe
that the power of each new piece of writing lies in its capacity to reshape our shared body of
knowledge.
For instance, considering the phrase "That all men are created equal," it is not an entirely
original thought. Instead, it traces its lineage back to the ancient Euripides, which Jefferson took
down as a note as a boy (Porter, 36). This simple example illustrates the concept of
intertextuality- how writings, even those that appear to be individualized or distinct expressions,
are often linked and have the potential to influence one another.
XXXX
Professor Sisary Poemape Heredia
ENGL 102-08
23 September 2023
A Comprehensive Blueprint for Empowering Student Writers: The Role of Intertextuality,
Discourse Community, and Proficiency in ‘Copying’, Structuring, Linking, and Expressing.
As a college student writer, I appreciate the profound influence of intertextuality and
discourse community concepts I have encountered in composition class and understand that
writing or language, the bridge connecting people's thoughts and the world, holds immense
power. Nevertheless, as I delve into linguistics and its practical application, two distinguished
scholars, James Paul Gee and James E. Porter, urge me to broaden my perspective. In a world
where words are woven into the entire fabric of society, they challenge me to go beyond
grammar books and not be too concentrated on pursuing free, independent, and creative writing
(Porter,34). In addition, they urge me to truly explore the profound positive impact and power of
writing in shaping who I am and how writing is adopted and significantly influenced by the
social context while also making an impact on the community's discourse value.
Most importantly, recognizing and valuing the significance of intertextuality, becoming
effect borrowers of different texts and resources, and cultivating proficiency through practices
are the keys to success in writing. In this paper, I aim to emphasize the power of intertextuality
and the importance of considering discourse, especially from the reader’s perspective and within
the context of the discourse community. Moreover, I intend to provide and share specific steps
, 2
that cultivate me to become a more efficient, confident, and successful writer, which can further
benefit and contribute meaningfully to my academic learning journey.
Significance of Intertextuality
Intertextuality plays a significant role in writing in many ways. It provides writers with
more insights, creates a handful of texts that can be used, and eliminates overwhelming
experiences that most college writers often encounter. Majority of people believe that a good
writer is someone who create original ideas, however, Porter does not agree with it and I believe
he is true. Porter insists that even though people concentrate more on pursuing freedom,
independence, and creative writing now, there is still an interconnection between other texts and
ideas (Porter, 34). Those texts are not isolated, self-contained entities. Instead, they form a web
of relationships with other texts; as Vincent Leitch also indicates, "The text is not an autonomous
or separated object, but a set of relations with other texts", yes, indeed all the pieces people view
as disparate contents indeed web together to create a great whole, a whole that can also be
creative and ordinary in writing. Porter also indicates that "Every new text has the potential to
alter the Text in some way" (Porter, 41), a view that I wholeheartedly agree with. I firmly believe
that the power of each new piece of writing lies in its capacity to reshape our shared body of
knowledge.
For instance, considering the phrase "That all men are created equal," it is not an entirely
original thought. Instead, it traces its lineage back to the ancient Euripides, which Jefferson took
down as a note as a boy (Porter, 36). This simple example illustrates the concept of
intertextuality- how writings, even those that appear to be individualized or distinct expressions,
are often linked and have the potential to influence one another.
