“Invention and Identification Through Intertextual Appropriation of Academic Discourse”

by George Shamshayooadeh | Xchanges 9.1

Methodology and Application

I propose the application of the Bakhtinian terms addressivity and appropriation as part of a composite intertextual framework that aims at achieving Burkean identification in the larger service of “persuasion” within the heteroglossic context of academic writing. Thus, identification and invention in academic contexts need to be (re)interpreted in the light of intertextuality, as conceived by the French poststructuralist critic Julia Kristeva, to capture thematic and structural interrelations of texts. Kristeva conceived of the text “as a mosaic of quotations” and noted “any text is an absorption and transformation of another” (66). This intertextual approach is appropriate for capturing the formation of identification within a discourse community by categorizing similar and/or congruent arguments and positioning them in relation to opposing views within a given text.

This model takes account of the dialogic nature of academic writing in which disciplinary alliances and positionality are of paramount significance. The dialogic model would be employed to help students interact not only with one another in class discussions but also with the various articles and texts germane to the issue or topic at hand. As such, the dialogic practice of writing could be enacted in such a way that promotes students’ own process of meaning making and negotiation through class discussions, collaborative group reading/writing activities while situating it in the academic context.

James Porter identifies two types of intertextuality: “iterability” and “presupposition.” The former term ascribes to the “repeatability” of “certain textual fragments to include not only explicit allusions, references, and quotations within discourse, but also unannounced sources and influences, clichés, phrases in the air, and traditions” (35). The latter term captures “the assumptions a text makes about its referent, its readers, and its context — to portions of the text which are read, but which are not explicitly ‘there'” (35).

Porter also notes that by underscoring “the intertextual nature of discourse … we shift our attention away from the writer as individual creator of the text and focus more on the sources and social context from which the writer’s discourse arises” (35). Thus, creativity and originality become less a matter of producing new language or ideas and more of applying them to new contexts and circumstances.

In “Intertexulaity: How Texts Rely on Other Texts,” Bazerman calls this application of existing terms to new contexts “recontextualization” (90). Thus, originality becomes less a matter of producing new language and more a matter of applying the available language to new contexts and circumstances. As Porter indicates, “the proper focus of audience analysis is not the audience as receivers per se, but the intertext of the discourse community” (43).