“Invention and Identification Through Intertextual Appropriation of Academic Discourse”

by George Shamshayooadeh | Xchanges 9.1

Conclusion

In short, the Bakhtinian terms addressivity, utterance, heteroglossia along with the term appropriation as the organizing conceptual principles, operating within an intertextual framework, would be instrumental in directing students’ writing by positioning them as authors who appropriate texts to achieve persuasion through Burkean identification. In the words of Jesson, McNaughton, and Parr, students are taught to become “agentive appropriators of knowledge resources, and the creators of their own learning tools” (73). This composite framework would foster a rich, constructive environment that would be conducive to generating nuanced writing by granting students agency to draw on their intertextual knowledge of various texts and their use of disciplinary and intertextual terms to achieve identification or consubstantiality by addressing their envisioned audience.

The emphasis on a dialogic intertextual context in which student-writers interact with various texts in their readings and writings and with one another would foster appropriation and transformation of language and ideas from the common web of ideas and signs. Consequently, the construction of textual identity becomes more an issue of textual appropriation of already existing ideas and applying them to new situations as well as taking positions on disciplinary, intertextual debates rather than creating them anew. This intertextual approach would likely prove beneficial to the diverse students at many American universities who are trying to negotiate their textual identities in writing.

In brief, what distinguishes this approach from current pedagogical practices in many composition classes is the coordinated selection of texts in freshman composition classes that rely explicitly and implicitly on other texts as well as the use of intertextual analysis. The explicit focus of the latter allows students to metacognitively recognize and comprehend intertextual relations in all their complexity while acquiring an in-depth understanding of these relations with specific emphasis on addressivity toward one’s intended/envisioned audience as well as positionality, which encapsulates the position the writer adopts in relation to a given topic and renders the textual production purposeful.