Porter, James E. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community." Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Ed.

Elizabeth Wardle and Ed. Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2011. 86-100. Print.

3.12.12 Brenton Spiro ENC 1101 1230-120PM Section 0004 Analysis: In response to question 4, before reading this article and looking over Porters ideas about how writing should be evaluated based on the acceptability within the readers community, I thought writing should be judged based upon the writers approach in regard to the topic and the style in which its presented. I think my view is somehow related to Porters since the approach and style that is applied when writing can directly affect the acceptability of the writing in a discourse community. In the past my writing has been judged based about how well I followed my teachers criteria and in a sense I think my teachers can my identified as being part of the readers community. So I sought acceptability from the specific readers community by means of following criterion, which means Porters view about how writing should be evaluated isnt much different than how Ive been evaluated in the past. In response to question 6, the harm in imagining writing as individual, isolated, and heroic is that writers develop unhealthy writing habits. We draw on precursors for conventions and models and by trying to be completely self-sufficient we might miss important elements that could make our writing more satisfactory.

Summary: In the article the author, James Porter, touches base with intertextuality or the concept that all texts contain bits of other texts and that there cannot be a text that does not take some ideas from other texts. The author discusses how we receive guidelines or perceived standards about the way we should write based on previous texts; we understand a text only insofar as we understand its precursors. Often authors try to maintain autonomy and originality so as not to be looked at as plagiarizing from other texts, but Porter argues that it impossible to refrain from applying some of sort of intertextuality to ones writing since all writers as a whole learn the basic processes of writing based on conventions presented in previous texts. A writer consciously writes to adhere to some sort of standards presented within their individual writing community, also known as the discourse community. Even though it can be done implicitly a writer does follow certain styles, mechanisms, and conventions previously presented by other writing done in their specific discourse community. A writer may not directly quote a precursor, but because they are abiding by some sort of writing code that has been previously established by other writers, they are still applying intertexuality to their methods and are therefore drawing on the ideas of other texts.