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Audrey Arellano

Professor Gardiakos

ENC1102

15 September 2022

Genre Analysis and Intertextuality

After reading Creating, Using, and Sharing Information in Research Communities by

Cassie Hemstrong and Kathy Anders, we are familiar with the concept of discourse communities

requiring certain criteria in order to function socially and understand each other to work towards

their shared goal. This includes but is not limited to communication, audience, academic

conversation, and language, but another important subject to this would be genre. Genre is what

the community shapes their content into a platform that will effectively reach their equals or

audience. Knowing how to dissect and write the genre within a discourse community is critical

for constructively conveying your message.

For a research community, a research paper, article, or journal is the most straightforward

platform for displaying and sharing said research. Rhetorically speaking, the research article is

the genre for the research community. Furthermore, much like any other form of writing, there

are going to be elements of intertextuality, where the author is taking content from other sources

and working the information into their own writing. In the article A Time to Dream: Black

Women’s Exodus from White Feminist Spaces, we are presented with an academic paper of no

personal bias, where researchers focus on BIPOC and black women’s struggle to not only fight

for survival, but also for their rights as women. Without even having to read the article, the

audience can immediately form the idea of what kind of problem is going to be addressed in this

article. In order to follow the nature of this genre, there needs to be a sort of pull, in this case the
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header, that gets the reader interested without boring them. Due to the nature of this research

article, it is most likely that the discourse community involved in this topic and the ones that are

going to be reading this would be other researchers specializing in gender studies and activism,

as the entirety of this article explains the problem with racism and predominately white, yet

women based communities.

The article as a whole focuses on the main question of what these black women have to

endure and what changes can society do in order to help them live a more peaceful and equal

life? However, in order to do so, the authors had to organize their thoughts and information,

especially when there are a lot of facts and explanations to do. Typically, this genre with this

kind of question will first state the problem, for example it is the corruption and struggles of

POC in their workplace, followed by an explanation, why these struggles are so impactful, and

closes it with a solution. This article specifically does in fact follow this format, making it easier

to read, especially for a piece of writing that is on the longer side, and the authors also utilize

headers before every chunk of writing that may have a different direction from another section in

the article. For example, one header within the article says “A Dream and Promise for Something

New” and then they proceed to explain temporary bliss and empty promises, however there is no

long term fix to the systemic problems in this institution. It is something eye-catching, and it still

shows passion for the topic without making it feel too personal and too biased, which helps keep

it grounded and professional. This is why the researchers writing these research papers need to

consider the kind of word choice they use because at the end of the day, this is an academic

paper that is going to be shared with other scholarly peers and needs to maintain that kind of

sophistication to establish credibility as a writer and a researcher in the discourse community.

This genre requires the author to balance the flow of content, evidence, commentary, and
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emotion all while keeping it relevant to the topic. It is one thing to have all of the information

written in one piece of writing, but if it is not displayed in an organized manner, it will become a

difficult and uninteresting reader and overall will not make any sense.

The ideas inside Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, written by James Porter,

help us understand that a research paper is not a research paper without the actual research. This

is where intertextuality comes into play. The authors of A Time to Dream: Black Women’s

Exodus from White Feminist Spaces, Staci M. Perryman-Clark, Mariam Konate, and Jennifer

Richardson, did not collectively come up with the exact same idea and write an entire article

based on their own cognitive thinking. It may have inspired them, but nothing in this article is

purely original and that is completely normal for this kind of genre. In fact, citing your resources

and using quotes and statistical information from other documents within the article is almost a

required practice. It shows that you truly did your research, which makes sense since this is quite

literally a research article. This article’s works cited page specifically has Twenty listed

academic journals and articles. This shows that dedication and time was put into writing Black

Women’s Exodus from White Feminist Spaces and that adds credibility towards the authors

because the audience, other researchers in this field, see that they put effort into genuinely

finding scholarly resources and trustworthy statistics in order to make their own writing as

reliable as it can be. What this allows is room for academic conversation from one person in this

discourse community to another.

A specific example from their citations page is The Souls of Black Professors by Colleen

Flaherty, and I chose this because the article focuses on the voice scholars themselves and their

experience with racist learning environments and how diversity interventions are rigged and

unhelpful. Perryman-Clark, Konate and Richardson most likely chose this to get that insider’s
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appeal and to understand the emotions of these mutual struggles. This is important as their entire

brand surrounds black survival in systemic racist conditions. Having this testimony brings

advantage to these authors as they can use second hand experiences as evidence in order to

appeal to their audience. It is crucial to know that a purpose must be stated or at least clearly

present within any writing, and since the main exigence of Black Women’s Exodus is to talk

about how and why black women work towards equality, this type of intertextuality is very

helpful in shaping the reason why this article was written in the first place.

Two other articles cited, A Tightrope of Perfection: The Rhetoric and Risk of Black

Women’s Intellectualism on Display in Television and Social Media and Necessary Adjustments:

Black Women’s Rhetorical Impatience, both written by Tamika L. Carey, do similar jobs of

narrowing the problem into the more feminist side of this topic. While The Souls of Black

Professors still discussed the problems in the workplace, these two go more into how women

may feel the burden even moreso. The majority of it dances around how it is one thing to be a

person of color, but it is another thing to be a person of color and a woman. On top of that, it

provides more insight on what has been done by these women in order to improve this situation

and the kind of attention and attitude that they needed in order to fight for their cause. Not only

does this develop the overall theme of Black Women’s Exodus, but it also supplies the author

with more supporting documentation of base content and an idea for a solution to the problem.

Since both of these example articles were written by the same individual, there is a sense of

familiarity in writing style and knowledge, so you know that both of these are going to connect

in some way and support each other. Having this kind of support system is extremely helpful in

developing the research article because there is plenty of insight to work with.
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All three examples of intertextuality here hold up the concept of the article, only further

proving what James Porter kept on saying about how multiple works can effectively still create

something somewhat new. The tactic these authors used was mainly adapting current and similar

notions into a single more specific structure. There are several quotes pulled from said resources,

but the outside academic information is just used as proof that this kind of evidence exists and

that they are the facts, all for the purpose of strengthening the author’s point. The borrowed

sources may state that action must be taken in order to disrupt the status quo, but the article was

the one who stated the specific kind of actions. By reading the article and the other writings that

it derives from, you can tell that all of the points are inherently the same, but it all comes down to

how the authors utilize the text for their benefit.

Using practices from Backpacks vs Briefcases: Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis by

Laura Bolin Carroll, the authors of this article have carefully dissected and analyzed the

information they present themselves with and fit everything together within this genre. They

have their exigence: the problem of corrupted structures in organizations that are innately

difficult for black women to thrive in due to enabled disadvantages. They have their audience:

the other researchers that are of similar political and social views. These may be people who

might have felt personally connected to the topic themselves which could have driven them to

the article in the first place. Perhaps they were simply interested in gender and human studies

and their impacts. Regardless, the audience is going to be one of the main ways of getting any

word out there, especially if the problem is interesting or controversial enough. Since this is a

research article, there is bound to be some intellectuals that will find it, because research papers

are written to be read and shared, and just maybe a person within the audience will have enough

reputation and influence to take the concepts from that writing and bring it to life. All the more
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reason why the author must do their research to guarantee quality writing for others. And lastly,

they have their constraints, and these come in many forms. Lengthwise, it is logical for this

article to be on the longer side because it contains so much information. The audience already

expects this since it is mainly targeted towards the people within the discord community. Even

though many others may be welcomed to read it as well, its lengthy structure may come off as

intimidating and boring to common eyes. There are constraints when it comes to the

intertextuality part. They need to know the boundaries between straight plagiarism and evidence.

At the end of the day, they want to present existing information all while having that

individuality from any other writer and writings. There are constraints in their language because

even though this article is very passionate, there needs to be no bias or personal expressions

because this will take away from the author's credibility as a pure research author and overall

tone of the article. There has to be a balance in using pathos to appeal to the reader, but also

keeping it neutral enough to show you are strictly stating the facts.

Due to the nature of this genre, the article, and the elements of intertextuality, there is a

platform for communication between the authors, the audience, which is fundamentally the

discourse community. Interaction started from the twenty resources, which were read and

examined between the authors, who then wrote the article, and published it for the rest of the

discourse community to see. There is academic conversation at hand since knowledge is being

attained, shared, and/or adapted depending on the individual. The adaptation part is particularly

interesting considering the fact that even though many within the community ultimately share

close mindsets, there is this open-minded mentality that may need to be present in order to accept

new information and ideas that will better their community.

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Works Cited

Carey, T. L. (n.d.). A tightrope of perfection: The rhetoric and risk of black women's

intellectualism on display in television and Social Media. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved

September 19, 2022, from

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02773945.2017.1392037

Carey, T. L. (n.d.). Necessary adjustments: Black Women's rhetorical impatience. Taylor &

Francis. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07350198.2020.1764745

Carroll, L. B. (n.d.). Writing spaces. Writing Spaces. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from

https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/backpacks-vs-briefcases-steps-toward-rhetorical-

analysis/

Flaherty, C. (n.d.). Scholars talk about being black on campus in 2020. Scholars talk about being

Black on campus in 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/21/scholars-talk-about-being-black-

campus-2020

Hemstrong, C., & Anders, K. (n.d.). Writing spaces. Writing Spaces. Retrieved September 19,

2022, from https://writingspaces.org/creating-using-and-sharing-information-in-research-

communities/

Perryman-Clark, S. M., Donate, M., & Richardson Dr. Staci M. Perryman-Clark serves as the

Director of the Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies at Western

Michigan University, J. (2022, March 1). A Time to dream: Black Women's Exodus from
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White Feminist Spaces. Present Tense. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from

http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/a-time-to-dream-black-womens-exodus-

from-white-feminist-spaces/

Porter, J. (n.d.). Intertextuality and the discourse community - JSTOR. JSTOR. Retrieved

September 20, 2022, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/466015