Monteiro 1

Chryssa Monteiro

Professor Gardiakos

ENC1102

27 January 2023

Reading Response for “Make Your “Move”: Writing in Genres” and “Intertextuality and

Discourse Communities”

Genres and intertextuality are two major concepts used in writing and discourse

communities. First starting off with genre, it’s essentially different categories of writing or

different writing formats, for lack of better words. Examples used within the text “Make Your

“Move”: Writing in Genres”, from Writing Spaces, were wedding invitations and student

absence emails. Both of these have two completely different genres, formats. They each have

certain things that are required to make them unique to that genre, these would be called moves.

A move is basically a part of a genre that has a purpose for the audience who reads it. These

could be as short as a sentence, a few words within a sentence, or even paragraphs long.

Wedding invitations must have a part that actually invites the person to the wedding, that’s the

whole purpose of it (Jacobson, Pawlowski, and Tardy 217) . A student absence email must state

its purpose that the student will be absent on said day (Jacobson, Pawlowski, and Tardy 219). A

new example to explain the features of certain genres would be personal statements. These are

used for college applications and should include information that tells the college why you

should be admitted, why you. A personal statement has multiple moves that are quite important.

One move would be to explain why you chose this school and how it can lead you to what you

aspire to be. Explain to the school what attracted you that makes you feel like they’ll be able to
 Monteiro 2

lead you to success better than any other. Another move that would normally be included in a

personal statement would be some kind of story that adds depth to you as a person. People may

seem quite shallow if they don’t have anything to share other than superficial, generic facts about

themselves. A personal story allows the school to see what are some things that have added on to

your character. One last move that would normally be seen within a personal statement would be

your skills. The purpose of including some of your skills would be so that the school can see how

you would be an asset to them, how you could contribute. There are multiple different genres and

each one includes its own set of modes, which all of them allow you to communicate in different

ways to the audience. Such as, with a student absence email, you are communicating with your

professor about not being in class, or with the personal statement you are communicating with

the school what it is that makes you stand out from other applicants.

What goes hand in hand with genre would be intertextuality. This is a concept in writing

that basically can include a multitude of sources. In a more simple manner, intertextuality is the

idea that a piece of text includes ideas from various people/places. James Porter used an example

about the Declaration of Independence that can perfectly explain intertextuality. Thomas

Jefferson wasn’t the only name signed on this important document. There were various other

signatures on it because, although he may have written it, that does not mean all the ideas were

his. He incorporated John Locke’s theory as well as the English Bill of Rights, which neither is

originally from him (Porter 36-37). The intertextuality comes into play here because this is

essentially what it is, one piece of text that was formed with multiple ideas from other people.

Thus, Jefferson wasn’t the only one to sign it because credit must be given where it is due, and

that would be to the other’s who provided him with their own ideas. Porter includes
 Monteiro 3

intertextuality into his own writing when he includes the names of other people, trying to show

the audience that this text he has written was not solely his doing, ideas were woven in from

other people. Now, intertextuality plays a role in discourse communities as well. Discourse

communities determine what is considered acceptable based on what information it is that they

follow. Information that they have researched and sifted through to see what fits and what

doesn’t. An example of a discourse community and their guidelines would be the art industry,

more specifically abstract art. Everyone knows that abstract art isn’t meant to be something that

is recognizable, it’s just a visual expression of who the artist is. There are guidelines that sort out

abstract artists. Some of these being that, if your art has characters in it and/or things that don;t

have organic shapes of their own, you would most likely not be considered part of the abstract art

discourse community. Your art would belong in another community, such as pop art, because of

the constraints put on abstract art to keep it that way. Intertextuality comes into this community

specifically when it comes to what the artists actually produce. A painting can be inspired by

other artists' paintings, meaning that it's not a completely original idea. In the text by Porter there

is a phrase that relates to this saying how “... the creative writer is the creative borrower…”

(Porter 37). This relates to any discourse community, even artists, because that goes to show how

even though one may have an original interpretation from something, it’s not their own original

thought or idea. For abstract art, if someone wants to join this community, the artist can feel

inspired by others, but they have to have their own voice without overpassing the constraints.

Intertextuality seems complicated but, in my opinion, is quite simple to understand. It’s a

connection between multiple things. A text can be original, but there’s always a works cited page

at the end because not every single thought was original. The words within the text were inspired
 Monteiro 4

by those of others. With that being said, I agree with how Porter explained intertextuality to be

and how he incorporated it within his own text.

Works Cited

Porter, James E.“Intertextuality and Discourse Community”. Rhetoric Review. Vol. 5, No. 1

(Autumn, 1986), pp. 34-47

Jaconson, Brad, et al. “Make Your “Move”: Writing in Genres”. Writing Spaces. pp. 217-238