Intertextuality


 * Definition**

Intertextuality, a term coined by literary critic Julia Kristeva (1967), is defined as “the relational orientation of a text to other texts” (Bauman, 2004, p.4). Kristeva draws from Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of heteroglossia and polyphony to argue that the literary word has not fixed point and is instead “an intersection of word (texts) where at least one other word (text) can be read” (Schmitz, 2008 p.78). Intertextuality, as conceptualized by Kristeva, challenges structuralist theories that decenter the human subject by claiming that “every human being is nothing more than an intersection of preexistent discourses (Schmitz, 2008, p. 78)” created by human language and texts. Kristeva’s conceptualization of intertextuality became a prominent literary theory despite her broad focus on language and the human experience. The //Oxford English Dictionary// (2012) alludes to the efforts of theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michael Riffaterre to narrow Kristeva’s construction of intersectionality from the larger human experience to specific literary texts by defining intertextuality as “the need for one text to be read in the light of its allusions to and differences from the content or structure of other texts; the (allusive) relationship between esp. literary texts.”

Intertextuality is a literary theory that claims texts share certain aspects of their meanings when they become de-contextualized from one context and re-contextualized into another. As Bakhtin (1986) puts it, ‘the text lives only by coming into contact with another text (with context). Only at this point of contact between texts does a light flash, illuminating both the posterior and anterior, joining a given text to a dialogue,” (p. 62). Bakhtin observes that each production of text is not a solo production by a single author, but rather, “each act of textual production presupposes antecedent texts and anticipates prospective ones” (Bauman, 2004, p. 4). It is important to focus on the different social contexts that influence the production of texts by acknowledging the links between various authors and the multitude of resources these authors draw from (Porter, 1986). Associating a single author with a text serves the purpose of neutralizing contradictions associated with the intertextual nature of creating a text (Foucalt, 2010).


 * Intertextuality and Communication**

Intertextuality is essential to communication studies because of its focus on text examination, language, and social identity and interaction. There are two types of intersectionality that are prevalent in communication studies: iterability and presupposition. (Porter, 1986, p.35).


 * //Iterability//** refers to the repeatability of certain parts of a text. It can take the concrete forms of “not only explicit allusions, references, and quotations within a discourse, but also unannounced sources and influences, clichés, and phrases in the air, and traditions” (p.35). The meaning of a particular iterable fragment contains the meanings of other contexts in which it has been used in the past and adds to these meanings in its present usage to shape future appropriations of the fragment. Bauman (1986), for example, in his study of oral narratives, recorded two tellings of four different stories. The second telling of each story was recorded a number of years after the first. Bauman observed that in all four stories, “the maximally reportable act – that is, the point of the story – is an instance of quoted speech” (p. 59) and that while the author may vary how he tells the overall story, the instance of quoted speech remains exactly the same in both tellings of each story. These stories were intertextually related over time through the use of iterable quotations.

//**Presuppositions**,// according to Porter (1986) are 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’,” (p. 35). Porter gives the example of the familiar phrase “once upon a time…” which is automatically associated with the opening of any fictional narrative, even among children, without referring to the narrative in any which way. Wortham (2005) looks at how presupposed intertextuality used in interactions over time can help to establish a social identity (p. 98). In his study, he examines how teachers characterize a student over a nine-month time period. Although he finds some overt characterization of the student (i.e. “you’re a bad student”), he also observes covert signs that do not individually constitute a social identity of the student “but instead must be traced through the contingent process of emerging intertextual links across events” (p. 98). In this particular case, Wortham links the interactions between a teacher and a student over time and not only shows how each interaction presupposes other interactions, but how all the interactions link together intertextually to form a social identity for the student.

Intertextuality is also a prominent feature of media studies and influences studies of adaptation, interpretation, and appropriation of texts into other media. (Allen, 2012). Media technologies such as the internet, smart cellular phones, decentralizes the text from what one would consider an “original” author in order to resist transparent meanings by connecting texts to other texts in order to create a hypertextual experience (Schmitz, 2008; Allen, 2012) that continuously builds off of and integrates with other available texts. According to Allen, intertextuality fits into a process of remediation that expands the theory before the examination of language into visual and computer-mediated culture.

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 * References**

Allen, G. (2012). //Intertextuality// (2, revised ed.) Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge

Bakhtin, M. (1986). //Speech genres and other late essays// C. Emerson & M. Holquist, (Eds.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bauman, R. (2004). //A world of others’ words: Cross-cultural perspectives on intertextuality//. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Bauman, R. (1986). //Story, performance, and event: Contextual studies of oral narrative.// New York: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. (2010). What is an author? In. P. Rabinow (Ed.) //The Foucault reader// (pp. 101-120). New York: Vintage Books.

Intertextuality (2012). In // Oxford English dictionary. // Retrieved from [|http://www.oed.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/view/Entry/240987?redirectedFrom=intertextuality#eid]

Kristeva, J. (1967). Bakthine, le mot, le dialogue et le roman. Critique, 239, 438-465.

Porter, J. (1986). Intertextuality and the discourse community. i, 5(1), 34-47.

Schmitz, T. A. (2008). Intertextuality. In Modern literary theory and ancient texts: An introduction (pp. 77-85). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing

Wortham, S. (2005). Socialization beyond the speech event. //Journal of Linguistic Anthropology//, 15(1), 95-112.