"Intertextuality and the Discourse Community"

According to Porter in his text "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" he claims there is harm in imagining writing "as individual, as isolated, as heroic." In truth writing is shared and borrowed. Interextuality is the bits and pieces of text which writers or speakers borrow are combine together to create a new text, and all text has intertextuality. The article uses Thomas Jefferson as an exmaple of this. The Declaration of Independence is popularly viewed as the work of Thomas Jefferson, but after some researchers thorough examination, it was discovered that Jefferson was not the originator framer, or a creative genious. Rather, he was a skilled writer but mainly because he was a skilled borrower of traces. In fact, his most memorable phrase of the Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal," was borrowed from Euripides, and was a cliche of the times. Also, Jefferson's draft of the Declaration was edited vigorously by Congress. All in all, this example of Jefferson used means that he should get credit for putting traces together and molding the framework of the Declaration, but it was a group effort that created this document. Writers like Jefferson have achieved post-socialized status within some discourse community. "Students need to learn first what it means to write in a social context. They need to see writers whose products are more evidently part of a larger process and whose more clearly produces meaning in social contexts."