Post 4

Porter’s article revolves around the idea that all text is intertextual, which means that the text has been used before. His example for this was Thomas Jefferson and the writing of the Declaration of Independence. He states that Jefferson had used information that was previously written by Locke in his social contract theory as well as other famous writers of that time period. Jefferson’s ability to borrow traces effectively and to find appropriate contexts for them are what Porter believes made him a good writer. Intertextual writings revolve around discourse and because of this, being a writer is just being a part of a discourse community and writing for their specific rules and regulations. He states that intertextuality supports writing across the curriculum as a mechanism for introducing students to the regulating system of discourse communities. He also believes that students need to be taught to be pre-socialized writers and wont be sufficiently immersed in their discourse community to produce a proper report, unless taught this information before they begin to write.

According to Porter, the harm in writing as an individual, as isolated, and as heroic is because if a student is not properly immersed in their discourse community, this can cause students to learn to overlook vital facts of discourse production. Porter feels that this can lead to plagiarism and not being in the confines of a discourse community. I feel like this could also lead to unrealistic expectations from teachers or professors when they are assigning projects, because I feel that there is not always a discourse community that a paper or an assignment can be placed. There are original ideas out there and that does not necessarily mean that someone has plagiarized.