Reading Response #8

          "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" is an article, written by Jame E. Porter, that argues that plagiarism, in the way various institutions describe it, is simplifying the idea of how people reading such text (freshman university students and academic researchers) will write their papers, trying to seek original material where it's difficult to think such terms. As such, Porter says that in order to understand the rhetoric of writing, one should look at intertextuality, where writings have "traces" that evokes other writings, or ideas at the time, and eventually accept the familiarity needed to create any sort of articles, instead of someone trying hard to follow the rules of "plagiarism" and complicated their thinking that isn't needed. Once the writer is successful at this thinking, then he will reach a conclusion Porter strongly accepts: If the writer doesn't try hard to be another individual and accepts that his surrounding shapes him more than his own thoughts, then he will arrive at a discourse community that believes in "acceptability" rather than "originality", where social forces beyond them will shape their writings much more than their own thoughts on writers that inspired them to becomes writers in the first place. 

          Michael Kleine's research almost agrees with the sentiment. Thinking back to his article, his notes made a point that his subjects were very eager to talk about their work, even to the point of excitement that their work can be seen with conservations of peers, comments from other academic members, and the language used to express those writings. Does this mean that Porter's article is indeed a positive one for whoever takes his theory of intertextuality seriously, where Porter discuss that a "discourse community" can evaluate any kind of material in their work and make it worthy of discussion? Most likely.

Before You Read 

            Now what is the difference between an author and a writer? If someone were to ask me, I would say that the big difference would lie in the way the person writing inserts himself into the text. If the purpose was to express something that the person wanted to express that exists in his mind, then he's an author. However, if the purpose was to arrive at a point that the reader has to either agree or disagree with, then he's a writer. It all depends on skill too; if I see more and more of the author within the text I'm reading, then I'm not reading his goals, I'm reading intentions; an authorship I'm suppose to look for. Yet, if I have to rely on the text to figure out what it is the person creating the words, then I can't rely on the writer himself, I have to look at the text, figure out what it means, and find a reason the writer argues for, or against, the overall work. So, if there's a book that revolves around a story that's all about the ideals of the person writing it, then it's an author. If there's an article in a local newspaper, then it revolves around the words the writer has to work around.

Question for Discussion and Journaling 

          Thinking about my own evaluations, I would say that in the past, I would argue that it was about ideals, or how the way I write would all depend on whenever or not the people reading my material agreed or disagreed on my material; express myself on the topic I was either interested in, or the project I was assigned to do. Afterwards, it was up to the people reading actual the material on whenever or not they wanted more or less, but generally, it would be up to my mood at the time. In a way, it does match my own thoughts on evaluation--write what the writer thinks and see if he reaches at a point that satisfies him and I at the same time--, where my various biases might cloud what the writer wanted to reach at in the first place. We will just have to see if that will change as time goes by.

          For Porter's own article, I would say that it matches with his own principals pretty well.
There's this overwhelming need to reach at a conclusion that will appeal to a wider audience than to his own needs as a writer, and going beyond that, he argues strongly for writing for groups of common interests. Even his analysis on the Declaration of Independence could been seen as a lack of faith on his part for relying on that text for three pages, where his thoughts on the matter only serve to agree with his point of intertextulaity--that text rely on rhetoric background than the writer's own thoughts on the subject--than his argument for a more border community to judge such work.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

          According to the Student Handbook, Plagiarism is "Academic Dishonesty", a "Code A offense" that will result in the description below:

          "[a] student found to have violated any of the following regulation will be subject to a maximum sanction of expulsion, or any sanction not less than a reprimand...Plagiarism involves the presentation of some other person's work as if it were the work of the presenter. A faculty member has the authority to grant a failing grade...as well as referring the case to the director of judiciaries."

If someone was to use Porter's paper as a source to rewrite the offense, I would see it like this:

          "Plagiarism involves the ideas used by the student's social backgrounds without the writer himself consciously knowing. A faculty member can excuse the student from the failing grade if he, the student, can use the material to arrive at an conclusion that is wholly his own. If the writer just uses his research that still evokes other writer's arguments of a similar topic, to the point where the wording is exactly the same, then the faculty member has every right to grant consequences he sees fit."

Is there a difference? On a fundamental level, no, both rulings deal with the same issue: If a student claims another writing as his own, he will receive dire consequences. Looking at the structure of each, the difference seems to lie on how serve the punishment is; the original demands harsh punishment for the student to resort to such thinking, while my own will depend on the subjectivity of the member itself. So, the results would be less serve to the student, perhaps reviling himself of anxiety that doesn't need to be there in his own mind.

Meta Moment 

          Thinking about it, the way I see "writers" is still about the same, where the rhetoric of the writer and how he approaches the material is much more important than the material he has to work with. The only idea Porter's article did was to reconfirm my theory that, to writers, the way they see whatever it is they're writing about means something to tell in other ways readers cannot see, so to the reader, their goal is to figure out what it is the writer wanted to express, and once that's done, see if it fits with the thinking of either the writer's context, or matches with the thoughts of the reader itself. That isn't to say that I will ignore Porter's argument; on the contrary, if I were to use his writing, then that would mean I would have to stop thinking about becoming "original" and just come up with ideas, concepts, or abstract thinking that I see appealing and hope that audiences would join with me and perhaps sharpen my own thoughts on various topics.

          All in all, no one would find me arguing with Porter, since looking at his article, I would agree that trying to look on the accomplishments on the past will actually benefit the writer into reaching a point that can appeal to a certain audience that is past himself, since this is an idea I believe in before I read his argument. Going beyond that, I see his point on how plagiarism might simplify ideas too much, since all text refers back to previous text anyways. In fact, that topic opens up even more questions too: How much is too much?  What's the difference between a reference and outright theft? How much context is needed to excuse a passage from plagiarism? Hopefully such questions will be answered as class keeps going.