Dialectical Notebook: Porter

Summary

In Porter's article, "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community", he discusses how it is nearly impossible to be a completely original writer and that writers inevitably, and sometime unintentionally borrow from other writers. Porter talks about how the concept of borrowing shouldn't be punished, but rather accepted within the discourse community. He gives the examples of Thomas Jefferson, who borrowed from Locke's ideas in order to form the Declaration of Independence. Porter also points out that writers are very constrained nowadays and that it's hard not to borrow from other writers.

Synthesis

I found that Porter's article was very similar to Allen's article, "The Inspired Writer vs. The Real Writer", because both talk about how writing typically does not come naturally to most people. It is an art that someone has to practice to become good at, and a perfect way to practice writing is to emulate another writer or other forms of writing. 

Response	Quotation
I feel that all writers can relate to this quote because almost everyone uses other writers as models for their own writing. People naturally take ideas from others and develop them and change them into their own.	“The writer in this image is a collector of fragments, an archaeologist creating an order, building framework, from remnants of the past” (Porter 87).
Porter shows that many texts use other texts as a foundation for their own. A lot of writing has to deal with the sharing the ideas and information of other texts.	“..texts refer to other texts and in fact rely on them for their meaning” (Porter 87).
This is a prime example that Porter gives to show how writers collect information from other writers in order to build their framework. Jefferson used a lot of Locke’s ideas when writing the Declaration of Independence.	“Locke’s theory influenced colonial political philosophy, emerging in various pamphlets and newspaper articles of the times, and served as the foundation for the opening section of the Declaration” (Porter 89).
This is probably my favorite quote from Porter’s article. It is very simple and it summarizes what Porter is trying to say in just a short sentence. I feel that a creative writer often time, borrows techniques from other writers and that those writers borrow from other writers, and so on.	“The creative writer is the creative borrower, in other words” (Porter 90).
Porter brings up a very interesting point in this quote. I like how he shows how a simple addition of a description of who was shot at the Kent State shootings was intended to shock the public. The fact that two women were shot instead of men, makes the statement more controversial.	““Two of them women” is shocking (and hence it was reported) because it upsets the sense of order of the readers, in this case the American public” (Porter 91).
Porter shows that many writers are confined to write a certain way and practically forced to borrow from others.	“We are constrained insofar as we must inevitably borrow the traces, codes, and signs which we inherit and which our discourse community imposes” (Porter 93)
This is similar to the last quote, in which writers are constrained by community standards to write a certain way. Porter says that a good writer is able to work around these constraints in order to make a change.	“The writer is constrained by the community, and by its intertextual preferences and prejudices, but the effective writer works to assert the will against those community constraints to effect change” (Porter 96).

Thoughts

I really enjoyed reading Porter's article and the points he brought up in his argument, especially the example of the Kent State shooting reports. He is very good at analyzing the textual techniques that are used by different people. The only thing that I didn't like so much about Porter's article is that it rambled on for a little while. I guess he was just trying to prove his point, which is understandable.