Anda di halaman 1dari 4

Rhetoric 4306: Writing for Business and Government Dr.

Huey Crisp Subrinia Bogan Assignment Due: June 23, 2013

Intertextuality and the Writing Process: Summary Writing has always been thought of as a way one could express their individual ideas and opinions; it was a freedom of expression. This is true to a point. When you move into the world of technical, business, historical, or scientific writing there is a loss of individuality. You are no longer writing for yourself, you are now writing for your department and the company you work for. The essay written by Dr. Jack Selzer talks about how writers get assimilated into a particular writing community who has set guidelines that are particular to that group. The writer assumes the identity of the group and is bombarded with its influences, that in effect changes a persons writing style. One thing that greatly influences the writing process is the intertextuality syndrome. Dr. Selzer talks about how an original text can give birth to future texts. All texts have some form of intertextuality in them, this is something that really cant be avoided. He uses a quote from Julia Kristeva who coined the phrase intertextuality she said, Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations: any text is the absorption and transformation of another. Intertextuality is not a bad thing, but it is just part of the writing process. There is a downside to intertextuality, especially in a business setting. The downside would be in the writing of documents. A document goes through so many hands and tweaked so many times that the true author of this document really wouldnt be known. One document would be absorbed into another one to form the current one.

My Response: I understand very well what its like to be in a particular writing community. Before I came to Rhetoric and Writing I was a History Major and I can tell these two writing styles couldnt be more different. Historical writing is very strict in nature and I was molded into what was thought of as a historical writer. No use of the I pronoun and very fact based as well it should be, but there is no freedom to express your true feelings about a topic. You had a certain guideline you had to follow and that was it. It was hard for me when I first came to Rhetoric and Writing because I was used to writing in a certain style. Since I have been in this department, I have learned to adapt a more relaxed style of writing. My approach is completely different when comes to writing essays and the like. Now I am more concerned with how my words are affecting the reader than making sure how accurate my historical dates are. Whether you know it

or not as a writer you will constantly be assimilated into different writing communities; they will all have their own peculiarities, guidelines and language. I have to say I LOVE the word intertextuality, this is just a really great word to say. Moving on, when I think of the concept of intertextuality I think of Romeo and Juliet. We all know the play but out of it came West Side Story, it intertextualized the text from Shakespeare. Another example I would like to use is Dr. Kings Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This is probably one of the greatest rhetorical pieces ever written. Dr. King used the Bible, incorporated the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, also parts of the First Amendment of the Constitution and other texts in his letter. I believe this is intertextuality at its best. This shows the power of intertextuality, Dr. Kings letter was written in 1963. Here I am using it in 2013. In his essay, Dr. Selzer uses a great quote, At the very least, texts are intertextual in their individual words, in that words carry a history. But it is not just a matter of history; in a kind of dialogue, words speak with other uses of those words in other contexts past, present, and future.(pg. 173) In the technical writing you have to ask the question, how can a document not be intertextualized? Most businesses use the boilerplate method, these are documents that have already been used for another department, but is recycled again. I think it would be really hard to escape intertextuality. Maybe thats not such a bad thing.

Rhetoric 4306: Writing for Business and Government Dr. Huey Crisp Subrinia Bogan Assignment Due: June 23, 2013

Discourse Regulations and the Production of Knowledge: Summary Anthony Pare has written a very insightful essay about discourse and knowledge. According to him, it all starts with what community a writer finds himself attached to. Community isnt the cozy term that everyone thinks it is. There is a darker side to the idea of community as far as writing is concerned. Dr. Pare draws the distinction of how it can control the access to knowledge. It is shown that discourse can be controlled through various methods especially in the workplace. Some of the examples used in the text are: Set roles and relationships among the writers and readers who may determine who says what to whom, as well as when, where, why and how it is said. (pg. 112 Ch. 8) Also the group think mentality is present, we are all guilty of this from time to time. The notion that this is the way things are done, is used to explain most bureaucratic red tape that exists in our society today. To show how far this mentality goes. Dr. Pare includes a study of social workers from Quebec that dealt with juveniles in the court system. The forms they had to fill out about the juveniles they were investigating is written in such a way that if followed to the letter the discourse allows certain information to be ascertained. These social workers had to fill out these forms and they did it without really giving much thought to what A) was being written and B) to what to form was asking. They simply followed the guidelines that was placed before them.

My Response: Reading this essay made me think of the essay about the NASA O-ring incident we read. The fact that many departments do feel that some knowledge is on a need to know basis is very scary. Writers in the workplace are at the mercy of discourse regulations because they do determine what is and isnt known. Take O-ring incident with NASA; the information by the community that expressed concerns about the O-rings never made to the right sources because others decided not to pass that information along. Writing is not as cut and dry as one would think, it is not just about putting pen to paper. You never really realize what forces can shape your writing. In the Pare essay, he makes the point that a communitys discourse determines the way the group and its individual members think.

(pg.113 Ch.8) Following this line of thinking, no member thinks for themselves. No one wants to be ousted from their community, you dont want to lose that identification with that community. This leads to many questions for me. I wonder how much of the information that we receive is based on the guidelines writers are following in their discourse community. How much information is being withheld from us by that same community?

Anda mungkin juga menyukai