"Invention and Identification Through Intertextual Appropriation of Academic Discourse"
About the AuthorGeorge Shamshayooadeh teaches English composition and literature at The National Hispanic University in San Jose, California. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in English at Old Dominion University with twin emphases is rhetoric-composition and literary studies. He holds two master’s degrees in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and English Literature. George has also taught at a number of community colleges in Northern California as well as San Jose State University. Prior to his work in Silicon Valley, he taught English composition and literature courses at a number of universities and institutions in Tehran, Iran, including the Islamic Open (Azad) University, College of Foreign Languages. His research interests are diverse and vary from composition theory and pedagogy to narratology and postcolonial fiction. Contents |
Case StudyAs a case in point, in “Intertextual Trips: Teaching the Essay in the Composition Class,” Nancy Kline illustrates the use of intertextual analysis by selecting essays for class discussion that have a clear dialogic relation with other texts and their authors. In particular, she explains how Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” could be used for close reading in the composition classroom since the letter was composed as a response to the eight white clergymen who had written to criticize King’s participation in Alabama’s peaceful protest against segregation. Thus, all the arguments in the letter that are deployed to persuade the skeptical clergymen are deployed to counter the clergymen’s stated or anticipated criticism, objections, and queries. Such a close, intertextual analysis that sheds light on how intertextual resources and connections are utilized and marshaled to attain certain rhetorical purposes would be instrumental to a pedagogical revamping of freshman composition classes since it goes far beyond the use of direct quotation and paraphrase and encompasses authorial and textual presuppositions and intentions toward which an essay is positioned. In practice, a class activity in which students are assigned to identify and highlight intertextual relations individually or in groups and be prepared to discuss them in the light of the rhetorical aims of the text at hand would assist in deepening students’ comprehension of intertextual relations and how they could be deployed to achieve rhetorical purposes. In my classes, I initially ask students to identify and explicate these intertextual relations in groups of three or four and ask them to be prepared to explain their findings to the class. Such cooperative group work also boosts students’ confidence since they often feel more comfortable engaging in the forum of small groups and receiving affirmation of their ideas by trying them out before addressing the entire class.As noted, the key point here is to ensure that students comprehend how these intertextual relations are used to achieve the overall effect in purposeful writing; as such, the next pedagogical step would be to move from intertextual analysis to production. This could be achieved by adopting a thematic approach in the selection of articles, essays and readings in which each topic is approached from multiple perspectives with authors that often position their arguments against one another’s differing views. Furthermore, students would be assigned to write multi-sourced essays in which arguments and ideas are used and synthesized from multiple sources to achieve the writer’s rhetorical purpose. Thus, students’ meta-cognitive awareness of intertextual relations is enhanced through modeling, discussion and analysis before they are asked to put it into practice in their writing.
In “The Rhetoric of Intertextuality,” Frank D’Angello indicates that “intertextuality can be a fresh source of invention not as lines of argument or modes of reasoning but as commonplace material in the sense of subject matter and striking ideas” (43). D’Angelo’s observation is perceptive since it articulates the fact that invention does not typically happen in a vacuum; rather, it is often the result of the writer’s interaction with a set of ideas and topics encountered in texts. However, I would argue that the arguments encountered in texts are critical as well since they lead writers to their recognition of what they agree with or disagree with and alert them to any potential gaps that need to be addressed and enunciated. Furthermore, intertextual relations provide the rich context for the topic(s) at hand through overlapping ideas, quotations, paraphrases, explicit and implicit allusions, and presuppositions.
In order to foster invention in my freshman composition and basic writing classes, I promote dialogic intertextuality by exposing students to antithetical arguments and ideas (e.g. pros and cons) on such controversial topics as death penalty, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, healthcare reform, sex/violence depiction in the media, marijuana legalization, and juvenile delinquency (how to cope with it in courts). This approach is compatible with Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright’s contention that “appropriation is one of the primary forms of oppositional production and reading” (350). The exposure to opposing views on debatable topics would compel students into positionality (e.g. adopting positions) by taking stands on the debatable issues and topics. Furthermore, they become intertextually knowledgeable through exposure to different views and stances on the issues under consideration.
One way intertextuality could be enacted in the classroom is through the use of collaborative groups and research projects. Thus, each group would select and identify a current, controversial and multifaceted topic or issue in the society and suggest a solution to it. This would necessitate research on the part of the group members. As members of a group, students would share a common topic or theme and attempt to approach it from different angles. Subsequently, each group member would write a multi-drafted research paper on a current social problem or relevant issue. Students would determine their topics within their research groups. Although they would do research in groups and present their topic as groups, each student would write her/his own research paper.
This practice is also congruent with Anne-Marie Deitering and Sara Jameson’s approach. In “Step by Step through the Scholarly Conversation,” they note that in order to “help our students understand the need to research before taking a position or narrowing a focus, both the FYC (First-Year Composition) faculty and the instruction librarians use the metaphor of conversation to demonstrate research and writing as recursive learning processes” (62). Similarly, the dialogic, intertextual approach would expose students to the heteroglossia or multiplicity of voices where the instructor will have the opportunity to underscore points of agreement (e.g. centripetal) and points of disagreement (e.g. centrifugal). When enacted in the composition classroom, the above practice would be useful in helping students understand the dialogic and intertextual nature of language as manifested in readings, writings, and class discussions in the way that Bakhtin elaborates in the The Dialogic Imagination:
Within the arena of almost every utterance an intense interaction and struggle between one’s own and another’s word is being waged, a process in which they oppose or dialogically interanimate each other. The utterance so conceived is a considerably more complex and dynamic organism than it appears when construed simply as a thing that articulates the intention of the person uttering it, which is to see the utterance as a direct, single-voiced vehicle for expression. (354-355)
The Bakhtinian dialogic framework, as noted above, could be productively utilized to help students interact not only with one another in class discussions but also with the various articles and texts and how they are positioned against one another. As such, the dialogic/interactive practice of writing could be enacted in such a way that promotes students’ own processes of meaning-making (through class discussions and collaborative group reading/writing activities) while situating these processes in the academic context and relevant discourse communities. This can be accomplished by positing a dialogic model for class instruction that underscores the interrelations between different readings, writing assignments, and participants in the classroom. The intertextual model needs to be implemented in student writing by emphasizing how writers use different intertextual sources to construct their authorial identities and ultimately become part of the practice and evaluation.
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