James E. Porter’s Idea of Originality in Intertextuality and the Discourse Community

As the world around us is growing rapidly everyday, we are easily overwhelmed by tons of new information. We rarely have the chance to think how digital technologies affect the way we gather the information and whether we are using it correctly. In the article “ Something Borrowed” by Malcolm Gladwell, he asserts that it is okay to use old ideas as long as the new work is transformative, and in the article The Plagiarist’s Tale” by Lizzie Widdicombe, she argues that copying is a creating process and continuous borrowing is a kind of art. Both the authors agree that borrowing is deemed to be acceptable as long as they are not entirely copying old work. It is true that everyone can have there own definition of plagiarism, and I believe that nothing

• the unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another person’s work and/or the presentation of another person’s idea(s) as one’s own.

Plagiarism is a temptation every college student faces. It's also a serious issue that doesn't always get taken care of. I think the way it has been dealt with is strange. Strange in the sense that there isn't just one procedure when it comes to the punishment of those who plagiarize. In Raymond A. Schroth's article, he focused more so on the professor's side of the issue. He also presented ways to prevent the issue in effective ways and gave information on not so effective way. I really enjoyed his approach to the article. Trip Gabriel's article brought to light just how common the issue of plagiarism is. It made me truly question the way students are taught how not to plagiarize and if it needs to be revisited or updated so it's more geared

In the article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community” James Porter points out to the audience that there is no original piece or writing. Porter’s article addresses the concept of plagiarizing. He does not oppose that plagiarizing is wrong, rather he claims that it is inevitable. Porter argues that in all pieces of writing are intertexual. Intertexuality is the idea that all writings have traces and ideas from other past text. Intertextuality is important to completely understand a piece of writing.

In the article Avoiding Plagiarism, Sue Burkill and Caroline Abbey discuss the ambiguous details of plagiarism. I completely agree that plagiarism is hard to depict. The article talk a lot about using your own words but it did not speak of the fact that your vocabulary could be closely related to an author’s vocabulary. In my experience, I have had my own complete thought before I research an article. While reading articles, I notice that the author shares similar views as well as similar language. In education, a common vocabulary seems to be a big topic for most school. We all end up at the same seminars. Therefore, we develop similar language. So, it is sometimes hard to distinguish between your complete thoughts and the writer’s

To create a piece of fabric, small textile fibers are crisscrossed, stitched, and sewn together. If unraveled, the individual fibers remain, but as a whole, they function collectively to make a larger and more significant piece. This is known as weaving, and it is argued by some literary researchers that this process of weaving can be figuratively applied to procedures of writing by way of intertextuality―the composition theory that claims all texts refer to other texts. From this assertion, James E. Porter’s “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” argues originality is nearly impossible to achieve, as no thought originates without influence from other sources; however, after examining the essays “All Writing is Autobiography” by Donald

In his 1843 didactic short story "The Birthmark," Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about the shortcomings and negligence of those who seek perfection throughout their lives. Aylmer, mad scientist and main character, is greatly encouraged by a romantic reverie to seek the removal of an aggravating birthmark from his wife Georgiana's face. Aylmer becomes trapped in a trance by his aspirations to the point where "he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace" (Hawthorne 74). Similarity, in the short story "Editha," William Howells portrays how romantic ideals instill false confidence and support an unrealistic perception of the outside world. The powerful persuasion by an unrealistic psyche is illustrated through the phrase "pocket providence", showing to be nothing more than a contagion, creating uncertainty and untenable expectations in all that encounter it.

On one hand, the author meant that “there’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature,” because he described how authors are inspired by other pieces of writing as poems or even paintings to write their literary work. They shared similar themes, characters or even they can combine many of literary features into their own that is the reason why readers have to be attentive in asking themselves: “where have they seen that before?” (pg. 29) Is it true that in chapters 4, 5 and 6 Foster describes that literature is affected by intertextuality to a certain extent, for instance, when writers lay back by prominent figures as Shakespeare or the

Ms. Wilensky believes that plagiarism occurs because “students leave high school unprepared for the intellectual rigors of college writing.” In college, the writing becomes more thorough, detailed, and the need for accuracy grows. Incoming freshmen are not taught crucial critical thinking skills needed for successful college writing while still in high school. I believe that this is true because high school teachers , especially upperclassmen teachers, are trying to prepare their students for the SAT/ACT and/ or state finals.

As per readings of Lecture 5 “Academic Expectations at GCU” Plagiarism is defined as the use of another person’s thoughts, ideas, words, quotations, or phrases without the proper acknowledgment of where the I information came from.

Sowden (2005:229) assumes the idea that Asian students seems to get accustomed with the memorization study approach with less critical thinking. In other words, the Asian students are more likely to learn by reproducing the existing knowledge and this reproductive approach seems to promote plagiarism as he has stated. However, it appears that Sowden attempts to explain the connection between the memorization approach with plagiarism by using implicitly assumption that memorization study approach is to reproduce the other’s idea and knowledge without citation, and this can be a part of plagiarism practice. His implicit assumption is seemingly wrong, as a matter of fact, the concept of memorization and copying is different to some extent. Memorization is a tool to support the overseas students to improve their language skills by memorizing how to write a well-written essay. This is not similar to copying which means to steal or use other ideas and claim to be their own. Liu (2005:237) also highlights this difference in his study, ‘Yet memorizing good writing to help one to learn better is not the same thing as copying other work and claiming it as one’s own’.

Another problem students may have with paraphrasing is that the language used in the paraphrase should be an accurate accounting of the source’s ideas. Good paraphrasing doesn’t just capture the ideas of the source. They don’t include your own opinions or omit important information. Just like in a quotation, be sure to either introduce the source at the beginning of your paraphrase or cite the source at the end of the sentence so that the reader knows these are not your ideas, but ideas from your

intertextuality  “a relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts”, that is, “the actual presence of one text within the other” (Genette 1,2), as we see in the case of quotations, allusions and plagiarism.

Plagiarism in writing, which could be defined as borrowing a creator’s original ideas and/or words without attributing credits where it’s due, is considered a big concern in higher-education level. The difference in ways of writing among regions and countries baffled me, thus resulted in my interest in the topic. One of the ethical issue concerns the role cultural background plays in forming students’ way of writing: some believe that plagiarism is acceptable in Asian countries, claiming plagiarism is a concept produced and mainly employed into practice in the Western nations, while other counter plagiarism is perceived the same way everywhere in the world – to be frowned upon. This essay will mainly explore the notion of whether culture shapes the way students perceive plagiarism, and if the previous statement stands true, should it be appreciated as one’s tradition.

Plagiarism is a act of imprinting another person's writing, conversation, or even ideas. This even includes the information one gets from WebPages, the published papers online and even articles