Intertextuality
Summary
Intertextuality is a word coined in 1966 by literary theorist, Julia Kristeva. What she was attempting to shed understanding upon with the development of this term, was the sophisticated and occasionally, hazy, supportive interconnectivity between works of literary art set in various historical periods. More specifically, it was her intent to demonstrate how words, phrases, definitions, and even context set in literary environments, are all related to one another, at varying extents. She set about to show that regardless of what works were created, or by whom, and when, all context, words, and phrases can trace their textual and descriptive lineage back to earlier works and vocabulary and literary prose contained in those works. The relationships between these words are rooted principally in how there are used in a particular work.
Synthesis
Since the type of works that may be considered for comparison to other works may span the width of time marking different historical eras, with perhaps hundreds of years separating them, it may not always be easy to recognize how one work written in the last ten years is even remotely related to another written even as recently as fifty years before that. However, it can be solidly proven, through all manner of media, from books, to movies, how words and phrases definitely share specific kinships among each other. One such example is a well-known line uttered by the supporting character, Morpheus to the main character, Neo, in the hit movie, The Matrix. Morpheus said that he would show Neo, “how deep the rabbit hole goes”. To the reader familiar with American Civil War era literature, this modern movie line would clearly present itself as an allusion, a very common intertextuality type relationship, that in this case, points to a very popular work of fiction called, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, written in 1865, by Lewis Carroll. In the realm of academic and professional disciplines, acquiring a clear understanding of how intertextuality binds compositional samples to one another, is a critical one. In this respect, Charles Bazerman discusses the various interconnecting relational nuances that occur between words used throughout time, and different periods. Bazerman indicates how we arrive continually arrive at giving value and importance to words due to their familiar relationships with other texts, noting that this type familiarization occurs because all of the words we use in our speech, and in textual language, originated in what he refers to as a, “sea of former texts.” (Bazerman and Prior, 2009, 1) These kinds of associative movements that we tend to formulate in relation to the words we use and hear, happens because we’ve ‘heard it all before’, as the saying goes, and it’s all been said, before. Bazerman further illustrates this point, thusly, and aptly: “When we read or listen to others, we often don't wonder where their words come from, but sometimes we start to sense the significance of them echoing words and thoughts from one place or another. Analyzing those connections helps us understand the meaning of the text.” (Bazerman and Prior, 2009, 1) Another area of immense and critical interest regarding textual relationships is the connection between onscreen words and verbiage, and how they relate to the art of creating meaningful dialogue, and conveying ideas. Typically, this is accomplished for the purpose of establishing compelling reasons for an audience to pay attention to what’s being communicated. Here again, the text is a critical relational element used to facilitate that purpose. Contextualization is also one of the chief elements at work in this circumstance, and it’s here that text serves as the adhesive agent that holds ideas, “words, drawings, colors, photographs, animations, sound, video, and so on”, to quote Anne Frances Wysocki, an expert in visual text technology. (Wysocki 2009, 123)
The fact that texts can have visual components to them that use graphics as a means of directly communicating ideas, or in the support of the communication of ideas in conjunction with worded texts, may seem very odd to those outside of the business of negotiating such elemental relationships. The history of visual texting is a very long one, as evidenced by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic messages depicting Egyptian lore, history and mythology on old Egyptian buildings from the days of the old god-kings. The use of visual texts are driving force behinds the vast majority of high exposure advertising, and for good reason; it’s visual cues, not what is spoken, or written, leaves a deeper impression on the mind. This is a major divergence from traditional composition theories and accepted practices.
Composition, like other forms of textual practice, is an evolutionary process, with purposes and techniques that have changed over the centuries to facilitate specific interests and needs. It has been referred to as a, ”largely conservative” practice that mostly “clings to the idea of writing about representation systems in verbal test because that’s what we do in composition”. (Williams 2001, 1)