Intertextuality 1

Lect. Wafa’ Abbas Sahan (PhD.)

What is Intertextuality?

Intertextuality refers to any explicit or implicit reference a text makes to other texts (spoken or written) be them produced in past, present, or carry potential future texts. The text therein builds multiple relations and positions itself within, as well as depends on other texts. Intertextuality refers to the case where a text exhibits relation(s) with other texts. An analysis in this respect would explore the relations of textual elements to numberless words in other texts, the way those words are operated. It examines the manner in which a text is placed with respect to other texts Bazerman (2004: 84, 86).

The term “intertextuality” as put in (Zengin, 2016: 313-17) had not been explicitly introduced until Julia Kristeva, the literary critic, feminist, and psychologist, coined the term and introduced it as a literary concept. She based her terminology on the ground founded by Bakhtin i.e. heteroglossia. Bakhtin assumed that texts are demonstrations of a diversity of discourses ranging from daily encounters to societal, literary, historical, discourses including even dialects or jargons in the same language. Language, thus, is formed in a heteroglossic structure. Bakhtin’s heteroglossia is Kristeva’s intertextuality. To them text carry dynamic dimension to structuralism rather than a fixed meaning imprisoned between the author, the addressee and the context (Kristeva, 1980: 65; Kristeva, 1986: 36).

• The ideological impacts of Intertextuality 

It is issued by Bazerman (2004) that the most explicit objectives of intertextuality are the formal expressions (the first two techniques mentioned above); they are more clearly recognizable and thus analyzable.

A kin intertextual analysis of a text as assumed by Bazerman (2004: 85) exposes:

1. the way writers draw other characters into their story

2. the manner through which writers locate themselves in the worlds of multiple texts

3. the resources and theories the writer relied upon or opposed

4. the ideas and intentions behind texts

5. the identity of a particular community in a society; the way they are presented and made sense of.

Relying upon the literature survey presented at the commencement of this section, intertextuality not only refutes the originality of textual products, it also highlights more the importance and existence of the reader. Text is no longer considered as novel or original because its formal-functional elements rely upon pre-existing texts; and therefore, the ideologies a text carries are transpositioned through preexisting textual ideologies.