Of the reading assignments for today, Bazerman's essay on intertextuality peaked my interests the most. In his work he describes intertextuality as the relation a text has to each text surrounding it. Bazerman goes on to explain how learning to analyze intertextuality can help us identify ideas, research, and knowledge behind documents and anything else textual. He seems to focus heavily on how a written text evokes a certain representation of the discourse situation and how that situation draws on other textual resources. As Bazerman sees it, no text can exist outside of, or independently from, other texts.
Bazerman then tries capturing the different aspects of intertextuality breaking it down into categories; levels of intertextuality, techniques of intertextual representation, intertextual distance or reach, and translation across contexts/recontextualization. The first two sections are explicit and easily understood (i.e. direct quotes, citation, etc), so I'll skip that and will move on to 'intertextual reach' and 'recontextualization'. Both of these are more implicit and require a bit more thought. They do, however, seem to go hand in hand with one another.
Recontextualization is when a reference or word is used in a work, then brought up multiple times throughout the work. Each time the word or phase is brought up, the meaning changes, giving new context. This concept can be used in philosophical works, having a specific term recur to further explain its meaning, or even have a metaphor recur to help explain different aspects of something. For example, explaining to someone how to properly write by making connections to baseball. If you have the same theme of viewing writing baseball reappear, then the message will change and become stronger and more clear.
Intertextual reach is how far a text travels for its intertextual relations, for instance (using a sports example again), if a newspaper stated that the president of the U.S. was "stepping up to the plate", we would know they didn't mean he was playing baseball, but rather, was dealing with something himself. The reach of the phase, "stepping up to the plate", transcends just sports casters commenting on a game. This is also an example of intermediality, or when a reference or resource moves from one media to another, i.e. talk radio, movies, or music is alluded to in written text.
When I originally saw the topic of the reading excepts, I was thrilled. However, as soon as I started reading I realized that intertextuality isn't what I had originally thought it was. I had anticipated the reading to pertain more to intermediality more so than to purely writing. The mixed media aspect came from how the word 'text' was defined in my other classes. This article was intertextual itself, in the sense that it built upon the word 'intertextuality' to change and further explain its own meaning for me.
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ReplyDeleteI will admit that I sometimes take an article at face value, so I'm really glad that you're bringing up the ideas of intermediality and how different media communicate effectively. Thinking about visuals as texts complicates Bazerman's levels and techniques of intertexuality, and open up new doors for recontextualization and intertextual reach.
ReplyDeleteTo briefly analyze some of Bazerman's techniques in different media, let's consider an online advertisement that uses an emotive visual as its main component and a billboard that uses Biblical verses and controversial images to condemn abortion. In the first, direct and indirect quotations could still apply (by using statistical information), but perhaps quoting text would not be as convincing as in print or if there wasn't a strong visual. For the second, the verses and images are a more easily applied technique that could be considered as commentary and evaluation of a recognizable issue.
Most advertisements use generally recognizable language since they have an intended audience in mind, but would like to appeal to as many audiences as possible to turn around a bigger profit.
Changing gears, if we consider art-- like graffiti, which can be considered a text if it communicates a message-- there are typically no references using words, so many of Bazerman's levels and techniques do not apply at all. Maybe these examples that are strictly visual with no words can reference other pieces of art, though, so then these can be intertextual.
Something else that your post prompts me to think about is how the idea of recontextualization is affected. This idea of recontextualization can be applied to propaganda. A picture from a past event can be reused with a different slogan in order to mobilize a new audience or get a new reaction. This image would have gained new meaning, hence it has been recontextualized.
In visual rhetoric, my friends had to remediate something, changing the medium (intermediality) and thus employing new strategies and techniques to communicate the message as effectively as its original medium. It's all about adaptation-- to the medium, the audience, the rhetorical situation as a whole.