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<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Here's two grafs on a paper on
intertextuality and the mass media I currently have out under
review:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>As I am using it here,
intertextuality is an active social process involving the extracting of a
discourse or discursive element from one setting (decontextualization) and
inserting it into another (recontextualization) (Bauman and Briggs 1990, Briggs
and Bauman 1992, Lucy 1993, Silverstein and Urban 1996). As a semiotic
heuristic, intertextuality is intimately bound to such central linguistic
concepts as genre, self-reference, plagiarism, parody, irony and indexicality.
As an interpretive practice, intertextuality is communicative insofar as links
between the original setting and the recontextualized setting are recognized.
Recognition of intertextuality by an audience does not require intent on the
part of the producers of a text, although intent may be imputed to them.
Likewise recognition of intertextuality by some audiences does not imply
recognition by all, nor does it imply that audiences will make the same
intertextual references.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>The deliberate use of intertextuality
is a powerful tool for media producers to enhance consumption. Product
placements, spin-offs, parodic comedies and commercial tie-ins all depend for
their effectiveness on audience recognition of indexical and iconic intertextual
relations. But intertextuality is never entirely controlled by media producers.
. Intertextuality is a standard tool for social actors to use when faced with
ambiguity. Gumperz argues that participants in communications that violate
expectations always search for explanations; in this search, they "rely on
previous communicative experiences and their ability to establish
intertextuality by remembering specific ways of talking and the situations and
activities indexically associated with their use" (Gumperz 1996: 397).
Intertextuality thus involves both personal and social constructions of meaning
by active consumers who, in the process, shape and reshape mediascapes through
their communicative behaviors.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>My paper (At home with
intertextuality: Interpretive Practice, Thick Description and the Anthropology
of Media)discusses the possibility of using intertextuality as a way to conduct
ethnographies that examine connections and disconnections between producers,
texts and consumers. As the references suggest, my use of intertextuality
is based on recent uses in anthropological linguistics. Most of these seem
to originally derive from Bakhtin and/or Kristeva.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>A few anthropological
sources:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Armbrust, Walter 1998 Terrorism and
kebab: A Capraesque view of modern Egypt. In Sherifa Zuhur, ed. Images of
Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East. Pp. 283-299. The
American University in Cairo Press.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial
size=2>Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs. 1990. Poetics and performance as
critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology
19: 59-88.</FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Briggs, Charles and Richard Bauman
1992. Genre, intertextuality and social power. Journal of Linguistic
Anthropology 2: 131-172.</FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Pedelty, Mark. </FONT><FONT
color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Forthcoming. Mexican popular culture and
development: An intertextual history of Agustin Lara’s Aventurera. In
(Re)Developing Communication, Karin Wilkins, ed. Rowan and
Littlefield.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Spitulnik, Debra. 1994. Radio cycles
and recyclings in Zambia: </FONT><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Public
words, popular critiques and national communities. Passages 8:10, 12,
14-16.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>1996. The social circulation of media
discourse and the mediation of communities. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
6(2): 161-187.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>1999 The language of the city: Town
Bemba as urban hybridity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(1):
30-59.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>In press. Media Connections and
Disconnections: Radio Culture and the Public Sphere in Zambia. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Intertextuality is hot in media
analysis generally and there is a growing literature. In addition to the
many citations so far offered, you might also find the following
interesting:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Andersen, Robin. 1995. Consumer
Culture and TV Programming. Westview. (The last chapter, on
intertextuality between commercials and story on Seinfeld is worth the price of
the book)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Browne, Nick 1984 The
political economy of the television (super)text. Quarterly Review of Film
Studies 9(3): 174-182. (Offers a vocabulary for talking about intertextuality on
tv)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>
<P>Newcombe, Horace M. 1988. One night of prime time: An analysis of
television’s multiple voices. In Media, Myths and Narratives: Television
and the Press. Pp. 88-112. James W. Carey, ed. Beverly Hills:
Sage.</FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Olson, Scott R. 1987.
Meta-television: Popular postmodernism. Critical Studies in Mass Communication
4(31): 284-300.</FONT></DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>Mark Allen Peterson<BR>Asst.
Professor of Anthropology<BR>The American University in Cairo<BR>PO Box 2511,
Cairo 11511 EGYPT<BR><A
href="mailto:peterson@aucegypt.edu">peterson@aucegypt.edu</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 face=Arial size=2>"Laughter overcomes fear, for it
knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and
authority."<BR> --
Mikhail Bakhtin</FONT></DIV>
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