Intertextuality

[Mark A Peterson]

Here's two grafs on a paper on intertextuality and the mass media I currently have out under review:

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.

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.

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.

A few anthropological sources:
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.
Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59-88.
Briggs, Charles and Richard Bauman 1992. Genre, intertextuality and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2: 131-172.
Pedelty, Mark.  Forthcoming.  Mexican popular culture and development: An intertextual history of Agustin Lara’s Aventurera. In (Re)Developing Communication, Karin Wilkins, ed. Rowan and Littlefield.
Spitulnik, Debra. 1994. Radio cycles and recyclings in Zambia: Public words, popular critiques and national communities. Passages 8:10, 12, 14-16.
1996. The social circulation of media discourse and the mediation of communities. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6(2): 161-187.
1999 The language of the city: Town Bemba as urban hybridity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(1): 30-59.
In press. Media Connections and Disconnections: Radio Culture and the Public Sphere in Zambia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

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:

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)

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)
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.

Olson, Scott R. 1987. Meta-television: Popular postmodernism. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4(31): 284-300.


Mark Allen Peterson
Asst. Professor of Anthropology
The American University in Cairo
PO Box 2511, Cairo 11511 EGYPT
peterson at aucegypt.edu

"Laughter overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and authority."
          -- Mikhail Bakhtin

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/19991210/911a9a5d/attachment.htm>