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A special issue on intertextuality
LINGUISTICS
AND EDUCATION
4, 255-256
(1992)
A Special Issue on Intertextuality This issue of Linguistics and Education contains six articles on intertextuality. Subsequent issues of the journal will contain other articles on intertextuality and articles that make use of the concept of intertextuality whether explicitly naming it or not. The concept of intertextuality is not new. Although use of the term can be traced back to Julia Kristeva’s work, certainly the concept has existed in previous work and can be seen even in the earliest discussions of language and literature. Yet, there is something new about the way in which the concept of intertextuality is being used in contemporary scholarship in linguistics and education. One of the ways the scholarship on intertextuality is new is in the work that the construct is being asked to accomplish: challenging and supplanting extant definitions of reading, writing, language, discourse, social interaction, social context, individual differences, instruction, and curriculum; realigning the relationship of social theory, social change, and language; and refocusing attention on the dialectics, history, and social dynamism inherent in language. In addition, the scholarship on intertextuality is new in where intertextuality is located. Reflecting the current diversity of linguistic, literary, and educational views of language, intertextuality is variously located in the reader (and his or her previous readings), in the interaction between a reader and a text (or perhaps more accurately in the transactions among readers and texts), in social interaction, in the social semiotics of language, in classrooms (viewed as diverse linguistic environments), in the discourse structures of the various institutions in which we live as well as in how we contest the confines of those discourses, among other locations. Absent are the views of intertextuality as simply a given in a text, or as simple reiterations of a string of words from a previous text. Absent also is the need for a single definition of intertextuality. While in their own work scholars may define intertextuality in a particular way in order to accomplish a particular purpose, and while they may even subdivide intertextuality into various types (e.g., Fairclough’s distinction between intertextuality and interdiscoursivity), intertextuality is as much defined by the purpose to which it is put as by abstract definition. The move beyond a single definition of intertextuality reflects an awareness that the meaning, significance, and consequence of any word depends less on the dictionary and on authority than on where that word is located among texts, histories, events, discourses, people, and social events, and that the meaning, significance, and consequence of any word is always changing and always open to being contested. It is, of course, impossible for any of the authors or for me to predict how you will read and use the articles in this issue. We cannot predict what texts you will 255
256
D. Bloome
have in mind as you read the articles or how you will interpolate them. We cannot predict in what events or circumstances you might use any one of the articles or parts of them or what functions or roles such use might take. And it is quite likely that there will be great variation in the texts brought to bear on the articles in this issue, in the circumstances and events in which they are used, and in the meanings, significances, and consequences they accrue. The situation-like the situation of contemporary research on language in general-is fluid, creative, uncontrollable, and unstable. It is a state of affairs to be enjoyed. David Bloome University of Massachusetts
/ University
of Sussex
AND EDUCATION
4, 255-256
(1992)
A Special Issue on Intertextuality This issue of Linguistics and Education contains six articles on intertextuality. Subsequent issues of the journal will contain other articles on intertextuality and articles that make use of the concept of intertextuality whether explicitly naming it or not. The concept of intertextuality is not new. Although use of the term can be traced back to Julia Kristeva’s work, certainly the concept has existed in previous work and can be seen even in the earliest discussions of language and literature. Yet, there is something new about the way in which the concept of intertextuality is being used in contemporary scholarship in linguistics and education. One of the ways the scholarship on intertextuality is new is in the work that the construct is being asked to accomplish: challenging and supplanting extant definitions of reading, writing, language, discourse, social interaction, social context, individual differences, instruction, and curriculum; realigning the relationship of social theory, social change, and language; and refocusing attention on the dialectics, history, and social dynamism inherent in language. In addition, the scholarship on intertextuality is new in where intertextuality is located. Reflecting the current diversity of linguistic, literary, and educational views of language, intertextuality is variously located in the reader (and his or her previous readings), in the interaction between a reader and a text (or perhaps more accurately in the transactions among readers and texts), in social interaction, in the social semiotics of language, in classrooms (viewed as diverse linguistic environments), in the discourse structures of the various institutions in which we live as well as in how we contest the confines of those discourses, among other locations. Absent are the views of intertextuality as simply a given in a text, or as simple reiterations of a string of words from a previous text. Absent also is the need for a single definition of intertextuality. While in their own work scholars may define intertextuality in a particular way in order to accomplish a particular purpose, and while they may even subdivide intertextuality into various types (e.g., Fairclough’s distinction between intertextuality and interdiscoursivity), intertextuality is as much defined by the purpose to which it is put as by abstract definition. The move beyond a single definition of intertextuality reflects an awareness that the meaning, significance, and consequence of any word depends less on the dictionary and on authority than on where that word is located among texts, histories, events, discourses, people, and social events, and that the meaning, significance, and consequence of any word is always changing and always open to being contested. It is, of course, impossible for any of the authors or for me to predict how you will read and use the articles in this issue. We cannot predict what texts you will 255
256
D. Bloome
have in mind as you read the articles or how you will interpolate them. We cannot predict in what events or circumstances you might use any one of the articles or parts of them or what functions or roles such use might take. And it is quite likely that there will be great variation in the texts brought to bear on the articles in this issue, in the circumstances and events in which they are used, and in the meanings, significances, and consequences they accrue. The situation-like the situation of contemporary research on language in general-is fluid, creative, uncontrollable, and unstable. It is a state of affairs to be enjoyed. David Bloome University of Massachusetts
/ University
of Sussex