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Intertextuality
Dialogism and Intertextuality
Mikhail Bakhtin
Intertextuality refers to the linkages across texts or discourse events. The meaning of any text or utterance is shaped by what has come before it, as well as in anticipation of future responses.
The concept of intertextuality was first expressed in the work of Russian philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975). The ideas of the Bakhtin Circle came to prominence via the writings of Julia Kristeva.
Julia Kristeva
In articulating Bakhtin's work on dialogism, Kristeva coined the term intertextuality to describe the idea that "any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another" (Kristeva 1980, p. 66). In other words, various linkages exist between texts, or between different discourse events.
As Roland Barthes notes, "etymologically, the text is a tissue, a woven fabric" (Barthes 1977, p. 159). In this way, a text -- or more generally, any spoken discourse -- is woven out of previous pieces of discourse. In Kristeva's words, a text is therefore "a permutation of texts, an intertextuality" (Kristeva 1980, p. 36).
Bibliography:
- Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Michael Holquist (ed.) and Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, Vern W. McGee (trans.), Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (eds.). Austin: University of Austin Press.
- Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z, Richard Miller (trans.). New York: Hill and Wang.
- Barthes, Roland. 1977.
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- Music - Text, Stephen Heath (trans.). New York: Hill
and Wang.
- Bauman, Richard and Briggs, Charles L. 1990. "Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life." Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59-88.
- Briggs, Charles. 1992. "'Since I Am a Woman, I Will Chastise My Relatives': Gender, Reported Speech, and the (Re)Production of Social Relations in Warao Ritual Wailing." American Ethnologist 19(2): 337-361.
- Briggs, Charles. and Bauman, Richard. 1992. "Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2(2): 131-172.
- Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon S. Roudiez (trans.), Leon S. Roudiez (ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.
- Kristeva, Julia. 1986. The Kristeva Reader, Toril Moi (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
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