Before diving into Douglas Eyman’s thoughts on intertextuality, I had thought that intertextuality meant finding a relationship between two different texts.
In a way, intertextuality IS that. It is comparing two different texts, whether the texts are physical or digital media, and trying to find a compelling relationship between them. English class has ingrained that into my head every since I could read. By doing so, I learned to develop my comprehension skills so I can think of “the bigger picture”. I often find intertextuality in practice within my own life when I want to talk about themes in literature, like writing a post on my personal blog about “the tragedy of immortal characters” and then pulling several different books together as examples that fit that theme. I find joy in discovering unlikely connections between seemingly unrelated things.
In a way, intertextuality is also not just finding a connection between two texts.
Intertextuality could look like many sorts of things. It is not limited to articles and books, things you primarily think of as “texts”. It could also be surrealist memes you find online, or SNL parodies aired on television.
From my understanding, it is, at its most all-encompassing definition, different forms of media referencing different other forms of media. It becomes intertextual when we understand how several, perhaps arbitrary, things come together.
I learned from Eyman’s aforementioned passage that intertextuality also comes with digital rhetoric. If rhetoric is the study and act of persuasion and communication, digital rhetoric is that same definition applied to various digital mediums. This stretches to outside the web. It is videos and software and all kinds of technology.
Having basic comprehension for how texts revolve around one another improves how we better understand communication. This leads us to become better communicators with each other.
Leave a Reply