Analyzing the concept of plagiarism is often neglected as it is, by definition, considered a copyright violation. However, James E. Porter challenges this opinion in the article “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” The author declares that any text, regardless of academic level, is a synthesis of other writers’ existing opinions. Consequently, the discourse community perceives intertextuality in two forms, namely iterability and presupposition. Each of them creates a particular paradigm of trace borrowing, thereby forming readers’ opinions and credibility of the author of the publication.
Porter describes text as a mix of opinions of other authors and as a skillful borrowing of literary traces. Besides, any publication is plagiarized, as it certainly contains marks of the points of view of existing discourses. Iterability is a set of traces on a specific topic that helps the audience understand the author’s position and form a critical opinion. On the other hand, presupposition challenges the context in which a given publication exists. Thus, intertextuality matters for the quality of information, as it focuses on the borrowed traces and their meaning in the context of discourse. In turn, the author is the data provider, although it has not been reimagined or reinvented. Porter expanded the understanding of plagiarism and proved that any text is borrowed to some extent from existing discourse communities.
The context of the publication’s existence determines the specifics of the traces that the author used. Porter pointed to iterability and presupposition as communication paradigms, each of which has various impacts on the audience’s opinion. Authors create a text that will be relevant in a specific discourse community to convey new rhetorical meaning, form opinions, and enhance their awareness of existing studies. Thus, each publication is plagiarized due to the borrowing of other people’s ideas and traces.