Snatches of Other Texts: Fairclough 1992

"Intertextuality is basically the property texts have of being full of snatches of other texts, which may be explicitly demarcated or merged in, and which the text may assimilate, contract, ironically echo, and so forth. [Emphasis mine]"

Fairclough's definition of ITXTY is a very interesting one, because I think it explains a great deal of his approach to text and register and discourse and a number of other things which he describes. Most important in his article, I believe, is his vision of texts and discourse as being more parole than lange. I've always been drawn to the term "languaging," because it to me encompasses a lot of what language is--less something static which we can understand through rules and structure (although I'm sure many formal theoretical linguists would disagree with me on that one) but rather something which is shaped on the fly by the ways in which it interacts with other parts of language.

On the note of formal linguistics, however, it was interesting to note that Fairclough appropriated the language of formalism in describing loci of discourse in using the term "complementary distribution," for example, the "school" discourse and register is defined in part by the fact that it is in complementary distribution with the locations which are "non-school," such as home. The question then arises if these loci of discourse exist without the loci that they are defined in contrast to: can we understand "school" discourse without having home discourse and neighborhood discourse to describe it against?

It seems that a lot of meaning arises out of these sorts of juxtapositions--school discourse becomes school discourse precisely because of the discourses that it is not. As we attend to the "snatches" of text which are present in another text, it seems evident that it is not only the presence of these snatches but also in the way they are defined by what they are in contrast to which provide a great deal of their meaning. This, I think, is an important part of intertextuality itself--the ways in which the texts interact with one another and create meaning through their contrasts (or lack thereof).