69249454-chandler-semiotics

TEXTUAL INTERACTIONS 207
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to be intertextual Would the ‘most intratextual’ text be one which
approached the impossible goal of referring only to itself Even if
no specific text is referred to, texts are written within genres and
use language in ways which their authors have seldom invented.
Intertextuality does not seem to be simply a continuum on a single
dimension and there does not seem to be a consensus about what
dimensions we should be looking for. Intertextuality is not a feature
of the text alone but of the ‘contract’ which reading it forges between
its author(s) and reader(s). Since the dominant mode of producing
texts seems to involve masking their debts, reflexivity seems to be
an important issue – we need to consider how marked the intertextuality
is. Some defining features of intertextuality might include the
following:
• reflexivity: how reflexive (or self-conscious) the use of
intertextuality seems to be (if reflexivity is important to
what it means to be intertextual, then presumably an indistinguishable
copy goes beyond being intertextual);
• alteration: the alteration of sources (more noticeable alteration
presumably making it more reflexively intertextual);
• explicitness: the specificity and explicitness of reference(s)
to other text(s) (e.g. direct quotation, attributed quotation)
(is assuming recognition more reflexively intertextual);
• criticality to comprehension: how important it would be for
the reader to recognize the intertextuality involved;
• scale of adoption: the overall scale of allusion/incorporation
within the text; and
• structural unboundedness: to what extent the text is presented
(or understood) as part of or tied to a larger structure
(e.g. as part of a genre, of a series, of a serial, of a magazine,
of an exhibition, etc.) – factors which are often not under the
control of the author of the text.
Useful as the concept can be, it is important to remember that intertextuality
is not purely a relation between texts. Nor does Kristeva’s
horizontal axis – that connecting the author and reader of a text –
adequately represent the frequently neglected dimension of intertextuality.
As the Peircean model suggests, the meaning of a sign is in