Reading for empowerment: Intertextuality offers creative possibilities for enlightened citizenry

Abstract

Julia Kristeva coined the term ‘intertextuality’ to explain her utter belief in the mutability and movement of texts, in contradistinction to the time-honoured popular idea that a text is an autonomous and self-evident object. For Kristeva, any text implies the existence and embedding of other texts, also known as sub-texts, within it. This has far-reaching implications for the way we read, engage with, and interpret various texts. This article describes the concept of intertextuality as a model of reading which puts the reader at the centre of the reading process. It goes on to link intertextuality to other domains of literacy, notably the notion of ‘spheres of literacy’. Central to intertextuality and spheres of literacy is their privileging of the reader, as opposed to the author, in the reading process. Finally, the article explores the ways in which our awareness and use of intertextuality can help to develop a literate and free-thinking citizenry who derive utmost autonomy and empowerment from various cultural texts accessible to them.

Cultural and social uses of orality and functional literacy: A narrative approach

“…Livestock literacy in use Kalua's (2012) view of the integrated approach to literacy emphasised roles, values, thought processes and awareness, individual and social histories. The planning processes that go into Hlalefang's classroom environment of animals bear testimony to an integrated model and how integrated this level of literacy has become.…”

“…While the authors emphasise literacy at the workplace looking at the difference between service institutions, business or private and public services, literacies differ because they follow a certain ideology embedded in their mandates and different objectives for which the organisations or institutions are formed (Roberts 2010). An integrated view of literacy as described by Kalua (2012) and Scull, Nolan and Raban (2013) emphasises a theory or an approach with a number of variables including literacy practices and literacy events; types of literacies and their social domains; roles and networks to provide support system; literacy as a communication tool; literacy as a cognitive thought process; values and their awareness of them and literacy in history. The integrated approach takes literacy as a social fabric.…”

Developing EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension and Reading Engagement: Effects of a Proposed Instructional Strategy

“…The findings of these studies also indicate that strategy instruction with a focus on comprehension monitoring can help less skilled EFL readers overcome their difficulties in reading (Kalua, 2011). Kazemi, Mohsen & Mohammadreza (2013) highlight that Cognitive views of reading comprehension indicate that reading is an interactive process while comprehension is a constructive process; recommending that comprehension instruction should emphasize teaching students how to use a set of text comprehension strategies and empowering them with a sense of conscious control, or metacognitive awareness.…”

Considering the Educationally Marginalized: A Quiz as Social Justice?

“…I give a quiz to ensure that my students read—because when they do not read, they unwittingly leave a part of their education unexplored by keeping their identities from interacting with the text (Kalua, 2012; Mann, 2000; Margono-Slamet, 2020; Rosenblatt, 1995). A quiz to get students to read within my pedagogy is based on the understanding that the act of “reading the word is not preceded merely by reading the world, but by a form of writing it or re-writing it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious practical work” (Freire, 1983, p. 10; emphasis in original).…”