Analysis Of Donald Murray's 'All Writing Is Autobiographical'

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Being truthful on an objective voice within our writing is something that can be impossible because of how we express ourselves with our personal experiences and the way people interpret it. We can’t say that our writing or our voice does not have originality because it is a buildup of other people’s thoughts and discourses. Your “unique voice” is not really just your own voice according to James E’ Porter. Donald Murray says that writing is always something personal, so in all sense he thinks, all writing is autobiographical. Murray does not refer to autobiographical as someone telling a story about themselves, but more about the nature of the text and on how it contains traces back to its writer. Donald Murray in “All Writing is Autobiographical”, …show more content…

For example, the time I had to write a research paper on the death penalty. Even though the essay’s main purpose was to inform my audience on the two different sides of the death penalty, my essay drastically leaned towards the side of being in favor for the death penalty. After reading Murray’s article I realized the reason why my research paper was in favor for the death penalty. I input my beliefs and personal experiences from reading about other criminal cases which influenced me to lean towards a side instead of staying objective. I can identify myself as a very autobiographical writer because I believe I write better when I can relate to the topic of the writing. If I feel I can relate to the main purpose of the writing with my personal experiences I feel more comfortable with the excerpt I’m writing because it’s going to be influenced by my …show more content…

He brings in the point of intertextuality which means that all texts contain traces of other texts. He is summarizing it as how we understand the concepts of the text and how they are based on other concepts of what other people have stated already. Writers have to reference other writer’s text ideas, in order to build upon them and also be able to get some credibility. The reason is if you are going to give information about a specific subject, the author must first be able to absorb the knowledge of the subject from other texts and that’s when intertextuality occurs. Porter names two different types of intertextuality which are iterability and presupposition. Iterability is mainly composed of traces of other texts that help the audience comprehend and understand in a sense to constitute its meaning. (Porter 89) Presupposition refers to assumptions in how the text makes about its readers and the contexts. (Porter89) The idea of having a unique voice is an illusion because intertextuality makes it difficult for a writer to be original. Porter believes that instead of writers creating new concepts, the writer should instead change the way the discourse community thinks. A discourse community is a group of individuals bound by a common interest, who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is

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