INTERTEXTUALITY IN ACTION: THE ROLE OF EXPERT ADVICE IN EVERYDAY PARENTING

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between discourse and action by examining the role of expert advice in everyday parenting practices. Drawing upon the notions of dialogicality (Bakhtin, 1981), intertextuality (Kristeva, 1986), and repetition (Tannen, 2007) and incorporating insights from Mediated Discourse Analysis (e. g., Scollon, 1998; Scollon and Scollon, 2007; Norris and Jones, 2005), this work analyzes instances in which the actions of parents in three American families can be traced back to various public texts on parenting. Such relationship between text and action is identified as intertextuality in action (Author, 2005, 2020), or when public texts serve as resources for the verbal and non-verbal everyday actions of parents. It is further suggested that by adopting a positive, childcentered approach to parenting from literature and trained childcare professionals, parents themselves are socialized into the contemporary Discourse (Gee, 1999, 2015) of parenting. The analysis of the “repetition” of the words of experts in family (inter)actions also illuminates the dialogic relationship between the public and private spheres.