Intertextuality: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy

0-In contemporary media scholarship, the concept of intertextuality is used to descrihe hoth an interpretive practice of audiences and a stylistic device consciously employed by producers of media. This study examines how the frequent, scholarly conflation of these two conceptions has weakened the theoretical usefolness of hoth perspectives. Turning to the view of intertextuality as s!Jlistic device, the essay identifies parodic allusion, creative appropriation, and self-reflexive reference as three distinct intertextual strategies. It concludes by considering the ways audiences use these devices to define their identities and order their experiences.