by Dale Carter
Contents: Introduction · Identifying Plagiarism · So That 's Not Plagiarism, Right?! · But They'll Never Notice · Ja, Men, But... · Anyway, So What if it Is?
Plagiarism involves using someone else's words or ideas without giving proper credit (or without giving any credit at all) to the author of the original. The term comes from the Latin plagiarus and originally had to do with kidnapping. It is defined by Alexander Lindley in his Plagiarism and Originality (1952) as 'the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person's mind, and presenting it as one's own.' In academic writing, therefore, if you take phrases, a whole sentence, sentences or entire paragraphs from the work of another, and then present them in an unaltered or virtually unaltered state as if they were your own work, you are engaging in plagiarism. Plagiarism may take the form not only of repeating another's sentences, or adopting a particularly apt phrase, as your own. It can also involve paraphrasing someone else's argument as your own.
Defined in such broad terms, it might seem that in academic writing it's difficult not to plagiarise. In preparing essays, presentations and reports, after all, one is encouraged, indeed expected, to go to other sources for information, ideas and arguments. Few of us are born, or enter upon a course of academic study, with innate knowledge of,say, T.S. Eliot's use of mythology in The Waste Land , the politics of the women's suffrage struggle in the United States, or possible explanations for the Great Vowel Shift. Of necessity, therefore,students and academics in practice regularly draw on the work, and eventhe words, of others as a normal, even essential, part of their scholarlywork. But drawing on the work of others is not automatically plagiarism.At the same time, when it comes to producing written material it is vital that the work of others is drawn on in an acceptable fashion, that it isused but not abused, and that -- as this brief guide seeks to show --plagiarism is thereby avoided.
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One of the practical problems raised by discussions of plagiarism hasto do with its concrete, specific manifestations. Definitions and general descriptions such as those given above provide a clear sense of what itinvolves, but they are abstract: they don't mark out its precise contoursin every individual case. This is hardly surprising, since, when it comesto plagiarism, there are many grey areas relating, among other things, tosignificance, intent and scope.
One way to address the uncertainty is to consider some textual examples. Here is a passage about the removal westwards of Native Americans in the late nineteenth century, taken from Alan Trachtenberg's The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (1982):
The major events in Indian-white relations in these years were military and legal: more than two hundred pitched battles, not to speak of guerilla warfare in outlying Western regions, and a reservation policy promulgated in 1887, to remain in effect until the 1930's. In each case, military action and legal solution, economic and cultural issues figured as unspoken but vital imperatives. The drama of these years was played largely on the Great Plains, but against a scenery put in place by the forced removal or expulsion of tribes East of the Mississippi in the decades before the Civil War.
Now, here is some text which could have been taken from an essay submitted by a student and which makes use of the above passage:
Major events in Native American-settler relations during these years were military and legal, and were shaped in important ways by both the US Army and the Federal legislature. There were more than two hundred pitched battles as well as guerilla warfare in remote Western areas, and a reservation policy which remained in effect from 1887 until the 1930's. In the case of both legal solution and military action, cultural and economic issues were unspoken but vital imperatives. The drama of the period, which took place mostly on the Great Plains, had as its context a scenery put in place by the ante-bellum expulsion or forced removal of tribes living East of the Mississippi River.
This text is clearly a plagiarised version of Trachtenberg's original: it leads the reader to believe that the words have been composed by the student alone. The original source and author of the passage are nowhere acknowledged, though this text consists of a slightly rewritten version ofthe original (created largely via the transposition, omission and substitution of occasional words) alongside a limited amount of non-plagiarized writing.
Here is another version of the student's text, also drawing on the Trachtenberg passage:
Alan Trachtenberg notes in The Incorporation of America that the major events in Indian-white relations in these years were military and legal, with over two hundred pitched battles as well as guerilla warfare in outlying Western regions. In each case, military action and legal solution, he adds, economic and cultural issues were latent but crucial imperatives. Though played out largely on the Great Plains, the drama of these years took place 'against a scenery put in place by theforced removal or expulsion of tribes East of the Mississippi in the decades before the Civil War.' 1
This version may appear to satisfy scholarly requirements: it refers to the source of the argument in the text and acknowledges a direct quotation via a footnote. It too, however, shows signs of plagiarism. Here thep lagiarism involves a failure to distinguish between legitimate paraphrase and unacknowledged quotation. While one quotation is correctly cited through the use of quotation marks and a footnote at the end of the passage, the preceding text is presented as if it were a paraphrase when in fact it is a virtual quotation. Again, the reader is led to believe that parts of the text have been composed by the student alone when infact they have been lifted from another source without adequate acknowledgment.
Here is a third version of the text from our imaginary student's essay, which draws once again on Alan Trachtenberg's original passage:
The relationship between Native Americans and settlers in the trans-Mississippi West during the late nineteenth century was marked by military conflict and legal coercion. As Alan Trachtenberg notes, there were 'more than two hundred pitched battles, not to speak of guerilla warfare in outlying Western regions, and a reservation policy promulgated in 1887, to remain in effect until the 1930's.' But if the relationship was played out on the battlefield and in response to legislative action, it was also shaped in significant ways by economicand cultural concerns. 2
This use of Trachtenberg's writing is legitimate. A quotation is correctly identified through the use of quotation marks, and its source is cited through a footnote (the note itself does not need to come directly after the quotation because the sentence which follows it also draws on the same source. The combination of the footnote and the clause preceding the quotation makes clear that the latter must be from Trachtenberg). The remainder of the passage, though drawing on Trachtenberg, is a legitimate paraphrase; in other words, it introduces, describes and explains the subject matter without borrowing Trachtenberg's own formulations.
At the same time, however, the use made of Trachtenberg's passage in this third version is about as close to the original source as it can legitimately be. It not only quotes him (this itself, of course, is perfectly legitimate) but it also borrows his argument and parallels its development. Were the passage to continue int his vein for, say, a couple of paragraphs -- restating his arguments int he sequence they develop, with the help of further quotations and paraphrases -- then it would edge into one of the many grey areas that constitute the border regions of plagiarism.
As the above example shows, while in general terms plagiarism is not difficult to define or describe, it can behard to identify its precise boundaries. At what point does repeated paraphrase edge into plagiarism? It's difficult to be precise; it depends,in part, on how sustained the practice is and how close the paraphrase.How many successive words used by another author can you legitimately use? Obviously no single author (except, perhaps, James Joyce) can claim ownership of single words or authorship of a language, and using the same word as another writer is clearly not an exercise in plagiarism. But beyond that? Again, it depends: in part on the nature of the writing. Some phrases are standard formulations; others are clichés or idioms. To go back to the Alan Trachtenberg passage, 'pitched battles' and 'not to speak of' are two standard phrases and formulations. Just because he uses them doesn't mean no one else can. If, however, you use them in a passage that reads 'There were more than two hundred pitched battles, not to speak of guerilla warfare and attempts by the Federal government to force Native inhabitants into reservations,' then you're edging back into plagiarism.
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If close study of specific texts illustrates some of the problems involved in identifying plagiar ism ,then consideration of the plagiar ist might throw more light on what is and what is not permissible. In some ways, however, turning from the text to the writer only casts more shadows and creates new grey areas. Is it possible, for example, to plagiarise unintentionally ; and,if so, does the alleged plagiarist's lack of intent absolve him or her of responsibility? As a general rule, the greater the evidence of plagiarism within a text, the weaker claims of inadvertent error become. It is difficult, in other words, to claim that chance, accident or little green men repeatedly brought whole sentences from published works by Homi Bhabha or Julia Kristeva into a student's essay. Alternatively, does ignorance constitute a defence against plagiarism charges? No, because it strains credibility. It is simply too far-fetched to have a student express complete surprise upon discovering that the conscious yet unacknowledged copying into his or her essay of two paragraphs by, say, Terry Eagleton is considered illegitimate. Yet both of these stances are adopted, even if neither constitutes a viable defence against accusations of plagiarism.
These are, moreover, only two of the more common, usually improvised, alibis -- and there are other, more sophisticated, rationalizations. It is now many years since Roland Barthes proclaimed 'the death of the author.' Today, in a post-modern age where many literary and cultural critics find textuality rather than the writer sovereign, a case could certainly be made against the very notion of authorial intent or ownership, and perhaps therefore of plagiarism as aconcept. Textuality was here before the author, who is more its medium than its source, one might argue; and it will be here after the author has gone and after others have taken over the medium's role. So why worry about whose words they are? After all, they're all just part ofthe discourse! A cultural and social analogue of this approach was put forward by some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s defenders when he was accused of plagiarizing his doctoral thesis. King, it was said, had been raised in an oral, preaching tradition within which the raw materials of sermons were collectively owned, authored and exchanged; his unacknowledged use ofthe words of philosophers and theologians was not, therefore, plagiarism as understood among university professors so much as a manifestation of anauthentic and distinctive sense of ownership within the Baptist ministry.
These and other such explanations may be profound, ingenious, illuminating or ingenuous, depending on your point of view. (In King's case, at least, a more broadly accepted defence was that,in the light of his enormous achievements, whatever scholarly misdeeds he may have committed were trivial.) In any event, when it comes to exams and essays within a university department, appeals to distinctive cultural patterns or the obsolescence of concepts like authorship and originality are unlikely to prove any more effective than claims of ignorance or expressions of mystification. To lament that other people (invariably unidentified) do it is no excuse; to dismiss the concept of plagiarism as a relic of an outdated bourgeois humanism is no defence; to insist that little green men made you do it and you didn't know what you were doing,or that even if you did know they never said it was wrong -- that, too, is much less than a watertight alibi.
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If it is very hard to defend oneself once clear evidence of plagiarism has been presented, it can seem a good deal easier, quicker and less personally awkward to try to conceal such evidence in the first place. Though efforts to disguise plagiarism tend apriori to undermine subsequent claims of innocence or ignorance, this approach is attractive and may even be effective. Well-concealed plagiarism can be very difficult to detect. The opening paragraph in this document, for example, contains material plagiarized from three different sources (one of them is another text written by the author, which may make it more like cannibalism than plagiarism). It's hard to tell: of course there are no citations or footnotes there, and other tell-tale signs of plagiarism are also absent. Being a native speaker also helped the author a lot. Unless you are familiar with published guides to plagiarism,passages from two of which have been copied there, you would be none the wiser -- though you might well feel cheated once you found out. The difficulties involved in identifying cases of plagiarism can make it correspondingly tempting to engage in, but if you are tempted, then read on.
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For many tempted to plagiarize, the exercise is not so much denied by claims of innocence or ignorance,justified by appeals to philosophy and culture, or protected by acts of camouflage: it is simply explained with a sigh and a sense of frustration. Some lament that there was too much work to do, that the essay deadline was approaching, that the subject matter was simply too difficult, that the SU was running out, that the exam absolutely had to be passed -- and that, in such circumstances, the occasional short-cut was, if not entirely legitimate, then absolutely necessary. Others are driven less by such pressures than by ambition or a sense of incapacity. They may be tempted to 'borrow' phrases and sentences from elsewhere because they really want a good grade to enhance their job prospects or their amour propre , because they need to prove or justify themselves to their family or friends, because they simply want to impress or 'repay' (one way or theother) their teacher, or because they have convinced themselves that they will never be able to express it so well, or that their English simply isn't up to the task. A few, meanwhile, will be tempted by the very ease with which, in the days of the internet, they can download, then cut and paste together text. In some ways, indeed, the world wide web seems like the plagiarists's dream: a vast, constantly-fluctuating resource base to be raided at will without even the need to engage in tiresome, time-consuming retyping. When that kind of borrowing is possible, one might say, it's almost criminal not to do so.
These explanations are all understandable and in some cases admirable, but none of them sanction plagiarism. Teachers want their students to work hard and to do their best, and they much prefer giving high to low grades. But they also want their students to produce honest work. Rather than having another author do it for you while you claim the credit, the best way to develop the ability to express yourself is to practice doing so. If you think that an author you have read explains or describes something very neatly, and you'd like to usetheir phraseology, then you can do so -- but you have to document the fact. 3
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Whether documented charges of plagiarism are met by expressions of wounded innocence or frustrated resignation; whether the excuses are preposterous or the explanations worthy of sympathy, suspicions and evidence of plagiarism are serious matters. If you felt slightly abused to discover that parts of the opening of this document were plagiarized, then consider how teachers feel when they are asked to grade plagiarized essays and exam papers. This document, at least,is not intended to pass an exam, and includes plagiarized sentences merely to demonstrate plagiarism in action. The plagiarist may well offer alibis to others, including teachers, or to him- or herself. But they can hardly be surprised to find that teachers, in particular, consider the activity pernicious and damaging to the educational process.
Not only does the plagiarist seek to mislead the teacher and effectively devalue the work of his or her fellow students; he or she also appears dismissive of the course of education they are engaged in, and ultimately shows no regard for their own work. Does the plagiarist inform potential employers that some of their grades say more about their willingness or ability to cut corners than their academic skills and efforts? It's unlikely. Does he or she plagiarize anessay -- perhaps even one dealing with obsolete humanist notions of authorship or originality -- and then a few weeks later accept a high markon their personal grading sheet and congratulations for a fine piece of work? It can happen.
Should you ever feel tempted to borrow the work of others without acknowledging the fact, therefore, it's a good idea to resist, strongly. Investigations into plagiarism can be far-ranging, and the penalties for proven cases of plagiarism correspondingly severe; they certainly include complete rejection of a paper.
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Dale Carter, 28 April 2000