I was spurred by Stanley Fish's recent essay in the NY Times to publish this essay here. His essay1 argues plagiarism need not be a moral issue necessarily. I harp on originality here (so a slightly different angle):
1. Viewable here
Plagiarism as Black-and-White
In the criminal justice system, the punishment for murder varies according to degree; punishment for first-degree murder is more severe than that for second-degree. It is apparent although a crime is a crime, the courts have decided that punishment for a crime should vary on the circumstances. This is a principle that is yet to be applied to the crime of plagiarism in academic writing. It is commonly understood that plagiarism is an intentional and serious violation of academic integrity and should be dealt with in the harshest manner possible. The very nature of language dictates, however, that accidental forms of plagiarism can occur; a common ethical belief holds that the punishment for a crime should be roughly proportional to the severity of the crime. Plagiarism, like other forms of criminality, is best understood through a spectrum ranging from fairly innocuous to particularly felonious.
There is a persistent majority who do see plagiarism as wholly black-and-white. It is the writer’s responsibility to make sure each word, phrase, or idea is original; if the word, phrase, or idea in question is another’s property, then proper attribution should be given. In many ways, this argument makes sense. Without quotation marks, readers might be under the false impression that what they are reading is entirely original. Without quotation marks, writers may be free to steal without any sense of responsibility.
Upon closer analysis, the idea and the arguments surrounding the idea that plagiarism is a black-and-white issue fall short. Of course the writer must assume responsibility for his or her work. But, it is clear that it is next to impossible to ensure each word, phrase, or idea in a particular essay is original. The very nature of language and its use means that particular words and phrases may be repeated in subsequent works without attribution, though unintentional. It is also clear that ideas exist freely—it is hard to claim that one “owns” an idea. Language is a shared means of communication, which means a certain amount of borrowing will take place, with or without attribution. Plagiarism, which insists borrowing of language without attribution is a crime, ignores the fact that such borrowing is inevitable, and that such “borrowing” has taken place an innumerable amount of times throughout history. Can any piece of writing be totally original? The fact is that all writing draws upon what has been written previously. No piece of writing exists in isolation, free from any outside influence either in the past or in the present. There are certainly forms of borrowing that are clearly unethical. But when the difference between plagiarized work (with the author and page number cited) and non-plagiarized work becomes a simple set of quotation marks, the writer in question should not be penalized as heavily as one who steals entire sections and paragraphs of another’s essay without any sort of attribution. Plagiarism takes different forms, not all of which should be dealt with in the exact same manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment