Plagiarism
Project Introduction
At some point
during their American education, every student learns and is warned of
committing plagiarism. While most teachers and students could give practically
the same definition of plagiarism, however, educators and students may have a
distorted view of this writing construct. Now, there’s another word a student
may not understand; construct. A construct is a sort of a misconception about
something; and one can say that plagiarism is definitely a writing construct. Plagiarism
is a bit blurry in the writing world because society has put a sort of double
standard on this concept.
For
example, when professional writers “borrow” things from other texts, no one
bats an eyelash at this, but when one college writer borrows something from
another college writer, it spells expulsion for the both of them. So why is
using someone else’s work acceptable in one situation but not the other? It has
been said that no piece of writing is truly original due to the fact that
writers are always borrowing things from other writers. Take for example Tim O’
Brien’s book Going After Cacciato and
Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. One
is about the Vietnam War and one is about a silly girl who dreams she follows a
talking rabbit down a hole in the ground. O’Brien couldn’t have borrowed
anything from Carroll in his book about Vietnam right? Wrong. In Going After Cacciato, the characters
fall through a hole in the road, and one even says that the only way out of the
hole would be to fall up. From there, the characters in Cacciato discover an alternative world after they fell down into
the Vietcong tunnels, much like Alice did when she fell down the rabbit hole
into Wonderland. By looking at these parallelisms, one can tell that Tim O’Brien
borrowed things from Lewis Carroll (Foster).
Going After Cacciato and Alice In Wonderland are both acclaimed as
great novels on their own merits, even though one borrowed a few things from
the other. Couldn’t a student write a great paper if they borrowed an idea from
another student or even another writer? In the eyes of the American education
system, no. The rules of plagiarism are more strictly enforced in high school
and college than when the pros submit writing. There is even special software
to detect if students are plagiarizing. This double standard with plagiarism
can get confusing when it comes to avoiding it. What exactly counts as
plagiarism? What doesn’t? Curiouser and curiouser!
The
current definition of plagiarism is to steal and pass off (the words or ideas
of another) as one’s own. It is useful to have a law that prohibits literary
theft, but how exactly can one steal ideas? (What is Plagiarism?) Besides the
fact that everything that is written down is protected by copyright, an idea,
since it isn’t a physical object, seems like it cannot be stolen.
In
fact, with this double standard, one could view the current take on plagiarism
as a contradiction. This is apparent when students are told to develop a topic
on something that has already been written, but by using something new and
original, or give credit to sources but also make their own contribution
(Brizee, Paiz, and Stolley). This can get confusing to students who are unsure
about what counts as plagiarism and probably don’t care; they just want to get
the paper done.
Furthermore,
while there is a technical definition for plagiarism, it is evident that it can
still be confusing when a writer is trying to avoid plagiarizing. Also, there
is a great double standard surrounding plagiarism that perhaps benefits one
group of writers but not another. What we need to assess is, if we could change
the definition of plagiarism, could that change the double standard that goes
with it?
Works
Cited
"What Is Plagiarism?" Plagiarism.org. Web.
19 Sept. 2012. http://plagiarism.org/
Brizee, Allen, Paiz, Joshua M, Stolley, Karl.
"Welcome to the Purdue Owl." Purdue OWL. Web. 19 Sept. 2012.
<http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/>.
Foster, Thomas C. "Now Where Have I Seen Her
Before?" How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
New York: HarperCollins, 2003. 29-30. Print.
I think you're doing some really good things with this draft. I especially like how you introduce the construct. Your analysis of these two literary pieces is pretty interesting too. What I don't see happening is a sustained discussion of what the conversation on plagiarism is from the perspective of writing studies. You need to find more research that deals with this subject directly. You might begin by looking at the bibliographies offered by Rebecca Moore Howard, on her site Writing Matters. This is a great start and as you start finding more research you'll want to start framing an argument: Teachers and students of writing need to replace harmful ways of thinking about plagiarism with new ___________?
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