What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is usually conceived - at least in western academic communities - as the theft of intellectual property, either by:

•	the unattributed copying of another person's words and/or
•	the unacknowledged appropriation ('taking') of their ideas.

We take the view that students who have problems studying and writing in a foreign language - this understandably means most students! - tend simply to rely too heavily on the words and ideas of the writers they read. This is particularly true when they are unfamiliar with the accepted conventions (techniques, etc.) of citation and attribution and the principles underlying those conventions.
(For more on this, see Section 3: How & when we do it)

A social 'crime'?

Academics tend to see their ideas and words are the 'tools of their trade', which help define their professional identity. But they also continually 'borrow' each other's language and ideas - like borrowing clothes. So, they have developed the custom of publicly acknowledging whose words - whose 'clothes' -they have borrowed. You failure to do this is often interpreted by teachers as pretending the words or ideas are yours, and is therefore seen as a crime. In this sense, it is seen as a social crime, a dishonest attempt to claim authorship of others' words or ideas for yourself.

This view of plagiarism as a social crime can be related to a materialistic view of knowledge, which defines contributions to that knowledge as 'property'. And just as there are  laws to protect people's property, so plagiarism is penalised.

An economic crime?

Increasingly, court battles are being fought over the authorship - and therefore ownership - of ideas. Once the law is referred to, economic issues take over - how much income or 'value' has the author lost? Information has become an important source of power and wealth, and people's words are turned into a 'commodity', to be patented, copyrighted, etc. This is done to ensure maximum profit is made from those ideas.

Note: The legal profession calls copying or plagiarising with no acknowledgment 'passing off'; 'copy watches' are a classic example, and a lot of money is made by the copier and lost by the company whose product is copied. Academics similarly see plagiarism as depriving them of credit and dishonestly benefiting another academic's career - a material advantage. This is why academics react so strongly to failure to attribute.

Alternative views of plagiarism

There are, however,  those who argue that the protection of people's ownership of words has gone too far. Since we are constantly 'borrowing' the language of others, it is very difficult to determine who has ownership of particular words or expressions. This interdependence between different writers and their texts has been called intertextuality. In this perspective, all words, expressions and ideas are part of an intellectual 'free currency', which over time generates a 'commonwealth' of ideas.

Related to this perspective is the view that nothing keeps the same meaning over time and across cultures and translations. So, since meanings change, it is difficult to 'own' them or to control how they are used.

ESL students and plagiarism

As an undergraduate student, perhaps the most important principle for you to remember is that there is a difference between 'borrowing' images, ideas and expressions - and copying whole chunks of someone's work. If you are copying large chunks of text without attributing those words and ideas, then you should ask yourself why you are doing that.

Last updated 03 March 2003