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Plagiarism
Introduction
This study will examine the definition of plagiarism, and the justification of regarding plagiarism as a “crime” or serious social failing.
I was interested in carrying out this study for several reasons. Plagiarism is of interest to me because of my academic background in linguistics, and research I have read on the subject of questioned authorship. It is also a common interest amongst the forum members due to the original articles, art, and fanfiction available on the forum. Given the frequency of allegations of plagiarism on the Internet, I felt that it was necessary to analyse two things:
1.What do people think of when they think of plagiarism? (and, crucially, are they thinking of the same things?).
2.Is it possible that people can coincidentally and unintentionally create identical or near-identical works?
Method
This study was carried out between September 15th 2004, and October 2nd 2004. The participants were the eighteen members of the Matters Masonesque and More forum (http://www.masonesque.net/forum2/index.php). At the time of the study there were 18 members, including myself, which left me with 17 possible participants. No personal information about the participants was gathered, and the participants will not be identified in the course of this study.
On September 15th the following message was posted in the forum:
I would appreciate it if you could all help me out with a little experiment. Linguistics is what I study at university, and more specifically legal language - plagiarism being a part of that.
All you have to do is PM me with your definition of plagiarism. This should only be one sentence long, and only needs to define plagiarism in general terms. You do not need to give specific examples.
Please do not confer with each other or consult dictionaries. And please remember to PM me rather than replying to this post. It is vital that you do not see each others' definitions.
Once the experiment is over (hopefully only after a few days, if I get all your definitions), I'll share with you my findings. And maybe they'll be interesting...
After I received few responses, I chose to send a Private Message (PM) to each member on the forum who had not already responded. This message read:
Dear <Name>,
I would appreciate it if you could help me out with a little experiment. Linguistics is what I study at university, and more specifically legal language - plagiarism being a part of that.
All you have to do is PM me with your definition of plagiarism. This should only be one sentence long, and only needs to define plagiarism in general terms. You do not need to give specific examples.
Please do not confer with anyone else or consult dictionaries.
Once the experiment is over (hopefully only after a few days, if I get all your definitions), I'll share with you my findings. And maybe they'll be interesting...
Please note that your identity will not be revealed in conjunction with your answer, so don't worry if you're not really too sure what plagiarism is, and are afraid of writing something like "plagiarism is a kind of green tea".
As a result of these PMs, I received a total of 10 responses, equating to approximately 55% of the members. Unfortunately the small number of participants means that my results cannot be considered significant, however interesting they might be.
Background
As this is not a “proper” linguistic study, I have chosen not to include a lengthy literature review. However, the passage which inspired me to carry out this study is interesting in terms of explaining the background to my research. I highly recommend the book it is excerpted from, John Olsson’s Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language, Crime and the Law, to anyone interested in further reading on the subject.
“Plagiarism is the theft of the words and ideas of others… note, by writing that sentence without acknowledgement I may have just committed plagiarism. Why? Because I may have seen those words or something similar to them on the Internet and therefore they could have been created by someone else. For example, according to the Harvard extension school:
Plagiarism is the theft of someone else’s ideas and work.
Black Hills State University entirely agrees with the Harvard Extension School. Word for word, in fact: “Plagiarism is the theft of someone else’s ideas and work”. San Jose State University, concurs, also word for word: “Plagiarism is the theft of someone else’s ideas and work”.
In fact these exact words were found on many university websites, with paraphrases on literally hundreds of others, if not thousands. I wondered who had borrowed from whom.
The key question here is whether it is possible for two authors acting independently of each other to produce the same formulation of words such as that shown above…”
(John Olsson, Forensic Linguistics: An Introduction to Language, Crime and the Law, p. 109)
Data
The following statements are the responses I obtained for use in the study. They are reproduced verbatim, and have not been altered in any way. I received 9 statements in total. One further participant responded, but could not give a definition of plagiarism.
(1)Stealing one's work & claiming it as your own.
(2)Stealing / copying someone's work and make it your own. Or write a story/book similar to someone else's work.
(3)Plagiarism (in writing) is the taking of text written by one person, and presented elsewhere as one's own.
(4)Knowingly copying another's work and putting it forth as your own.
(5)The taking of anothers original creation and claiming it as your own publicly.
(6)Passing someone else's work off as your own.
(7)The copying of someone else's work without his/her permission.
(8)Plagiarism is copying something (art, essays, etc) from someone and claiming as your own.
(9)Plagiarism is where someone copies something word to word and passes it off as their work. Stating publicly that what they have shown was made them.
(10)(no definition)
Analysis
Participants:
18 total participants
10 responses (approximately 55%)
8 no-replies (approximately 44%)
Responses:
9 definitions (90%)
1 non-definition (10%)
In the following section, I divide the definitions into their core parts (verbs, nouns, etc.) in order to compare like terms and compile an “average” definition. As a result, some of the verbs from the original statements have been altered in form. For example, “copying” and “copies” are both counted here as “copying”. Please note that some statements use more than one relevant verb or noun, and in such cases both have been included.
Verbs used (the action of plagiarism)
Copying (5)
Stealing (2)
Taking (2)
Writing
Statement (6) did not contain a verb to define the initial action of plagiarism.
Noun (the thing that is plagiarised)
Work (5)
Something (2)
Story/book
Text
Original creation
All statements included a noun to define the object of plagiarism.
Verb (further action)
Claiming (3)
Passing (2)
Making
Presenting
Putting
Statement (7) did not include a verb to define the secondary action of plagiarism.
Additional Factors
Public Arena
Publicly (2)
Elsewhere
(Putting it) forth
Statements (1), (2), (6), (7), and (8) did not include a “public arena” word or phrase.
Ownership (of original work)
Someone else’s (3)
Another (2)
One (person)
One’s
Someone
Someone’s
All statements included a word or phrase assigning original ownership.
Secondary ownership
Your own (6)
One’s own
Their work
Statement (7) did not include a word or phrase assigning secondary ownership.
The two most “abnormal” statements are statements (6) and (7). They conform least to the broad categories I have outlined. Statement (6) does not include an initial verb, and as such only describes the “secondary” part of plagiarism. Statement (7) does not include a secondary verb, and therefore only describes the “primary” part of plagiarism. Neither statement includes a “public arena’ word or phrase. This does not invalidate either statement as a possibly entirely adequate definition of plagiarism. However, they include the least number of common elements.
The most controversial element is that of a public arena phrase. Forty percent of statements include such a phrase, fifty percent do not, and ten percent did not provide a definition. This indicates that the inclusion of a public arena phrase is not seen to be necessary by the majority of the participants.
Amalgamated Definition
Based on the most popular word choices and phrases from those given above, a “general” definition of plagiarism can be formed. This is not meant to be an exact definition of plagiarism. Instead, it is intended to give a representation of what the participants in general believe plagiarism to be. This definition does not conform to any single definition obtained in the study, and is therefore not the opinion of any of the participants. I leave it to the participants to decide whether this general definition matches their personal definition in meaning rather than words, or differs in significant ways.
Copying
someone else’s
work
(and)
claiming
(it as)
your own
(publicly).
Conclusion
Despite the low number of participants, this study has enabled me to reach some interesting conclusions. An important point to make is that one of my participants (10%) could not provide a definition for plagiarism. The reason for this is unknown, but it suggests a need for educational establishments to more explicitly define plagiarism. Given the severe penalties usually imposed by universities and schools on plagiarising students, it is important that students are made aware of the nature of the offence.
In terms of the definitions that were provided, they all broadly conformed to the structure I had expected, with a few exceptions which I have pointed out above. It appears that those who were able to give definitions all had a similar idea of what plagiarism is.
The vocabulary differed between the definitions to a significant extent. Although the different words used were usually synonyms, vocabulary choice may indicate subtle connotations which differentiate the meaning of one definition from another. For example, there is obviously a difference between the overwhelmingly negative “stealing” rather than the more neutral “copying”, and this may translate into different views of the morality of plagiarism.
This study did not attempt to evaluate whether the participants believed plagiarism to be good or bad, or acceptable in some circumstances but not in others. However, some aspects of the definitions suggest the viewpoints of the participants. One of these aspects is the idea of connotations discussed previously. Another is the inclusion or absence of a “public arena” phrase. Plagiarism is generally only an issue in the public arena – in a school or university, or other public forum – and this is perhaps where most people encounter their definitions. It is therefore interesting to discover whether people view plagiarism as only occurring if the plagiarised work is then displayed publicly, or if it occurs if no one except the plagiariser ever sees it. The definitions in this study indicate in the favour of no public arena phrase needing to be inserted, and therefore that plagiarism occurs even if the work is not displayed publicly. However, this was the issue about which there was the most disagreement in the definitions.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the members of Matters Masonesque and More who gave of their time to participate in the study. My thanks also go to Zael for proofreading and offering her suggestions on the final draft.
Lonelywalker
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