Price, Margaret. “Beyond ‘Gotcha!’: Situating Plagiarism in Policy and Pedagogy.” CCC 54.1 (2002): 88-115.
Summary:
Plagiarism is difficult, if not impossible, to define. In this paper, [Price] argue[s] for a context-sensitive understanding of plagiarism by analyzing a set of written institutional policies and suggesting ways that they might be revised. In closing, [she] offer[s] examples of classroom practices to help teach a concept of plagiarism as situated in context (article abstract 88).
Drawing from institutional policies from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (U Mass), as well as heavily from Moore Howard’s work, Price illumines the multifarious definition of plagiarism across contexts and moments in time. She highlights the relaxed conventions in sharing or borrowing material in corporate contexts and in the construction of our own teaching documents, and urges teachers to either model accepted citation conventions in documents they distribute to students or to explain why they have chosen not to include them.
Area Cluster:
101-Practices of Teaching Writing, 102-Composition/Writing Programs, 107-Institutional and Professional, 112-Community, Civic & Public
Methodology:
Call for Change, Examination and criticism of institutional practices
Most Valuable Citations:
LEde ALunsford LBloom LBuranen RMHoward CSpigelman SWest MWoodmansee JYoung
Money Quotes:
“‘We scholars in English studies, it appears, are often more comfortable theorizing about subjectivity, agency, and authorship than we are attempting to enact alternatives to conventional assumptions and practices’” (Ede and Lunsford as qtd. 88).
“We can explain that what we call plagiarism is located in a specific setting: this historical time, this academic community. We can demonstrate that ideas such as ‘common knowledge’ and ‘original’ are informed by their particular contexts. And once we have acknowledged to students and ourselves that plagiarism is part of an ongoing, evolving academic conversation, we can invite students to add their own voices to that conversation” (90).
“We need to stop treating plagiarism like a pure moral absolute (‘Thou shalt not plagiarize’) and start explaining it in a way that accounts for… shifting features of context” (90).
“Our task, as Howard articulates it, is not to choose sides in a theoretical debate but to acknowledge the dialectic that operates around the notion of authorship and to try to draft institutional policy that incorporates that dialectic” (96).
