Tuesday, July 19, 2016
What does Melania Trump's plagiarism tell us?
As the news agencies have told us during this 24-hour news cycle, Melania Trump got up last night to further her husband's success, and took her cue from Michelle Obama eight years ago. Her speech contained phrases which can only have been copied from the First Lady's earlier address, and so have been labelled as plagiarism.
This is a damning accusation and has prompted recollections of the last big plagiarism scandal to rock a US election, when Joseph Biden re-used Neil Kinnock's 'Thousand Generations' speech, was promptly labelled a plagiarist, and was forced to withdraw from the campaign (see the New York Time's reporting of it here).
But how closely do the two cases parallel each other? Is one as bad as the other? To answer those questions, we have to figure out how plagiarism fits into political discourse.
A key sign of plagiarism, and thus a common basis for decrying it, is the absence of an attribution to the original source. When academics write research articles, they remember one simple rule. In the words of Malcolm Bradbury, 'a gentleman always cites his sources'. But politicians use speech writers, and speech writers aren't credited, so this criticism doesn't wash.
Those of us who grew up in the English-speaking world were nurtured in a doctrine of 'in your own words'. But again, in a community in which speech writers are commonly used, 'use your own words' isn't the norm; 'use the best words for the purpose is'.
One reason we have a cultural aversion to plagiarism is that it denies the right person of credit. If you're Led Zeppelin and people think you've plagiarized another band's music (which a court has decided they didn't: see this report from the Guardian), then you've taken a lot of revenues from that other band. But unlike the people who write pop songs, neither Joe Biden nor Melania Trump gave their speeches in order to make money.
Well, you might think, not to make money, but to gain influence. And this is precisely the point at which the Kinnock-Biden plagiarism case diverges sharply from the Trump story.
The plagiarism accusations in the Kinnock-Biden case revolved around a speech which Neil Kinnock made to the Labour Party congress. When the Labour asked in his emotional address why he was the 'first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university', it was in service of a point: if bright, capable people were to be able to realise their potential, they needed a social structure which permitted them to; they needed a 'platform upon which they could stand'.
When Joe Biden asked in a stump speech why he was the first Biden in a thousand generations to go to university, he meant the same thing.
Both were members of a left-wing party, waging war against the far-right leaders of their countries, Thatcher and Reagan. There was no appropriation; there were soldiers on the same side of the fight making common cause. And that's why Neil Kinnock, when asked whether he was bothered by the appropriation of his words, responded that he wasn't; to the contrary, he confessed to feeling 'flattered'.
In the same way, when the New York Times reported the Biden story, chunks of the same text were repeated from day to day, with different journalists on the by-line. But why not? They weren't in competition with each other, they were on the same team, pooling resources.
And that's the first of two reasons why Melania Trump's use of Michelle Obama's elegant formulations is highly problematic. They're not on the same team. Quite the opposite. So if Mrs. Trump can express points of deeply held principle in Obama's words, what are we to conclude? Does she share Obama values? Or does she not know what her own values are? It must be one or the other, and neither reflects well on the Trump campaign.
The second and closely related reason why this case of plagiarism should be seen as a canary fainting dead in a coal mine is that it signals an absence of something to say. Michelle Obama's eloquent speech dovetailed nicely with her husband's agenda, and indeed comportment, as president. We now why she said what she said, because she has gone on to live the values she espoused. But if Melania Trump doesn't hold a set of values which can be differentiated from Michelle Obama's, why is she trying to become first lady? Or to reverse it, if she supports Donald Trump's presidency, how can she not understand that it is antithetical to everything Michelle and Barack Obama have ever espoused?
The problem, in other words, is not the plagiarism. The problem is that it reveals an emptiness of thought which the American electorate ought to find instructive.
This is a damning accusation and has prompted recollections of the last big plagiarism scandal to rock a US election, when Joseph Biden re-used Neil Kinnock's 'Thousand Generations' speech, was promptly labelled a plagiarist, and was forced to withdraw from the campaign (see the New York Time's reporting of it here).
But how closely do the two cases parallel each other? Is one as bad as the other? To answer those questions, we have to figure out how plagiarism fits into political discourse.
A key sign of plagiarism, and thus a common basis for decrying it, is the absence of an attribution to the original source. When academics write research articles, they remember one simple rule. In the words of Malcolm Bradbury, 'a gentleman always cites his sources'. But politicians use speech writers, and speech writers aren't credited, so this criticism doesn't wash.
Those of us who grew up in the English-speaking world were nurtured in a doctrine of 'in your own words'. But again, in a community in which speech writers are commonly used, 'use your own words' isn't the norm; 'use the best words for the purpose is'.
One reason we have a cultural aversion to plagiarism is that it denies the right person of credit. If you're Led Zeppelin and people think you've plagiarized another band's music (which a court has decided they didn't: see this report from the Guardian), then you've taken a lot of revenues from that other band. But unlike the people who write pop songs, neither Joe Biden nor Melania Trump gave their speeches in order to make money.
Well, you might think, not to make money, but to gain influence. And this is precisely the point at which the Kinnock-Biden plagiarism case diverges sharply from the Trump story.
The plagiarism accusations in the Kinnock-Biden case revolved around a speech which Neil Kinnock made to the Labour Party congress. When the Labour asked in his emotional address why he was the 'first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university', it was in service of a point: if bright, capable people were to be able to realise their potential, they needed a social structure which permitted them to; they needed a 'platform upon which they could stand'.
When Joe Biden asked in a stump speech why he was the first Biden in a thousand generations to go to university, he meant the same thing.
Both were members of a left-wing party, waging war against the far-right leaders of their countries, Thatcher and Reagan. There was no appropriation; there were soldiers on the same side of the fight making common cause. And that's why Neil Kinnock, when asked whether he was bothered by the appropriation of his words, responded that he wasn't; to the contrary, he confessed to feeling 'flattered'.
In the same way, when the New York Times reported the Biden story, chunks of the same text were repeated from day to day, with different journalists on the by-line. But why not? They weren't in competition with each other, they were on the same team, pooling resources.
And that's the first of two reasons why Melania Trump's use of Michelle Obama's elegant formulations is highly problematic. They're not on the same team. Quite the opposite. So if Mrs. Trump can express points of deeply held principle in Obama's words, what are we to conclude? Does she share Obama values? Or does she not know what her own values are? It must be one or the other, and neither reflects well on the Trump campaign.
The second and closely related reason why this case of plagiarism should be seen as a canary fainting dead in a coal mine is that it signals an absence of something to say. Michelle Obama's eloquent speech dovetailed nicely with her husband's agenda, and indeed comportment, as president. We now why she said what she said, because she has gone on to live the values she espoused. But if Melania Trump doesn't hold a set of values which can be differentiated from Michelle Obama's, why is she trying to become first lady? Or to reverse it, if she supports Donald Trump's presidency, how can she not understand that it is antithetical to everything Michelle and Barack Obama have ever espoused?
The problem, in other words, is not the plagiarism. The problem is that it reveals an emptiness of thought which the American electorate ought to find instructive.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Is it plagiarism if they want to be copied?
A story in the Guardian reports on a website called Churnalism.com which compares the text from press releases with news stories on the same topic. This text-matching exercise has shown that news organizations often copy the wording from press releases and paste it into their stories.
The phenomenon of journalists relying on press releases isn't a new one, but it is one which will presumably become more widespread as news organizations around the world respond to harsh economic realities by cutting reporting budgets.
This story (rightly) addresses the recycling of press releases as a question related to quality in journalism, but doesn't mention the p-word, and there's a sense in which it shouldn't, in which plagiarism would be a side issue in this context. The people who write press releases would like nothing better than for newspapers to reprint them as fact, with no changes made. They don't feel their authorial rights have been infringed. The reason this strategy can be problematic is that we assume press releases are designed to tell the story in such a way as to put the issuer of the release in the most favorable light possible, while we hope the news media take a more balanced and critical view of any news event they report on.
However, if it were students instead of journalists using this strategy, the first reaction of many teachers would be to the unattributed textual relationships, and the word 'plagiarism' would be invoked. (And, interestingly, the information about a given news story on the Churnalism site is strikingly reminiscent of a Turnitin report--percentage of the press release copied into the story, percentage of the story consisting of language from the press release, a side-by-side comparison of the two texts, etc.)
So this story interests me for what it implies about the relationship between what we teach our students, and the writing they'll do in the workplace. The principles we teach for good source use are fundamentally academic ones, but few of our students are going to be academics. They may go on to work in professional contexts where the recycling of language per se is not always problematic, and in which the principles guiding acceptable and unacceptable intertextuality are shaped by the individual demands of the discourse community.
To what extent does our teaching about source use in the university equip students to write in their professional lives?
The phenomenon of journalists relying on press releases isn't a new one, but it is one which will presumably become more widespread as news organizations around the world respond to harsh economic realities by cutting reporting budgets.
This story (rightly) addresses the recycling of press releases as a question related to quality in journalism, but doesn't mention the p-word, and there's a sense in which it shouldn't, in which plagiarism would be a side issue in this context. The people who write press releases would like nothing better than for newspapers to reprint them as fact, with no changes made. They don't feel their authorial rights have been infringed. The reason this strategy can be problematic is that we assume press releases are designed to tell the story in such a way as to put the issuer of the release in the most favorable light possible, while we hope the news media take a more balanced and critical view of any news event they report on.
However, if it were students instead of journalists using this strategy, the first reaction of many teachers would be to the unattributed textual relationships, and the word 'plagiarism' would be invoked. (And, interestingly, the information about a given news story on the Churnalism site is strikingly reminiscent of a Turnitin report--percentage of the press release copied into the story, percentage of the story consisting of language from the press release, a side-by-side comparison of the two texts, etc.)
So this story interests me for what it implies about the relationship between what we teach our students, and the writing they'll do in the workplace. The principles we teach for good source use are fundamentally academic ones, but few of our students are going to be academics. They may go on to work in professional contexts where the recycling of language per se is not always problematic, and in which the principles guiding acceptable and unacceptable intertextuality are shaped by the individual demands of the discourse community.
To what extent does our teaching about source use in the university equip students to write in their professional lives?
Friday, February 18, 2011
The aptly named (Dr?) Guttenberg
The English-language press has been a bit behind the continent in picking it up, but there's a new plagiarism scandal: the German defence minister has been charged with plagiarizing part of his PhD thesis.
While specifics are hard to come by, as they usual are in public episodes of plagiarism, it appears that it's patchwriting that's really involved.
What is striking about the response this case has generated is how very short the collective memory is. Joseph Biden—now a heartbeat away from the US presidency—was forced to withdraw from a bid for the presidency after allegations of plagiarism in one of his speeches turned up similar allegations regarding his student work. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. appears to have patchwritten parts of his thesis in theology. Here in Sweden, a Stockholm University professor widely known here in Sweden for her political activity was the recipient of vituperous public allegations of plagiarism after having adopted a patchwriting strategy in her published work. And so on and so on and so on.
My point isn't (of course) that the frequency with which plagiarism is identified in the writings of public figures somehow makes it conventional. Rather I'm a bit surprised that the media, and their consumers, can respond with shock and outrage again and again and again.
The journalistic adage goes 'Dog bites man—no news. Man bites dog—news.' Patchwriting in student writing should, on the evidence, fall into the former category.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
New book
A volume on academic writing has just come out, with several chapters on plagiarism:
Voices, identities, negotiations, and conflicts. Writing academic English across cultures.
Ed. by Phan Le Ha and Bradley Baurain
Emerald Group Publishing
More info: http://books.emeraldinsight.com/display.ask?K=9780857247193
Voices, identities, negotiations, and conflicts. Writing academic English across cultures.
Ed. by Phan Le Ha and Bradley Baurain
Emerald Group Publishing
More info: http://books.emeraldinsight.com/display.ask?K=9780857247193
Monday, February 14, 2011
Plagiarism in a PhD thesis at Ohio State
A graduate of the Ohio State University (my alma mater) has not only had her degree revoked after a university disciplinary committee found her guilty of plagiarism, she has been ordered to pay $15,000 in damages to the author of the thesis she plagiarized, according to a story in the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern. The article links to court documents giving about 17 pages' worth of examples of copied chunks of text, and the filing states that these are not the only examples. Interestingly, though, it appears that the two theses were on different topics. It was therefore possible to use the same extensive passages of language to frame two separate pieces of research. I'm not sure what that tells us, but it seems to raise some interesting questions.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
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