Running Head: PLAGIARISM DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Plagiarism discourse and English language learners

Angela Sharpe
Colorado State University

Plagiarism discourse

Introduction
There are many ways in which writers insert their judgments, values, opinions, and
knowledge into their writing. One of the devices for gaining credibility with their audience
while taking a stance in writing is through citing and paraphrasing other research. As novice
members of an adopted discourse community, English language learners are confronted with the
temptation to copy others words due to: 1) a lack of confidence in their own language ability,
especially their phraseology in academic discourse; 2) English language learners may place more
trust in something that has been written and reviewed by others than their own writing; and 3)
the electronic age makes the temptation to copy and paste from various sources very enticing as
the task of writing a research paper using their own language can be very overwhelming. This
paper will highlight some of the unintentional instances of plagiarism by second language writers
in order to illustrate a continuum of plagiaristic behavior and intention in order to contrast the
current state of dichotomizing students as either unethical plagiarizers or honest writers with
integrity.
Through published and reviewed research, writers attempt to base their ideas in
previously grounded research. Likewise, based upon a review of literature, primarily in applied
linguistics and TESOL, this research review focuses on plagiarism as a concept as well as its
many forms with regard to second language writing. A short review of the historical roots of the
concept of plagiarism, along with some terminology employed in discourse about plagiarism will
be used to examine the complexity of the issue. This paper will utilize texts used at an intensive
academic English program to teach learners about plagiarism and citation conventions as a basis
for primary source examples on plagiarism discourse. The following anecdotal comment,
included on an ELL writers manuscript, summarizes the issue that many second language
teachers are familiar with: your work is both good and original. Unfortunately, the parts which
are good are not original, and the parts which are original are not good. (as cited in Pecorari
2003, p. 318). Although, the comment is rather harsh it does illustrate a dichotomy
representative of the matter.
The historical roots of plagiarism
In order to understand how plagiarism is conceived in todays academic environment, it is
relevant to review its historical roots. Pennycook (1996, p. 5) posits that in order to understand
current conceptualizations of plagiarism we must first examine how author, authenticity, and
authority are understood and intertwined in Western thought. In premodern times (e.g.biblical,
medieval), imagination was thought of largely as a reproductive process rather than a productive
process, that is, the images in our minds were thought of as reproductions of reality or imitations
of an original. During this time, it was believed that the production of any text came from a
divine source channeled through a human medium. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the
Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, caused a great shift in thinking in Europe.

Plagiarism discourse

Imagination became thought of as a productive activity and textual meaning was attributed to the
human mind instead of divine origins. This shift put emphasis on the human mind as the center
of creativity and idea formation, however, during this time the notion of property rights on ideas
produced discourse on ownership of ideas and language. Flowerdew and Li (2007, p.162) show
how plagiarism, or an overwhelming concern for authorial rights, is an Anglo-Saxon concept
which can be traced partly back to the invention and rise of the printing press during the 15th and
16th centuries coupled with the origin of copyright law in England and the United States during
the 17th and 18th centuries. Swales and Feak (2004, p. 172) define plagiarism as a deliberate
activityas the conscious copying from the work of others. They point out that plagiarism has
become an integral part of Western academic thinking and the assumptions that it is based upon
may not be shared by all cultures. Similar to Flowerdew and Li (2007), Swales and Feak (2004,
p.172) show that their definition of plagiarism is based upon the one framed in North American
and Western European academic cultures in which an Anglo-Saxon heritage is prevalent.
Plagiarism, then, in the United States is based upon a Western or Anglo-Saxon idea, and does not
acknowledge that other cultures may not share its definition or believe that ideas and language
can be owned. This opens the door to examining plagiarism as an ethical issue centered in a
Western academic moral system of thinking about intangible or intellectual rights, especially
with regard to second language writing pedagogy.
Conceptualizations of plagiarism
Flowerdew and Li (2007) draw attention to a number of caveats in any contemplation of
what constitutes plagiarism brought forward by Currie (1998):
.the need to appreciate the (postmodernist) belief in the intertextual nature of
discourse, the belief that no writer can be the sole originator or his or her own words or
ideas: the need to acknowledge the cultural and ideological implications of the traditional
Western (especially Anglo-Saxon) definition of plagiarism (a definition which fails to
acknowledge alternative cultural conceptions of acceptable practice and that may lead to
problems in dealing with students [especially ESL students] plagiaristic behaviors; and
the potential usefulness of distinguishing between the borrowing of words vs. the
borrowing of ideas when analyzing specific cases of textual borrowing. (p. 163)
Likewise in a study by Abasi and Graves (2008, p.230) on how university plagiarism policies
interacted with international graduate students development of identities as authors in their
academic writing, the authors found that the language used in plagiarism policy serving to
demystify academic writing had a negative effect on those students who were learning about
and becoming familiar with the genre of academic writing. The argument in this study was
framed around professors expectations that graduate students, including international students,

Plagiarism discourse

adopt an authorial stance in their writing. Many professors interviewed in the study lamented
that their international students writing often exhibited heavy borrowing and paraphrasing from
published sources with little evidence of creativity or authorial voice.their own voices were
almost completely marginalized by the authoritative voices of published authors (p. 226). This
brings up the issue of how to effectively convey to students what is expected in academic writing
and what constitutes plagiarism.
Forms of plagiarism
Plagiarism is a multi-layered phenomenon. It comes in many forms and likewise is the
result of many different intentions. There are obvious forms of plagiarism which are done with
intention, such as purchasing a paper from a website and turning it in as your own, direct
copying of anothers words and claiming them as your own, and self-plagiarism, or turning in
ones own work for more than one assignment, i.e. receiving credit more than once for the same
piece of work. These forms of plagiarism can be thought of as prototypical forms of plagiarism
which include intention to deceive.
Researchers have identified two contingencies related to plagiarism in writing. The first
contingency is intentionality, which the previous examples of prototypical plagiarism exhibit.
This contingency hedges on the degree to which an unattributed or misattributed writers use of
anothers work is deliberate. This can include mismatched work and source attribution,
inappropriate use of the citation conventions, and incomplete or incorrect adaptations of an
original passage. The second contingency has to do with culpability or the level of fault or moral
responsibility that a writer has in committing these types of plagiaristic acts (Jocoy & DiBiasi
2006, p.2).
One common form of plagiarism is textual plagiarism, which Pecorari (2003, p. 318)
defines as using the language and ideas from a source without (sufficient) attribution. This type
of plagiarism varies in intentionality. Pennycook (1996, p.202) illustrates an experience with
Chinese students where a student wrote a word-for-word memorized biographical account of
Abraham Lincoln which came from the class text. In this account the student unintentionally
plagiarized and did not try to hide the fact that they copied from memory. When Pennycook
(1996, p. 202) asked the student about copying the student reported feeling:
.rather fortunate that I had asked them to write something which he already knew.
Sitting in his head was a brief biography of Abraham Lincoln, and he was quite happy to
produce it on demand.
This account not only illustrates textual plagiarism, but also demonstrates how cultural beliefs on
ethics in writing make defining something as plagiarism relative, especially with students from
cultures where rote learning and memorization are seen as positive learning activities and in

Plagiarism discourse

some cases a sign of superior intellect. This exemplifies how there are degrees in the
prototypicality of textual plagiarism and cultural factors may play into the degrees of
intentionality and culpability at work.
Another form of plagiarism is referred to as patchwriting. Howard (2000) defines
patchwriting as: copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical
structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes (as cited in Pemberton 2000, p.80).
This form of plagiarism is classified as unintentional plagiarism and nonprototypical plagiarism.
However, Howard brings up the paradox in using terms like unintentional plagiarism by
pointing out that since plagiarism, as a subset of academic dishonesty, is seen as an ethical issue
where being dishonest means a lack of ethics or acting unethically. But she also points out that
by calling it unintentional we assert that it is committed by a writer who is ignorant of U.S.
academic ethics. It is unintentionally unethical (p. 80). Comparing patchwriting to purchasing
a completed paper from, say an internet paper mill, demonstrates a dichotomy between
unintentional and intentional plagiarism, however, because these are both classified under
academic dishonesty (plagiarism) they are both defined as unethical. The respective terminology
is problematic because it attempts to classify many extremely contextually situated events under
one reference.
Howard (2000) attributes patchwriting as a form of plagiarism in second language writing
where limited reading comprehension may be the cause, in that the student doesnt fully
understand what she is reading and thus cant frame alternative ways for talking about ideas. Or
the student understands what she is reading but is new to the discourse (quoted in Pecorari
2003, p. 320). This quote speaks to the possibility that second language learners use
patchwriting to supplement their writing because they are novice writers and are not familiar
with how to write with an authorial stance in a new discourse.
Flowerdew and Li (2007, p.164) use the term language re-use to describe Chinese novice
scientists textual copying strategies in a study they conducted. In their opinion this term, while
describing a similar phenomenon to patchwriting, removes the stigmatizing effect of language
entailed by the term plagiarism. Intertextuality is yet another term used to reframe the binary
effect of most plagiarism discourse. Intertextuality refers to the notion that all texts are related to
prior texts which include ideas on the subject or research of the text being written, therefore
some degree of textual borrowing is inevitable. This notion speaks to ideas about originality and
ownership. Any new writing that is grounded in research will unavoidably and inadvertently
include some form of borrowing. Chandrasoma et al. (2004, p. 173) claim that intertextuality
(i.e. textual borrowing) is endemic to all writing. Viewing writing as a product which is
influenced by and therefore linked to previous writing further blurs the lines of what constitutes
plagiarism and the ethical judgments that ensue. In light of the forms of plagiarism highlighted

Plagiarism discourse

in this section it is useful to consider these forms through the lens of a published plagiarism
policy.
Academic dishonesty: the institutional level
There are a number of researchers trying to understand and identify reasons why
international students may have higher tendencies for unacceptable source appropriation. One
place to start to analyze this issue could be within the language of a university plagiarism policy.
Institutions of higher education have a responsibility to uphold academic standards in order to
ensure academic integrity. Plagiarism is a subcategory within their guiding principles in
ensuring integrity. The following excerpt is taken from the policy handbook for a medium-sized,
public university located in the Western United States:
Plagiarism Plagiarism includes the copying of language, structure, images, ideas, or
thoughts of another, and representing them as ones own without proper acknowledgment
and is related only to work submitted for credit; the failure to cite sources properly;
sources must always be appropriately referenced, whether the source is printed, electronic
or spoken. Examples include a submission of purchased research papers as ones own
work; paraphrasing and/or quoting material without properly documenting the source.
(Colorado State University policies and guiding principles 2014, p.
9)
The language in this policy seems to reduce academic dishonesty to issues in properly
acknowledging sources of knowledge. In effect, the language in this policy suggests that as long
as writers have proper citation they can avoid plagiarism. In comparison, the policy from an
internationally recognized private university addresses issues other than citation, including
authorial stance. The policy states:
All work submitted for credit is expected to be the students own work. In preparation of
all papers and other written work, students should always take great care to distinguish
their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from other sources. The term
sources includes not only published primary and secondary material, but also
information and opinions gained directly from other people.
(Harvard University guide to using sources, 2014)
The difference between the policies, and the point of the comparison, is that the second policy
acknowledges forms of plagiarism beyond citation and in effect promotes students taking a
careful authorial stance in their writing. Abasi and Graves (2008, p. 230) argue that the omission
of information (to students) on the rhetorical uses of texts in academic writing as a collaborative
act of knowledge construction fails to convey an important core assumption that those privy to
professional writing practices adhere to,

Plagiarism discourse

namely, that knowledge is contingent, and that all published sources, regardless of their
authors, are to be approached as provisional claims to truth that are always subject to
rational scrutiny
The failure of the first policy to recognize the importance of students distinguishing their own
ideas in their writing, leaves a lot of gray area in the conversation on what is and what is not
plagiarism. It also may create a scenario where the professor who suspects the type of
plagiarism highlighted in the second policy must be the one to open a dialogue with students
about inserting their own ideas and responding to sources, possibly sending the message that not
distinguishing your ideas from source ideas is not acceptable for this particular professor but may
be in other contexts. In the case of international students, instruction on how to use sources to
cultivate an authorial stance in their writing is essential in ESL instruction of academic writing.
Classroom texts as conveyers of best practices in academic writing
This portion of the paper focuses on an analysis of classroom texts used in an Intensive
Academic English program. The texts are used in the two highest levels of writing classes in the
program. Specifically, the sections defining plagiarism and how to avoid plagiarism are
analyzed.
The first text, Academic Writing for Graduate Students, by Swales and Feak (2004, p.
173) lists the following approaches to writing as plagiarizing approaches:
1. Copying a paragraph as it is from the source without any acknowledgement.
2. Copying a paragraph making only small changes such as replacing a few verbs or
adjectives with synonyms.
3. Cutting and pasting a paragraph by using the sentences of the original but leaving one
or two out, or by putting one or two sentences in a different order.
4. Composing a paragraph by taking short standard phrases from a number of sources
and putting them together with words of your own.
5. Paraphrasing a paragraph by rewriting with substantial changes in language and
organization, amount of detail, and examples.
This list is juxtaposed with an example for using sources which would produce and constitute
acceptable original work (p.173):
Quoting a paragraph by placing it in block format with source cited.
This may mislead students into believing that quotation is the only safe strategy to avoid
plagiarism. Further, example 4 is mute on what constitutes short standard phrases.

Plagiarism discourse

The second text, Sourcework: Academic writing from sources, by Dollahite and Haun
(2012), makes little mention of the word plagiarism in its section on attributing sources. Instead,
the section is headed under Documenting Your Evidence. It gives the following rationales for
documenting sources:
1. To let the reader know that you have carefully researched your ideas.
2. To tell the reader where to find the original if she wants to learn more about your
topic.
3. To avoid plagiarism, a serious offense in academic writing in the United States.
(p. 123)
Although this text does not define or give clear examples of what constitutes plagiarism it does
present a good argument for why documenting sources is good for writer credibility and
maintaining rapport with the audience in that they are informed of the sources of information in
the paper. The rest of the chapter focuses on APA conventions for documentation of sources.
The third text, Academic Encounters 4:Reading and Writing, by Seal (2012) makes only
one explicit mention of plagiarism in one of its many sections on paraphrasing as a writing skill.
In this section paraphrasing as a writing skill is described as follows:
Sometimes when you have a writing assignment, you read something that someone else
wrote that has information and ideas that you want to include in your writing, too. You
cannot simply copy this persons words into your writing and pretend that they are your
own. This is called plagiarism, and it is considered to be a serious offense. However,
you can paraphrase. Paraphrasing involves understanding the meaning of what someone
else wrote and the using your own language to express the same thing. .the key to
writing a good paraphrase is not only to use synonyms, but also to change the sentence
structure. (p.80)
This seems to send the message that paraphrasing does not require citation. Further, this
description seems to correspond with what Howard (2000, cited in Pemberton, 2000) attributes
as patchwriting, a form of unintentional plagiarism and what Swales and Feak (2004) attribute as
a form of plagiarism (see item 5 in their list). The skill of paraphrasing is reviewed again in a
later chapter by stating:
You use paraphrasing when you include someone elses ideas in your own writing. You
can use paraphrasing when you encounter a difficult piece of text. Rewriting the text in
your own words is a way to deeply interact with the text as you struggle to understand it.
(p.126)

Plagiarism discourse

Again, this passage suggests that unattributed paraphrasing does not constitute plagiarism. The
writing skill of quoting from an original source is described in the last chapter of the text by
stating:
In developing writing skills you have learned how to paraphrase.In each case, you
have learned how to avoid plagiarizing by using your own words to include information
and ideas from another writer..A third way to include another writers information
and ideas is to use quotations, that is, the actual words that the writer used..Also, using
the writers actual words will show your instructor that you have read and understood a
reading very thoroughly and thought critically about it. (p.188)
This passage is followed by a very general description of citation conventions. The message that
this passage seems to send, however, is that using quotations and attributing them to a source
avoids plagiarism and demonstrates to your instructor (audience) that you understand what you
read in the original source. There is no indication to students, in this passage, as to how
quotations affect their authorial stance or credibility as writers. Also, this passage could be
construed as promoting an unlimited use of quotations.

Stance in academic writing

Biber et al. (1999, p. 966) defines stance a linguistic device where speakers and writers
express personal feelings, attitudes, value judgments, or assessments. Biber (2006, p. 99)
refers to stance expressions as those which convey to the audience a speakers attitude, how sure
they feel about the reliability of certain information, how they obtained access to this
information, and most importantly what perspective or viewpoint they are representing or taking
up in their writing. Stance, then, is a way in which writers convey a part of themselves to their
audience. Stance is referred to by many terms including: evaluation (Hunston and Thompson,
2000), attitude (Halliday, 1994), epistemic modality (Hyland, 1998), appraisal (Martin, 2000);
White, 2003), stance (Biber and Finegan, 1989; Hyland, 1999), and metadiscourse (Crismore,
1989; Hyland and Tse, 2004) all of which describe a similar phenomenon accounting for an
interpersonal dimension of writing (all cited in Hyland 2005, p. 174). Effective academic
writing should take into account audience and the potential questions or disagreements which
may arise from their writing. In this way writers are simultaneously trying to make a claim,
comment on its truth, establish solidarity and represent credibility(Hyland 2005, p. 177).
Where second language learners are concerned, especially in light of the writing strategies
highlighted in learner texts, stance and its importance when citing and paraphrasing research
seems to present a necessary but often missing component in second language writing pedagogy.

Plagiarism discourse

10

Discussion and Implications

According to Open Doors Data from the Institute of International Education, the number
of international students enrolling in institutions of higher education in the United States has
been increasing by about 8% every year. In 2014, there were approximately 886,000 students
studying in universities across the United States with the largest portion of these students from
China. From a linguistic perspective, there are many expectations of these students in an English
medium classroom, one of which is the ability to understand, analyze and synthesize research
into their academic writing. There is also an expectation for these learners to be able to
synthesize this research in a way that also incorporates an element of their own stance. These
expectations can be particularly difficult for some writers as they represent western-centric
conventions and are expected by virtue of the genre and discipline to add to knowledge.
Citations are a device by which a writer can be interactive and evaluative in their own writing.
Citations play a key role in all academic writing that is research based. Citations demonstrate
how a new proposition or piece of evidence is grounded in previous research and ongoing
knowledge. Citations help writers to project themselves into their own writing through their
support or challenge to the contributions of others involved in similar research. Citations, then,
can be used as devices to give a writer a credible stance in their writing.
The implications that can be drawn from the research used in the paper are broad. From
a second language teaching perspective, one implication might be examining the concept of
plagiarism in relation to international students who may not share in the idea that words and
ideas can be owned. Further, as these students are learning how to write and are simultaneously
seeking membership into a new discourse community through their writing, it seems extra unfair
to label them plagiarizers. A second implication, especially in light of a repeated concern for
international students tendency to not attribute language or ideas to their sources, may be drawn
from the review of the sources for dispelling this type of knowledge, in that, there doesnt seem
to be a clear or empirical pedagogy for teaching learners what constitutes plagiarism and what
does, only strategies for avoiding it. The research used as a basis to form these implications
similarly suggests that decisions about whether a second language learner has plagiarized should
be related to questions of student reading comprehension, student writing development, ways in
which writing strategies are conveyed to students, whether stance and authorial voice is a part of
these conversations, and ways in which citation conventions and their imperativeness for
credibility are emphasized to students. Chandrasoma et al. (2004, p. 172) echo this by
suggesting that plagiarism and textual borrowing cannot be dealt with in terms of only detection
and prevention, or of simply teaching the correct citation practices, because it is centrally
concerned with questions of language, identity, education, and knowledge.

Plagiarism discourse

11

References
Abasi, A. R., & Graves, B. (2008). Academic literacy and plagiarism: Conversations with
international graduate students and disciplinary professors.Journal of English for
Academic Purposes, 7(4), 221-233.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., Finegan, E., & Quirk, R. (1999). Longman
grammar of spoken and written English. London/New York: Longman.
Biber, D. (2006). Stance in spoken and written university registers. Journal of English for
Academic Purposes, 5(2), 97-116.
Chandrasoma, R., Thompson, C., & Pennycook, A. (2004). Beyond plagiarism: Transgressive
and nontransgressive intertextuality. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3(3),
171-193.
Colorado State University. (2014). Policies and guiding principles. Retrieved from:
http://www.catalog.colostate.edu/Content/files/2014/FrontPDF/1.6POLICIES.pdf
Dollahite, N. E., Haun, J. (2012). Sourcework: Academic writing from sources. 2nd ed. Boston:
Heinle / Cengage Learning.
Flowerdew, J., & Li, Y. (2007). Plagiarism and second language writing in an electronic age.
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27, 161-183.
Harvard University Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism. (2014). Retrieved from:
http://hms.harvard.edu/departments/office-registrar/student-handbook/4-student-conductand-responsibility/409-academic-dishonesty-and-plagiarism
Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse.
Discourse studies, 7(2), 173-192.
Institute of International Education. Retrieved from: http://www.iie.org/Research-and
Publications/Open-Doors/Data/International-Students
Jocoy, C. L., & DiBiase, D. (2006). Plagiarism by adult learners online: A case study in
detection and remediation. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance
Learning, 7(1).

Plagiarism discourse

12

Pecorari, D. (2003). Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second
language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(4), 317-345.
Pemberton, M. A. (2000). The ethics of writing instruction: Issues in theory and practice.
Stamford, Conn.: Ablex Pub..
Pennycook, A. (1996). Borrowing others' words: Text, ownership, memory, and
plagiarism. TESOL quarterly, 30(2), 201-230.
Seal, B. (2012). Academic Encounters 4: Reading and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Swales, J. M., Feak, C. B. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and
skills. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.