CCR 720: Valentine (2006) "Plagiarism as Literacy Practice"

Valentine, Kathryn. "Plagiarism as Literacy Practice: Recognizing and Rethinking Ethical Binaries." College Composition and Communication 58.1 (Sept. 2006): 89-109.

Summary:

After demonstrating that plagiarism is often viewed through cultural binaries of honest/dishonest, wrong/right, moral/immoral, high writing/low writing, work/non-work, Valentine argues that composition instructors and university administrators should recognize that plagiarism is much more complicated. She views plagiarism as a literacy practice of academic discourse, one where individuals’ identities are shaped through the conventions of that community. She claims that novices and international students will not understand and effectively practice western rules of plagiarism until they can understand plagiarism as a complicated performance of honesty, one infused with social interaction, textual practices, and cultural values.

Methods and Methodologies:

· She frames her investigation with theories of literacy practices within academic discourses, citing numerous researchers (Barton and Hamilton, Buranen, Howard, Price, Bauman, Gee) to support her analysis of viewing plagiarism as socially and culturally located as a literacy practice.

· She defines plagiarism through binaries (see above)

· She draws on anecdotal evidence of one international students’ experience being accused and punished for plagiarizing. While her methodological approach isn’t really covered (like when and how interviews occurred), she does discuss her involvement with the case.

· She cites one anonymous students’ practice of not quoting in order to avoid plagiarism charges (100).

Quotable Quotes:

· “Plagiarism becomes plagiarism as part of a practice that involves participants’ values, attitudes, and feelings as well as their social relationships to each other and to the institutions in which they work” (89).

· “Within the ethical discourse that informs plagiarism, identity categories are fixed: students may only occupy one—and only one—of two categories: honest or dishonest. This regulating of available identity categories is particularly evident in the treatment of unintentional plagiarism” (95).

· “Students’ opportunities to practice citation and the performance of honesty are closed down when their improper citation is read as a sign of dishonesty, rather than as a sign of an authentic beginner engaged in the work of acquiring a new discourse” (97).

· “Plagiarism policies and many administrators and teachers involved with plagiarism cases often don’t recognize plagiarism as connected to a discourse, as taking on an identity that can’t be taught or acquired just through textual features and teaching of those features or conventions. Because of misunderstandings of citation and plagiarism and because of misrepresentations of students, administrators and teachers often misread what students know and understand about plagiarism, what they need to learn about citation, and the space they need to be given to practice performing the identity that will allow them to get being a student “right,” especially in regard to plagiarism” (105).