Re: Plagiarism, credit, and culture-reply, reply, reply

[Beth Rapp Young <youngbr@email.uah.edu>]

On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Frank Sherwood wrote:

> I thought for 
> the most part, in addition, that citations meant I was giving my 
> advice freely to those I cited, a sort of gesture of pity and good 
> will for the troubles they're in.

Hey!  I DID THIS TOO!  :)

Seriously, if we teach that research/scholarship is analogous to
conversation, all of our reasons for responding to someone in person
would be reflected in our writing.  How can we have scholarly
conversation if we don't know who we are talking with?

I forgot to say earlier that a new textbook, _The Writer's Community_
by David J. Klooster and Patricia L. Bloem (St. Martins ISBN
0-312-09539-2) has a terrific section on originality.  Not only do
they discuss how one can find "original" ideas, even on an assigned
topic, they includes an approach to teaching about plagiarism which
relies on the purposes of the text and the expectations of readers,
not on threats ("Follow these rules or get kicked out of school!")
Definitely worth a look.

Beth Young

Dr. Beth Rapp Young
U of Alabama in Huntsville
YoungBR@email.uah.edu