Re: Plagiarism/boilerplate

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

Just a few random observations about plagiarism and boilerplate (I'm
in the midst of making editorial changes in a book ms that's 4 years
old--mostly it's adding references to what everyone else has done while 
my ms has sat around at the publishers, and maybe I'd rather philosophize
than practice).

1. Boilerplate is nothing new.  There are examples e.g. from 13th c B.C.E.
Hittite texts (e.g. treaties and instructions from the king).  Like us,
the Hittites didn't feel obliged to reinvent the
wheel when it came to highly conventionalized language designed for a
specific purpose. 

2. The idea that conventions for citation style are discipline specific 
is one that we ought to take seriously.  And maybe we should accept the
fact that the teacher in a discipline not conventionally associated with
teaching writing might not care much about citation style.  In a class for
majors with a strong writing to learn emphasis, perhaps the teacher does
see teaching and enforcing a particular citation style as part of the
agenda, but in a class like the linguistics class I'm teaching right now,
which is lower-division, not for majors but aimed at educating students to
be informed laypersons, and has essays related to the readings but no
required independent research, I quite honestly regard teaching or
requiring a particular citation style as way down on my list of
priorities.

I dunno.  My own subfield of linguistics is quite anarchic with regards to
citation style.  Traditionally people use abbreviations for journals and
books, and part of learning the field is learning what those
abbreviations spell out.  Occasionally someone editing a book will try and
standardize things, urging contributors to use the abbreviations in a
standard source or presenting an alternative described as "Do it like
this." (what follows is a couple of examples in some sort of APA-ish
hybrid--enough to extract some general principles).
Sara Kimball