The examples below draw upon the following passage from the 1985 book, by media critic Neil Postman. 1. When people plagiarize, they present someone elses words or ideas as if they were their own. Which of the examples below would be considered plagiarism? Which would be considered plagiarism? Explain. If youre not sure, thats fine. Just explain why youre uncertain. (Note that we are not concerning ourselves with APA or MLA in this discussion. Pretend you are encountering the examples in a newspaper or magazine, where academic citation style isnt even used.) 2. This set of examples has been used by many different instructors. Teachers (both K-12 and higher ed) participate in a culture of sharing that is intended to benefit students and normally isnt considered plagiarism. Politicians, too, often present words that they did not themselves author. Everyone is aware of the role of political speech writers, and
thus this practice is not considered plagiarism. Can you think of other situations where one person presents the words of another without citation, and the practice is not considered plagiarism? What is the difference between the situation you have in mind, or the situations described above, and that of plagiarism that appears in the work of an individual author (whether a student or professional author)? If you cant think of a response to #2, or it seems to you that your example has already been well-covered by your peers, then you can respond to the following prompt instead: Do a little web surfing to learn about a public official or some other prominent person who confronted charges of plagiarism. Summarize the incident and describe any debate surrounding it. Explain or explore any differences between his/her response to #1 and your own. You may alsoor insteadwant to comment on a classmates response to #2.