It is a sad reality that, in 15 years, I have not had a single semester - and that includes summers and short semesters - where I have not failed at least one student for plagiarism. Only 7 percent? More like, “Yikes! Seven percent!”Īs someone who has taught college-level English in a variety of environments - on-site and online, at community colleges and major research universities- I can say without hesitation that the speech delivered by Melania Trump would have, at the very least, earned at least a zero on any assignment and possibly, depending upon the writer’s response to the offense, an F in the course. From Texas to New Jersey, such policies are not uncommon. Reminding a professor that other students had plagiarized in the past did nothing to remove the student's guilt. Indeed, I once taught at a community college - an open-enrollment institution - where it was standard policy for students to fail an entire course if they were caught plagiarizing a single sentence! If a student wanted to be shown any mercy, at a bare minimum, they had to admit to their error. And since education is a significant political talking point, hopefully we can all agree that this is a pretty big deal. To be sure, Melania Trump's speech and its “only” 7 percent plagiarism would be enough to earn it poor grades from more colleges and universities than we have room to list. That makes the instance even more significant. Along with making a case for her husband as a viable presidential candidate, it was her first significant attempt to sell herself to the country as first lady, which was the same exact context as Michelle Obama's speech. It's not as if Melania Trump delivered this speech at local school board meeting or in her sophomore speech class. Let's grant that 93 percent of the speech was original. Still, Christie's faux defense demands that we ask, what percentage of intellectual theft is actually permissible? If 7 percent is acceptable, why not 10 percent? Or 20 percent? Where do we draw the line?
Oddly enough, Trump defenders such as the attack-dog-in-chief Chris Christie proudly declared 93 percent of the speech was original, which of course is a tacit admission than 7 percent of the speech was indeed plagiarized and a tactic that the great orator and propane enthusiast Hank Hill would describe as playing "lawyer ball." As the Modern Language Association handbook makes clear, "using another person’s ideas, information or expressions without acknowledging that person’s work constitutes intellectual theft." Melania Trump's speech contained textbook plagiarism. To limit the plagiarism to mere shared vocabulary drastically misses the point and shows a simplistic understanding of plagiarism.
That's really the most egregious error in the Trump speech. Trump's speech contains what is sometimes called mosaic plagiarism, where the vocabulary might be altered with synonyms but the structure of the original is maintained. Most people know that when you copy someone else's words directly, it's plagiarism, and, yes, contrary to the protestations of her husband's political apparatus and their many defenders across social media, Trump's speech contained direct word-for-word plagiarism.īut there's more. Oddly enough, many teachers such as myself will in time come to appreciate Trump's speech because it contains, in a relatively short space, several types of plagiarism and may serve as a model for future study. Trump's speech bore similarities to Obama’s in not only vocabulary but also in subject matter and syntax, making the possibility of a coincidence a mathematical fiction. Period.ĭespite Trump campaign protests to the contrary, the speech contains more than mere generic vocabulary that both Melania Trump and Michelle Obama (or their speechwriters) drew upon. But whoever wrote the words in question, the speech was, in short, plagiarized.
Meredith McIver, a speechwriter for the Trump campaign, has since come forward to accept blame for the plagiarized sections. The speech that Melania Trump delivered this week at the Republican National Convention would easily have been flagged for plagiarism in any college-level speech or writing class. Let's establish a clear fact from the outset.
0 kommentar(er)
