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Author: Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Title: Lies Like Truth: Discourse Issues In Language

Publication Info:

Ann Arbor, Michigan: Scholarly Publishing Office,

University of Michigan University Library

Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism,

Fabrication, and Falsification

2006

Source: Lies Like Truth: Discourse Issues In Language

Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Ann Arbor, MI: Scholarly Publishing Office,

University of Michigan, University Library

vol. I, , pp. 33-42, 2006

ArticleType:

Invited Editorial

URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.5240451.0001.011

PDF: Link to full PDF [0.3mb ]

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http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/images/5240451.0001.011.pdf

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LIES LIKE TRUTH: DISCOURSE ISSUES IN LANGUAGEFrom Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification (an on-line refereed journal), University

of Michigan, Volume 1, pp. 33-42, 2006. ISSN 1559-3096. The first version of this work was prepared for the AnnualConference of the Modern Language Association, Ontario, Canada, December 1993.

By Felipe de Ortego y GascaVisiting Scholar and Lecturer in English, Texas A&M University—Kingsville; Professor Emeritus, Texas State University System—Sul Ross.

INTRODUCTION

abrication, falsification, and plagiarism aredifferent facets in the prism of discourse,

all inhering eiconic dimensions. The wordeicon is of Greek origin, and we use its

blood kin icon in a number of ways in English. Butthe word spelled as “eicon” was first introduced by

Kenneth Boulding in his work The Image (1956).

There the word “eicon” refers to that collection of

impressions and perceptions that create “image”–

Boulding was addressing creation of a “public

image” or persona. Extending professor Boul-

ding’s notion of “eiconics” in the creation of a

public image, all of us, I daresay, at some time or

other, act or have acted out of “eico-nic-governed

behavior”–perhaps “always” some behavioristsnow suggest–a “scanner syndrome” (being

watched) behavior that may engender fabrication,

falsification and even plagiarism.

By way of background to eiconic behavior,one school of thought, in the popular “ jargon” of

“transformation” best sellers, contends that “self-

image” or “self-esteem” is the product of “eiconic

forces, that who we think we are (our self –internal

perception internally influenced) opposed to who

we think others think we are (our imago –internal

perception externally influenced) is more

important to our well-being. Development of the“imago” is based on internal perception and its

projection is determined by external influences on

the “self”. These are important eiconic parameters

in the matrix of perception which Dr. Henry

Kissinger has remarked is oftentimes more

important than reality. To many cultural

anthropolo-gists perception is reality. Whorf and

Sapir, for example, postulated that reality is the

sum of our perceptions whatever their relationships

to reality. Let us consider how this proposition

plays out among human beings in terms of

discourse issues in language–particularly

fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism.

THE EICONIC MATRIX

s sentients, we’re concerned about how

others see us, regard us, think of us. We’re

concerned about “what the neighbors will

say” or “what the guys will think” or “I

can’t wear this dress (or suit) to the party” or some

variation of the above. In some cases we call

eiconic-governed behavior “peer pressure.” No one

wants to be “less” in the “public” eye. “Last one in

is a rotten egg” we shout (or used to shout) as kids.And so, to enhance our image we learn, acquire,

and adopt a variety of image-enhancing strategies

(eiconic strategies) which include fabrication,

falsification, outright lying, exa-ggeration,

embellishment, confabulation, and hyper-bole, to

name but a few. To say you went to Yale, for example, when you didn’t, is a lie. If you didn’t go

to Yale and you say you went to a school as good

as Yale, may be an exaggeration. Depends.

Someone mentions a swanky restaurant and you

say “I go there all the time” is an exaggeration if

you’ve only gone there once or twice. You’ve justgot home through heavy traffic and you say “there

were a million cars on the road” is hyperbole. All

of us hyperbolize at times. This is an innocuous

form of fabrication. We don’t pay attention to it.

The mother who says to her child, “I’ve told you a

thousand times to wash your hands before dinner”

is using hyperbole to make a point. Strictly

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speaking, what she said is a lie. Certainly an

exaggeration. But the purpose of the exaggeration

or hyperbole is to impress the child with the need

to wash hands before dinner. We don’t usually

brand hyperbole as a fabrication. We acknowledgeit as colorful language, idiosyncratic at least. It

serves a purpose.What I’m getting at is that sometimes we “mis-

speak” ourselves, falsify to fit the moment. The

words may not be an accurate reflection of the

“truth” in these “Pinocchio” scenarios as Lisa

Takeuchi Cul-en (2006) calls them. For the point

is not the truth but the “moment.” Cullen explains

that “psycholo-gists call lying a form of

impression management”. Some psychologists

consider lying an impairment of volition,

especially chronic lying. My granddaughter asks if

I like spinach as I try to get her to eat the spinach

on her plate. I say “yes,” knowing I loathe spinach.She asks: “Did you eat your spinach when you

were little?” “Sure,” I reply, knowing I didn’t. Am

I lying to her? Yes. Technically. But for a reason.

To create the impression that I like spinach. Thatkind of verbal behavior (falsification) goes on all

the time. For example, I’m leaving a dinner party

that I didn’t enjoy, but on my way out I tell the

hostess, “That was a great party; really enjoyed

myself.” The food was terrible and the guests were

boring. But I tell her what she expects to hear in

terms of the protocols of civility. Am I lying? Yes.

But the protocols are paramount in the exchangefor both the hostess and for me. These fibs are part

of the “impression management” process. In his

Confessions, Rousseau commented that “to lie

without intent and without harm to oneself or to

others is not to lie. . . but a fiction,” adding that a

fiction need not engender reproach (McQuillen,

2001, 45).

In his 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters in

1989, Jesse Jackson explained that he did not actu-

ally spit in white people’s food–though he publiclysaid he did–when he worked in a restaurant as a

youth during the dark days of the civil rights strug-gle. He only said he had done that, he explained,

because saying it was a way of “fighting back.”

Was he lying? Of course. Should we hold his feet

to the fire for that fabrication? I think not, for his

words were words of the moment. Uttered to

enhance the context–or the speaker. The soldier

who deports himself less than valiantly during a

battle will not describe himself that way later–per-

haps as he recounts those exploits to his

grandchildren. The eiconic impulse is always to

place ourselves in the best possible light. In myview, these are not high crimes and misdemeanors.

Pecadillos? Yes. But surely forgivable.Unfortunately, the eiconic matrix includes per-

ceptions by other people wherein they expect

correspondence between “utterance” and “fact.”

Though not an unreasonable expectation, that’s not

always possible because language is a verbal

symbolization of perception and behavior. That

was Whorf and Sa-

pir’s hypothesis: that language influences percep-

tion and behavior. In other words, we can read the

sym-bols in our own language but cannot compre-

hend the symbols in someone else’s language

unless versed in that tongue. What I experience isone thing. How I verbalize that experience in my

own language is something else. And writing about

that experience in my own language recasts the

reality of that experi-ence in an entirely differentmode and domain. Thus, in recounting our

experiences, we may consciously or unconsciously

resort to fabrication and/or falsify-cation. This,

however, does not absolve us of illicit conduct and

behavior.

The language we speak never really captures

“the experience.” Language is a filter (and at once

the conduit) through which we “strain” experience.In essence, Whorf and Sapir were saying that the

language one speaks shapes one’s view (reality) of

the world. As Paul de Man would have put it, the

words in our accounts of life and of ourselves

emerge already colored (or tainted) by a plethora

of factors like emotion, consciousness, education,

awareness, inter alia. When we tell people about

ourselves, we do so using the most imprecise

medium at our disposal–language. Unfortunately

it’s all we’ve got–for the moment–until we get thehang of Mr Spock’s Vulcan mind-meld. In short,

people are not always who they seem to be nor who they tell each other they are. In part, this

explains résumé padding and ficti-tious degrees.

Those transgressions reflect the eiconic need for

agency.

When we speak about ourselves we are transla-

ting experience into symbols of intelligibility we

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think other people will understand. But it’s all ap-

proximation. Language is never accurate, as Jac-

ques Derrida knew. While the English word “tree”

is an acceptable transliteration of the Spanish word

“arbol” each word has its own aura of comprehension in its respective linguistic system.

Language is always in-nately figurative,representational. Ambiguity attends all linguistic

manifestations. As sentients we’ve become accus-

tomed to that ambiguity–that’s how we cope with

the ambiguities of life, of existence, of the

universe. That’s why a member of the IRA may be

a patriot to one group and a terrorist to another.The production of linguistic meaning is a

constantly shifting ground, some meanings seeking privilege over others.

THE DISCOURSE MATRIX

t’s this ambiguity that most often deters us

from coming to an unequivocal definition of

the term “plagiarism” in its various forms, one

of the mo-dern “deadly sins,” perhaps because

the term itself is so ambiguous and ambivalent.

Sometimes plagiarism is referred to as “recycling.”

This was certainly true in Shakespeare’s time

when–in the absence of laws of plagiarism–he

allegedly purloined most of his plots and, in thecase of Antony and Cleopatra, lifted al-most

verbatim an entire passage from Plutarch; not to

mention what he took from Brooke for Romeo and Juliet . Or in Chaucer’s time when he borrowed

freely from French authors (Ortego, 1970). With

these two “gold-standard” authors, what they

plagiarized (unacknowledged copying) has

sometimes been excused as “creative genius” or an

improvement on the original. No matter the

circumstances, plagiarism is a trope with a long

philosophical history

Other “great figures” of history have been

caught in the skein of unacknowledged copying.

In 1597, the astronomer Tycho Brahe accused

Nicolas Raima-nus Ursus, another astronomer, of

plagiarism, of stealing his geoheliocentric world

system theory, drawing Johannes Kepler into the

fray. Even Thomas Malthus, the population

theorist, was charged with plagiarism. In Malthus’

case, sociologist William Petersen notes that by

putting the ideas of previous population theorists“into a larger framework and examining in detail

the relation of population growth to economic,

social and political development, Mal-thus did

more than any of his predecessors or all of them

together” (Dupaquier, 1980). This is

characterizing plagiarism as “creative genius.”

In 1916, a plagiarism dispute arose over

whether Albert Einstein or David Hilbert

discovered the general theory of relativity. Like

Malthus, Einstein was considered by many of his

peers as an “incorrigible plagiarist” and charged

with copying the theories of others without

attribution (Bjerknes, 2003). The matter remains

unresolved, it may seem, according to Bjerknes”

work, although critics have noted Bjer-knes’

disclaimer that the book was “intended solely for

entertainment purposes . . . [and the author’s

disavowal of responsibility for] the completeness,

or the accuracy, or the adequacy, of any

information in” Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible

Plagiarist .ISSUES OF PLAGIARISM

rom accounts in the media on Stephen B.

Oates and plagiarism in 1993, I saw littlethat would outrightly constitute plagiarism.

Oates, professor of history at the University

of Massachusetts at Amherst, was charged with

plagiarism by what he called a cabal of “fraud

busters” bent on exposing plagiarism not only in

With Malice Toward None, his book on Lincoln,

but also in most of his previous works (Oates,

2002). Having taken their case to the AmericanHistorical Association, the verdict rendered by the

AHA supported “the cabal,” stating that “Mr.

Oates relied too much and too consistently, even

with attribution [emphasis mine], on ‘the structure,

distinctive language, and rhetorical strategies’ of

other scholars and authors.” Oates denied the

charges and not being a member of the AHA

refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the or-

ganization (ibid .). But his case raised an important

distinction between “appropriation” and “attribu-tion”–albeit an ambiguous distinction. After a year

and a half, the professional division and council of the AHA absolved Oates of plagiarism but rebuked

him for not having enough references to the Benja-

min Thomas biography. This is a prime example

of just how difficult it is at times to ascertain

plagiarism.

As I see it, “plagiarism” is not “expropriation of

another author’s findings or interpretation” as the

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American Historical Association (AHA) contends.

Those are different “crimes”–theft and

misappropriation. Plagiarism is the outright use (or

claim) of someone else’s words or works as one’s

own. Like putting your name as author of Hamlet .But creating a play like West Side Story based

loosely on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is notconsidered outright plagiarism. That’s making an

old idea new. That’s what Dryden did with Shake-

speare. We know who the author is of the original

work, the adaptation can be regarded as a sort of

homage to the original and, thus, considered “a

legitimate means of derivative expression.” In

1968, Mark Medoff (Tony-award author of Child-ren of a Lesser God ) and I crafted an anti-war

musical version of Hamlet which we called

Elsinore. With a lot of license and a considerable

dash of schmaltz the work was well received by

audiences. We were hailed as clever.Historically, well into the 18th century, writers

regularly embellished the works of well-known

figures much the way Dryden “improved”

Shakespeare. In science, for example, break-throughs are almost always predicated on previous

work. Attribution is taken for granted. In the realm

of ideas, I’m reminded of Stephen Jay Gould’s

acknowledgment in Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle(1988):

I owe a more profound and immediate debt to col-leagues who have struggled to understand the

history of geology. I present this book as a logicalanalysis of three great documents, but it is really acollective enterprise. I am embarrassed that I cannotnow sort out and attribute the bits and pieces forgedtogether here. I am too close to this subject. I have

taught the discovery of time for twenty years, andhave read the three documents over and over again(for I regard such repetition as the best measuringstick of an intellectual life–when new insights cease,

move on to something else). I simply do notremember which pieces came from my own readingsof Burnet, Hutton, and Lyell, and which from Cooy-kaas, or Ruwick, Porter, or a host of other thinkers

who have inspired me–as if exogony and endogenycould form separate categories in any case.

“Bits and pieces forged together”–that’s the

process of learning. Our data banks are full of “bits, pieces, and bytes” of information from which

we draw to fill our own views, opinions, and

utterances. In other words, critical thinking is not

the product of a vacuum. It draws on the flow of a

“broader intellectual and social history” (Ashcroft

and Ahluwalia, 1999, vi). Over time, as Gould has

explained, it’s difficult to know where exactly

those bits and pieces came from. Do they appear in

our texts naturally? Some bits and pieces are sounique we forego the need for attribution because

we know everybody else recognizes those bits and pieces. Richard Brookhiser (2006) likens these bits

and pieces to literary “lint” that “sticks to your

mind” eventually becoming your “own” words,

adding that “good writing is rife with inherited

conventions and silent quotations”.

It would be hard for me (and foolish) to begin

the opening of a speech with the words “Four score

and seven years ago” without attribution. But to

start out with “Some time ago our ancestors” and

go on from there, paraphrasing or borrowing from

Lincoln’s ideas in the Gettysburg Address does not

strike me as plagiarism. That’s drawing from thecommon storehouse of ideas we have access to.

Ideas aren’t proprietary. We can patent a particular

application of an idea (a mousetrap), for instance,

but not the idea itself (the idea of a mousetrap).Ideas can give rise to any number of applications.

The applications are patentable.

In 1988, Senator Joseph Biden’s use of British

Labor Party leader Neal Kinnock’s theme of per-

sonal poverty and self-determination to his

constituents was but another application of a theme

that was not Kinnock’s property in the first place.

He’s not the originator of that theme. What heowns is his application of the theme, nothing more.

Appropriation of his application, word for word,

would be plagiarism. But Senator Biden “adapted”

an application of an al-ready common theme for

his own purposes in order to make a point –a good

point. Because the theme was appropriate to the

moment of his text, Senator Biden paraphrased

Kinnock’s theme. But Biden was knocked out of

the presidential nomination box not for his lack of

attribution to Kinnock, but other exaggerations. Asan Hispanic I’ve drawn many times from that

theme of personal poverty and self-determinationin order to make a point about Hispanic progress in

the United States.

Why is it that I’m the first Hispanic to acquire thePh.D. in English at the University of New Mexico?

Is it because we’re less intelligent? Less able? No,that’s not the case. After a long day’s labor in the

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fields, our parents would sit us down to read and

write because they wanted a better life for us in thiscountry. A part of the reason we don’t have more

Hispanic Ph.D.’s is that we don’t have our owninstitutions.

The essence of my words parallel those of Kin-

nock’s. Is that plagiarism? I spoke my words long before Kinnock uttered his. I did not get them from

him. Did he get them from me? If so, he didn’t

give me credit. Obviously he did not get that theme

from me because the words are part of a

“common” theme–of over-coming obstacles, battling with adversity, “making it.” And when that

thought is expressed by others, and we realize how

much it applies to our own lives, we adapt the

thought to fit our own circumstances. That’s whatSenator Biden did.

I’m concerned about the narrow view the

media (and the public, as a consequence) has placed on the question of plagiarism in, say, Sen-

ator Biden’s application of Kinnock’s

“application” of a stock theme. By those standards,

any concatenation of words (written or spoken) by

anyone can be construed as plagiar-ism because

any number of English-speakers before us have

used those same words in like concate-nations. In

his piece in The New York Observer , Richard

Brookhiser (2006) asks: “How can anyone steal

words?” That’s my question too. Words belong to

all of us. They’re part and parcel of our languages.

Indeed, words selected and arranged in a particular way in a text by one writer and then copied and

passed off as original by another writer is

plagiarism. But the addition of words to our

vocabularies is part of the process of language

acquisition.

et me draw attention to the ending of Presi-

dent Reagan’s commentary to the nation

on the day the Challenger was lost in 1986:

the president closed with words about

“touching the face of God.” The thrust of his

closing comment comes directly from the poem“High Flight” by John Magee which explains: “I

have slipped the surly bonds of earth and touchedthe face of God.” I don’t recall the President citing

the source of that thought. Nor did I note Robert

Frost getting any credit for the Ford Motor

Company ad that says “If you’ve got miles to go

and promises to keep” you should get a Ford.

Also, consider the ending of Chapter 3 of

Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror (1987). She

concludes her observations on the Chivalric Code

with the words:

Yet if the code was but veneer over violence, greed,

and sensuality, it was nevertheless an ideal, asChristianity was an ideal, towards which man’sreach, as usual exceeded his grasp.

“Man’s reach . . . exceeded his grasp.” Robert

Browning’s words are: “A man’s reach ought to

exceed his grasp.” Professor Tuchman’s words (or

thoughts) there are not attributed to Browning.

They are not set off by quotation marks or cited in

a footnote. And there is really no need for

attribution there, for Browning’s words have

become part of the common storehouse of thought

from which we draw freely. In fact, so freely that

unless we are lettered writers we more often thannot have no idea who the authors are of those

thoughts that are in that common storehouse.

Additionally, though, Tuchman is aware that the

“literate” reader knows the origin of the reference.

In my short story of some years ago, “Chicago

Blues,” I used an inverted reference to T.S. Eliotwhen the lead character says, “That’s how the

world would end, not with a whimper but with a

blast.” I used that expression knowing the literate

reader would make the association with Eliot.

There was no need for attribution there.

In Professor Oates’ case: How does one “para- phrase” a fact, a datum? The question is not how

close Oates’ paraphrases approximate Benjamin

Thomas’ words but where Thomas got his facts

from in the first place? How does he know “Spa-

nish moss festooned the trees”? Perhaps Oates

should have written “. . . the trees were covered

with Spanish moss,” rather than “. . . the trees were

festooned with Spanish moss.” I like the word

“festooned” myself. Thomas doesn’t own that

word. Besides, it seems to me Oates altered the

concatenation sufficiently. I’m not surprised the

AHA (American Historical Asso-ciation) perceived Oates’ work as “derivative.” That’s the

nature of accumulated scholarship–one works from

material others have left for us, as Stephen Jay

Gould pointed out. Or as Jean Paul Sartre indicated

in Les Mots (The Words, 1964), the writer is

inspired by the “I’s’ of memory: imagination,

invention, and imitation. The beginning writer

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borrows from other writers until he or she acquires

his or her literary voice. As a child, so as to feel

like a writer, Sartre reveals, “I loved plagiarism”

(88). Eventually he plagiarized less as he got the

hang of “joining” things up.Sometimes, however, we have information we

are unaware we have or how we got it. For example, some critics have pointed out that

Nabokov got the title and theme for “Lolita” from

a German short story published in 1916 which he

may have read when he was in Berlin in the 20's.

Over time, Nabokov may have forgotten that he

had read that story. This kind of memory lapse has

been labeled cryptomnesia. Given the billions of

information bytes that humans pro-cess, crypto-mnesia is not an unusual phenomenon. However,

this does not excuse outright plagiarism. But it

does help to explain the eidetic complexities of

memory. How bits and pieces of information getlost in the maze of memory or get stuck there like

“lint.”

In the world of ideas, a writer’s “voice” runs

into challenges when least expected. For example,Dan Brown, the 39-year old former teacher of

English from New Hampshire and author of The DaVinci Code with a plot about the marriage of

Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalen and its suppression,

has run into charges from Michael Baigent and

Richard Leigh that Brown “lifted the whole

architecture” of research they carried out for their

non-fiction work Holy Blood, Holy Grail whichthey co-wrote with Henry Lincoln. Baigent and

Leigh argue that Brown appropriated without

acknowledgment their all-important list of the

Grand Masters–who guarded the secret documents

pertaining to Christ’s bloodline out of his liaison

with Mary Magdalen. Baigent and Leigh also

contend that the premise and factual research of

Brown’s novel are plagiarized from their original

historical hypothesis. To shore up their charge,

Baigent and Leigh point out that the name of Sir Leigh Teabing in Brown’s novel is an anagram of

Leigh and Baigent. A court settlement absolvedBrown of the charge, buttressing the proposition

that plagiarism is not always easy to pin down

despite Lyon, Barrett, and Malcom’s opinion to the

contrary ( 2006).

In 2002, the historian Stephen Ambrose ran

afoul of “fraud busters” with charges that passages

of The Wild blue, his best-seller about World War

II B-24 bomber crews, were taken from Wings of

Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down over Germany in World War II by Tho-

mas Childers. Like Oates, Ambrose’s previousworks have become suspect of plagiarism. In a

closely argued defense of Ambrose, RichardJenson (2002) exonerates Am-brose from the

charge of plagiarism, though Ambrose did

apologize for the transgression. A number of

prominent writers, especially historians, have been

charged with plagiarism, notable among them

Doris Kearns Godwin and her 1987 book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys with passages

similar to those in other works, including Lynne

McTaggert’s Kathleen Kennedy. The most scathing

rebuke of Ambrose and Godwin’s literary

pecadillos appeared in an editorial of The New

York Observer (“New Publishing Man-ra,” 2006)which excoriated not the authors but their

publishers, saying “It’s clear Mr. Ambrose and Ms.

Godwin’s editors were too cowed by the authors’

fame to bring up any doubts they might have had”about possible plagiarism.

Strictly speaking, the case of the 27 year old

Jason Blair of the New York Times is more about

dubious reporting, creating stories out of whole

cloth, than about plagiarism, though accounts of

his journalistic pecadillos have him lifting pieces

of stories from other journalists and wire service

accounts. The editors of the Times found fraud, plagiarism, and inaccuracies in 36 of his 73

articles. I don’t minimize the import of plagiarism.

In 1975, I ran across a piece that lifted from 36

sections of a work I produced in 1970. The matter

was settled to the satisfaction of all. Today I color

that episode with humor, glossing the value of my

original piece such that it was worthy of

plagiarism.

There are countless cases of putative

plagiarism. In its April 3, 2006 issue, TimeMagazine highlighted a plagiarism blurb about Ben

Domenech, 24 year old co-founder of the blog Red State who was working at Red America, a

Washington Post blog. Domenech was confronted

by “fraud busters” who saw passages in his work

“suspiciously similar to other journalists” and

“uncomfortably resembl[ing] those by writers”

elsewhere. About his piece in the National Review

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Online the charge was that some “unique phrasing”

was lifted from a piece by Steve Murray of the

Atlanta Journal Constitution. The choice of words

in char-ges of plagiarism provide significant clues

about the idiosyncratic perspectives on plagiarismand just how difficult it is sometimes to define the

act of plagiarism.Throughout my academic career as a professor

of English I have stressed that “good writing

comes from good reading,” despite Paul de Man’s

perspective of the latter. A key input to our

individual lexicons of knowledge comes from

reading. That’s why the primacy of literacy is so

important in global societies. It seems only natural

that reading reinforces the engramming process of

experience. This is the expla-nation offered by

the” wunderkind” Kaavya Viswa-nathan for her

plagiarism of Megan McCafferty’s works Sloppy

Firsts and Second Helpings, works whichViswanathan contends she internalized so

thoroughly that McCafferty’s words stuck in her

mind like Brookhiser’s “lint” in her “photographic

memory.” Eidetically it’s possible! But forty “ech-oes” of Mc-Cafferty’s works in Viswanathan’s

novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life does seem a bit much.

Recently, a charge of plagiarism was lodged

against Raytheon chief William Swanson, who, it

is alleged, knowingly included in his booklet

Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management a

considerable num-ber of rules from W.J. King’sUnwritten Laws of Engineering published in 1944.

Dated language and almost word for word

correspondence between Swan-son’s rules and

King’s rules have made it hard for Swanson to

dodge the charge. But Swanson’s defense is that

over the years he jotted down on scraps of paper

rules of management that he came across in his

reading which he saved, ultimately publishing

them as Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management under the aegis of Raytheon’simprint. By way of miti-gation, he points out, in

the past these rules were passed around sofrequently that their attribution was blurred or lost.

Swanson attributes the word for word

correspondence between his rules and King’s to

coincidence. But his critics contend that “it seems

too much of a coincidence.” Raytheon has

copyrighted Swanson’s booklet and has given

away some 40,000 copies from its website (Jones,

2006).

When I was Dean of the Hispanic Leadership

Institute at Arizona State University in the late 80's

I used to provide my leadership students with

aphorisms that were appropriate for the instructionof the day. Like Swanson I too used to jot down

aphorisms when I came across them and savedthem for potential use. Unfortunately their

attribution faded over time. Not remembering who

their originators were, humorously I attributed

those aphorisms to Aphoro, indicating that they

came from The First Book of Aphoro. The

aphorisms were not mine so I could not and would

not take credit for them. The locution about The First Book of Aphoro was indeed a ploy. The

originators of those aphorisms should have been

duly credited. But like Stephen Jay Gould and Wil-

liam Swanson, I could not for the life of me

remember who to cite as the originators of thoseaphorisms. Periodically I see those aphorisms here

and there, still circulated without attribution.

DISCOURSE ISSUES

IN THE PRISM OF AMBIGUITY

heory and literature on eiconic behavior is

scant, to say the least. What I proposed

about eiconic behavior at the start of this

piece is principally anecdotal, though there

is an incipient body of empirical support.

Nevertheless, there appears to be some corre-spondence between the behaviors that engender

fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Is itaberrant or wayward behavior or simply a

propensity of human nature? I don’t know.

What I think, however, is that there are eiconic

forces at work in fabrication, falsification, and pla-

giarism engendered, perhaps, by mental

immaturity, low self-esteem, lack of literary skills,

or otiosely in-duced intellectual laziness which

ignite the need to project oneself in the best

possible light, even at the risk of disclosure as was

the case recently of an American in the Northwestwho had been passing himself off as a Vietnam

prisoner-of-war. More and more “fraudulent

representations” of this kind surface every day.

In the fields of academe, specters of plagiarist

bounty hunters or plagiarist busters acting as

lexical vigilantes undertake the role of keeping

Freshman student papers free of plagiarism,

T



seemingly oblivious that language is a shared

commodity, that we learn our language from the

“modeling” of others. In other words, all our

utterances have their genesis in others, the aim of

instruction is to have our students become familiar with the thoughts and ideas of others. That’s how

one generation transmits its values to the next.This is not to say we do not hope for original

thoughts or ideas from our students. But there is a

storehouse of thoughts and ideas that are common

currency, available to all. So much that there is

little if any need for attribution.

I concede that taking someone else’s text and

putting one’s name on it is indeed plagiarism; and

as Richard Brookhiser (2006) puts it: “plagiarism

is never a shortcut, it is a dead end”. But borrowing

a turn of phrase that enhances our discourse is not

a high crime subject to expulsion or anathema.

Why criminalize such linguistic behavior?Borrowing is in the nature of linguistic interaction.

In this linguistic interaction, idiolects are like

consenting adults interacting with each other. But

this does not lessen the growing “culture of surveillance with the work of fingering and

tracking writers who plagiarize” (Harris, 2005).

Indeed, quotation marks and attribution are es-

sential when we use someone else’s words

verbatim in our texts. Paraphrasing, however, is

permissible, though there again we “encourage”

students to cite sources. As Associate Director of a

Freshman Writing Program early in my career, Idrilled my students in the ethics of attribution and

the documentation of sources. Citation is not an

absolute requirement for paraphrasing because

we’re delighted to see students handling the ideas

of others, incorporating them into their own

weltanschauung . That’s why we teach the ideas of

others to our students. Until fairly modern times,

learning reflected the accumulated ideas of past

generations. The mark of erudition was the ability

to incorporate the ideas of previous sages intoone’s own articulations.

Summing up, some representations and utter-ances may be outright distortions, falsifications or

fabrications of experience. Other representations or

utterances may be made only to enhance the mo-

ment or the context. For instance, a comedian may

talk disparagingly about his wife or her husband

during his or her act, none of which may be true.

Alan King (a comedian of the 60's and 70's) is a

good example of that. Phyllis Diller (a comedienne

of the 60's and 70's) is another example of comedic

disparagement. The ambiguity of existence may be

why language is equally ambiguous. It seems tome that fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism

are discourse issues in the prism of that ambiguity.

REFERENCES

Ashcroft, B. and Ahluwalia, P. (2001). Edward Said , Routledge.

Bjerknes, C.J. (2002). Albert Einstein, the Incorri- gible Plagiarist . Downers Grove, IL: XTC Inc.

Boulding K. (1956). The Image: Knowledge in

Life and Society. Ann Arbor, MI: University of

Michigan Press.

Brookhiser, R. (2006, May 8). “Here’s an original

thought: How can anyone steal words?” New York Observer 4.

Cullen, L.T. (2006, May 1). “Getting Wise to Lies,

Time, 167, 59.

Dupaquier, J. (1980). “Malthus Reconsidered,”

Contemporary Sociology, 9, 4.

Gould, S.J. (1988). Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle.

Harvard University Press.

Harris, B. (2005). “Credit where credit is due,”

Education Libraries, 28, 1.

Jensen, R. (2002, May 20). In defense of Stephen

Ambrose,” History News Network . Retrieved fromhttp://hnn.us/articles/738.html.

Jones, D. (2006, April 25). “Raytheon chief sayshe didn’t plagiarize,” USA Today. Retrieved fromhttp://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/man-

agement/2006-04-24-raytheon-ceo-responds_x. htm.

Lyon, C., Barrett, R. And Malcolm, J. (2006).

“Plagiarism is easy, but also easy to detect,” Pla-

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org/papers_and_perspectives.htm.

McQuillen, M. (2001). Paul de Man. Routledge.

“New publishing mantra: Plagiarize or perish”(2006, May 8). New York Observer . Retrieved

from http://www.observer.com/20060508___opi-

nions__editorials.asp.

Oates, S. (2002). I stood accused of plagiarism,”

History News Network . Retrieved from

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Ortego, F. (1970, July-September). “A Bibliogra-

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Copyright © 2006 by the author. All rights reserved.

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