Public Speaking

Academic Honesty (^37)
source of a photograph. Accidental though it was, she was held responsible for knowing
the rules relating to plagiarism, which are easily available.
Where are these rules? Your university library or campus writing center provides
guidelines for source citations. Here’s an example from Purdue University’s Online
Writing Lab:^33
• Give credit whenever you use somebody else’s words, ideas, or creative works
directly—whether you take them from library resources, the Internet, films or
television shows, audio recordings, advertisements, letters from friends, or elsewhere.
• Provide sources for information learned in interviews, conversations, or email.
• Tell your audience the source of unique words and phrases that are not your own.
• Identify the sources of diagrams, illustrations, charts, photographs, and figures.
You do not need to document:
• Personal experiences, observations, conclusions, or insights.
• Results of experiments you personally conduct.
• Common knowledge, including folklore or traditions within your cultural group
such as Cinderella or Robin Hood.
• Generally accepted facts—the kind of information every source provides or
information your audience already knows or easily finds in reference material. For
example, numerous sources say Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both
died on the fourth of July in 1826, so citing a source may be unnecessary. To be
Diversity
in praCtiCe
plagiarism and Culture
Individualistic cultures like the United States consider plagiarism to be a serious
intellectual breach.^39 First, writing something down is thought to be a concrete
way to demonstrate your knowledge and skills. Turning in someone else’s work
does not show what you know.
Second, because individuality is emphasized, you should develop yourself to
your highest potential and do creative, original thinking. Turning in someone
else’s work does not demonstrate your originality.
Finally, the cultural notion of personal property includes ownership of
intellectual property. You can patent, copyright, or sell your ideas, creations,
musical works, unique words, and writings because they are legally yours. Thus, if
someone else uses all or part of your original work without giving you credit, you
can charge that person with “stealing” your intellectual property.
In contrast, collectivist cultures view intellectual property differently. In a
society that values the group over the individual, words and ideas can belong to
the culture as a whole, not to a single person. Would stealing or pirating works be
viewed with the same perspective? What might happen if a business headquartered
in the United States moved into such a culture?
Also, consider the impact of the Internet on notions of “ownership” of words
and ideas. For example, through hypertext, people can “write collaboratively and
use nonlinear connections to create products that show few indications of who
said what.”^40 Wikipedia is just one example of a jointly created resource. Who re-
ally “owns” a Wikipedia entry? If you find two or more websites with identical
information, who originated the material?
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