Speaking ethically 4.3 59
UndErStAnd thAt PLAgiAriSm mAy hAvE SigniFiCAnt ConSEqUEnCES
According to one source, 75 to 98 percent of college students admit to having
cheated at least once.^23 At least one Web site claims to provide “non-plagiarized”
custom term papers—ironic, because using any such paper is exactly what con-
stitutes plagiarism!^24 And communication researcher Todd Holm reports that
more than half of the students he surveyed admitted cheating in some way in a
public-speaking class.^25
Despite the near-epidemic occurrence of plagiarism, most colleges impose
stiff penalties on students who plagiarize. Plagiarists almost always fail the as-
signment in question, frequently fail the course, and are sometimes put on aca-
demic probation or even expelled. And the risk of being caught is much greater
than you might suspect. Many colleges subscribe to a Web-based plagiarism de-
tection company such as Turnitin; other professors routinely use free detection
sites such as Grammarly or even Google.
A few years ago, one of your authors heard an excellent student speech on
the importance of detecting cancer early. The only problem was that she heard
the same speech again in the following class period! On finding the “speech”—
actually a Reader’s Digest article that was several years old—both students were
certain that they had discovered a surefire shortcut to an A. Instead, they failed
the assignment, ruined their course grades, and lost your author’s trust. The
consequences of plagiarism in other arenas can be even more dire, including the
loss of a job or the end of a promising career.
do yoUr own work The most flagrant cases of plagiarism result from not
doing your own work. For example, while you are poking around the library
for ideas to use in a speech assignment, you might discover an entire speech or
perhaps an article that could easily be made into a speech. However tempting it
may be to use this material and however certain you are that no audience mem-
ber could possibly have seen it, resist the urge to plagiarize. Not only is the risk
of detection great, you will be shortchanging yourself if you do not learn how to
compose a speech on your own step by step.
Another way in which speakers sometimes attempt to shortcut the speech
preparation task is to ask another person to edit a speech so extensively that it
becomes more that other person’s work than their own. This is another form of
plagiarism as well as another way in which novice speakers can cheat them-
selves out of the skills they need to develop.
ACknowLEdgE yoUr SoUrCES Our admonition to do your own work in
no way suggests that you should not research your speeches and then share
your findings with audience members. In fact, an ethical speaker is responsible
for doing just that. Furthermore, some information is so widely known that
you do not have to acknowledge a source for it. For example, you need not
credit a source if you say that a person must be infected with the HIV virus to
develop AIDS or that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. This infor-
mation is widely available in a variety of reference sources. However, if you