Author: Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Title: Lies Like Truth: Discourse Issues In Language

Publicati Ann Arbor, Michigan: Scholarly Publishing Office,

on Info: 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

Article Invited Editorial

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

PDF: Link to full PDF [0.3mb ]

1
LIES LIKE TRUTH: DISCOURSE ISSUES IN LANGUAGE
From 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 Annual
Conference of the Modern Language Association, Ontario, Canada, December 1993.
By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in English, Texas A&M University—Kingsville; Professor Emeritus, Texas State University System—Sul Ross.
INTRODUCTION
F
abrication, falsification, and plagiarism are
different facets in the prism of discourse,
all inhering eiconic dimensions. The word
eicon is of Greek origin, and we use its
blood kin icon in a number of ways in English. But
the 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 behaviorists
now 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
A
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 just
got 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
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 acknowledge
it 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. That
kind 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 exchange
for 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 publicly
said 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
3
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 my
view, 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 is
one 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 different
mode 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 the
hang 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
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
THE DISCOURSE MATRIX
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.
peers as an “incorrigible plagiarist” and charged

I
with copying the theories of others without
t’s this ambiguity that most often deters us
attribution (Bjerknes, 2003). The matter remains
from coming to an unequivocal definition of
unresolved, it may seem, according to Bjerknes”
the term “plagiarism” in its various forms, one
work, although critics have noted Bjer-knes’
of the mo-dern “deadly sins,” perhaps because
disclaimer that the book was “intended solely for
the term itself is so ambiguous and ambivalent.
entertainment purposes . . . [and the author’s
Sometimes plagiarism is referred to as “recycling.”
disavowal of responsibility for] the completeness,
This was certainly true in Shakespeare’s time
or the accuracy, or the adequacy, of any
when–in the absence of laws of plagiarism–he
information in” Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible
allegedly purloined most of his plots and, in the
Plagiarist.
case of Antony and Cleopatra, lifted al-most
ISSUES OF PLAGIARISM
verbatim an entire passage from Plutarch; not to

F
mention what he took from Brooke for Romeo and
rom accounts in the media on Stephen B.
Juliet. Or in Chaucer’s time when he borrowed
Oates and plagiarism in 1993, I saw little
freely from French authors (Ortego, 1970). With
that would outrightly constitute plagiarism.
these two “gold-standard” authors, what they
Oates, professor of history at the University
plagiarized (unacknowledged copying) has
of Massachusetts at Amherst, was charged with
sometimes been excused as “creative genius” or an
plagiarism by what he called a cabal of “fraud
improvement on the original. No matter the
busters” bent on exposing plagiarism not only in
circumstances, plagiarism is a trope with a long
With Malice Toward None, his book on Lincoln,
philosophical history
but also in most of his previous works (Oates,
Other “great figures” of history have been
2002). Having taken their case to the American
caught in the skein of unacknowledged copying.
Historical Association, the verdict rendered by the
In 1597, the astronomer Tycho Brahe accused
AHA supported “the cabal,” stating that “Mr.
Nicolas Raima-nus Ursus, another astronomer, of
Oates relied too much and too consistently, even
plagiarism, of stealing his geoheliocentric world
with attribution [emphasis mine], on ‘the structure,
system theory, drawing Johannes Kepler into the
distinctive language, and rhetorical strategies’ of
fray. Even Thomas Malthus, the population
other scholars and authors.” Oates denied the
theorist, was charged with plagiarism. In Malthus’
charges and not being a member of the AHA
case, sociologist William Petersen notes that by
refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the or-
putting the ideas of previous population theorists
ganization (ibid.). But his case raised an important
“into a larger framework and examining in detail
distinction between “appropriation” and “attribu-
the relation of population growth to economic,
tion”–albeit an ambiguous distinction. After a year
social and political development, Mal-thus did
and a half, the professional division and council of
more than any of his predecessors or all of them
the AHA absolved Oates of plagiarism but rebuked
together” (Dupaquier, 1980). This is
him for not having enough references to the Benja-
characterizing plagiarism as “creative genius.”
min Thomas biography. This is a prime example
In 1916, a plagiarism dispute arose over
of just how difficult it is at times to ascertain
whether Albert Einstein or David Hilbert
plagiarism.
discovered the general theory of relativity. Like
As I see it, “plagiarism” is not “expropriation of
Malthus, Einstein was considered by many of his
another author’s findings or interpretation” as the
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 not
considered 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 logical
analysis of three great documents, but it is really a
collective enterprise. I am embarrassed that I cannot
now sort out and attribute the bits and pieces forged
together here. I am too close to this subject. I have
taught the discovery of time for twenty years, and
have read the three documents over and over again
(for I regard such repetition as the best measuring
stick of an intellectual life–when new insights cease,
move on to something else). I simply do not
remember which pieces came from my own readings
of 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 endogeny
could 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
5
“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 so
unique 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 the
common 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 he
owns 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. As
an Hispanic I’ve drawn many times from that
theme of personal poverty and self-determination
in order to make a point about Hispanic progress in
the United States.
Why is it that I’m the first Hispanic to acquire the
Ph.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
 fields, our parents would sit us down to read and
write because they wanted a better life for us in this
country. A part of the reason we don’t have more
Hispanic Ph.D.’s is that we don’t have our own
institutions.
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 what
Senator 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.
L
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 touched
the 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, as
Christianity was an ideal, towards which man’s
reach, 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 than
not 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. Eliot
when 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
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 get
lost 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 which
they 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 absolved
Brown 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
7
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 previous
works have become suspect of plagiarism. In a
closely argued defense of Ambrose, Richard
Jenson (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, Time
Magazine 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
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 plagiarism
and 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 which
Viswanathan 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’s
Unwritten 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’s
imprint. By way of miti-gation, he points out, in
the past these rules were passed around so
frequently 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 instruction
of the day. Like Swanson I too used to jot down
aphorisms when I came across them and saved
them 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 those
aphorisms. Periodically I see those aphorisms here
and there, still circulated without attribution.
DISCOURSE ISSUES
IN THE PRISM OF AMBIGUITY
T
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 it
aberrant 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 Northwest
who 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,
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, I
drilled 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 into
one’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.
9
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 to
me that fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism
are discourse issues in the prism of that ambiguity.
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Copyright © 2006 by the author. All rights reserved.