Chavez & Valencia 1

Jason Chavez & Carolyn Valencia

Mr. Michalski

English 1A: Critical Thinking & Writing I

21 September 2018

“Plagiarisms, Authorships and the Academic Death Penalty Summary”

Within Rebecca Howard’s Plagiarisms, Authorships and the Academic Death Penalty,

Howard discusses the conventional issues and complexities of plagiarism, authorship, and the

punishments that schools enforce. Howard presents how plagiarism is negatively perceived,

because a writer uses another author’s ideas without citing the source. These issues that stem

from plagiarism are what Howard is attempting to absolve in her essay. She attempts to counter

the negative perception of plagiarism by shedding a semi-positive light on it. Rather than

deconstructing plagiarism as a taboo, she provides historical context of writing and its evolution

over time. In this sense, Howard provides a much wider view of the complexities of plagiarism.

Many view that plagiarism is solely the student’s fault and punishment should be the

response to their academic dishonesty. However, Howard illustrates that not all college students

tend to utilize other sources and claim them as their own. She states, “...plagiarism occurs as a

result of one of two possible motivations: an absence of ethics or an ignorance of citations

conventions” (Howard 788). If students are not properly educated on the procedure of correct

citation, the lack of “respect” toward the original author will appear throughout their essay.

Although the student’s intention was not to plagiarize, they are misinformed on how to avoid it.

Be that as it may, Howard does not dismiss the presence of plagiarism. Done maliciously or not,

the original author is not receiving credit. Although some unintentionally exclude citations, few

students intentionally do so. In these instances, punishments are more in line as the responsive
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course of action, leaving the reprimanding of unintentional plagiarism as one of modern

writing’s most difficult and complex issues.

Within her essay, Howard addresses the issue of authorship by presenting the mimetic

and the individualistic style of writing. Mimesis writing is when the writer uses another author’s

work to expand or enhance the ideas presented by said author. An individualistic style of writing

suggests that the writer comes up with new and inventive ideas. Howard uses Mark Rose’s idea

of how authorship had shifted from mimetic to an individualistic approach. The shift in

authorship was a result of technological innovation; “From these economic conditions arose

copyright laws, beginning in England with the 1710 Statute of Anne and in the U.S. with

Congressional legislation in 1790” (Howard 790). Ideas were beginning to become isolated,

thanks to copyright laws, making it much more difficult to utilize the works of another author.

This new task the writer had to take on, to be more original in the work they produced, is what

Howard claims has hindered the way in which society views plagiarism. She conveys the

conflicts between authorship when she explains, “Embedded in the medieval mimetic economy

of authorship, in other words, are essential components of the modern individual economy: the

notion of the individual and the notion that he might seize something new” (Howard 790).

Authorship is a factor Howard believes affected people’s stance on plagiarism. She believes the

shift in authorship, coming into the modern era, has remolded interpretations of plagiarism.

Due to the progress and impact of copyright laws, modern day authors struggle with

being original. On account of this, Howard discusses how writing can be either autonomous or

collaborative. When one is autonomous, it means that they are the originator of an opinion. They

do not rely on anyone else to express their thoughts, making themselves known throughout their

writing and leaving an impact on the reader. However, when some writers begin their argument,
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they most likely refer to texts that have already been written to strengthen their foundation. By

doing so, it can make it difficult for the individual to have a strong sense of autonomy because

they imitate a past author that has already expressed their point of view. The most recent writer’s

voice may not shine through the essay, because they are drowned out by the summarization of

their sources. Aside from lacking originality, the writer may begin to use plagiarism as a crutch,

because they have no alternative solutions. With the use of collaborative writing, an author

utilizes someone else’s work to enhance their own; however, they build heavily upon what is

already present. Collaborative writing works with texts that have already been recognized to

express an individual author’s point of view. This brings to question the cyclicality of opinions

and to what end an idea is considered “original.” One can ask how autonomos writing can be if

most pieces that are written are based off of an already existing foundational text. Ideally, there

will never come a time when there is nothing left to say about a topic, but looking through the

lens of an inexperienced or unmotivated writer, being creative and stating something new might

seem impossible. When writing, it is important to add to the conversation of an issue. For

example, an entire piece dedicated to restating points to agree with someone may not be

necessary if someone has already done so, but disagreeing with that author sparks up a branch of

conversation to the overall concept at hand. One’s writing becomes less relevant when it stops

being collaborative and blends into another author’s identical ideas. Therefore, using someone

else’s works to further the dialect around an issue is what can also make one autonomous.

While Howard does argue that plagiarism can hinder the collaborativeness that comes to

writing, she does present a more tolerable solution to the policies of plagiarism in college

campuses. Howard looks to challenge university policies on plagiarism because she believes that

colleges advocate for a more autonomous approach to their writing. She expresses, “We must
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revise universities’ plagiarism policies because at present they describe only one notion of

authorship, the unified, autonomous subject whose textual manifestation derives from his or her

moral turpitude” (Howard 802). Howard believes that through revising plagiarism policies in

school, it will create an alternative outlook towards plagiarism. Rather than college students

taking “credit” for the ideas and thoughts of others, she presents how college students can utilize

those ideas to help them develop their own understanding of the subject at hand. This outlook on

plagiarism enhances the teaching of a subject and allows for students to better understand the

material and the world around them.

Reflection

Our group, Jason and Carolyn, made a list of key ideas/topics Howard touched upon and

dedicated the paragraphs to portraying their importance and impact they had on the reader. We

had a long list, but, ultimately, had to condense it as our summary would have end up being more

than 1000 words. We picked concepts such as autonomous and collaborative and some that had
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counterarguments attached to them. From each key concept, we summarized paragraphs into

sentences to include the essence of Howard’s opinion, but made sure not to be repetitive or too

general. We did not include Howard’s discussion of voice-merging, because we did not think

that was important in the overall aspect of our summary. We focused our summary on plagiarism

and the overall impact and consequences it brings a student. MLK’s version of “plagiarism” did

not fit the theme of our summary’s discussion, however, we can see how others may incorporate

that into their essay to portray how there are “positive” forms of including other authors’ works.

On the other hand, we included the section where Howard briefly speaks about the “giant and the

dwarf.” We touched upon how originality is getting more difficult to identify because of how

advanced technology has become. People can instantly share information online, which means

authors have to act fast if they want their name “branded” onto a concept or statement. These

ideas that Howard presents are complex to take upon one single writer, which makes it a topic

most would want to avoid. However, our group thought it was vital to include this concept as it

gives the summary context and leaves a larger overall impact on the reader; at least, it did for us

when we first read it.

Works Cited

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty.” College

English, vol. 57, no. 7, 1995, pp. 788-806.