Your recent post about plagiarism got me thinking. I’m an English professor. I hate and detest plagiarism. It strikes at the heart of the whole academic game. And it is a game, a language game, in the sense Wittgenstein meant by that phrase. When a student plagiarizes, it’s like cheating at cards. Which means, also, that the student is assuming that I am a rube, which is offensive in another way. When a student turns in faked work, that student not only violates the rules of the game we have agreed to play, but insults my intelligence.
At the same time, my job consists of getting students to join in the larger intellectual conversation of our shared culture; therefore, I don’t get hysterical about citation. I explain its importance – as in science, others need to be able to follow up on one’s work – but I correct errors and explain procedures. I want students sticking Freud and Conrad and whomever else into their essays and if they have incorrectly punctuated their parenthetical citation, I correct it and move on. (I correct it once and expect the student to be able to generalize, that is.) I don’t want to put barriers between my students and the texts I love. Which is to say, I’m not a pedant.
At the same time, my job consists of getting students to join in the larger intellectual conversation of our shared culture; therefore, I don’t get hysterical about citation. I explain its importance – as in science, others need to be able to follow up on one’s work – but I correct errors and explain procedures. I want students sticking Freud and Conrad and whomever else into their essays and if they have incorrectly punctuated their parenthetical citation, I correct it and move on. (I correct it once and expect the student to be able to generalize, that is.) I don’t want to put barriers between my students and the texts I love. Which is to say, I’m not a pedant.
