In some “real-world” contexts, plagiarism is not only acceptable but is expected

Question

In some “real-world” contexts, plagiarism is not only acceptable but is expected. Brian Martin calls this “institutionalized plagiarism.” Plagiarism is as tied to context as every other aspect of language use. In our everyday conversations—and lectures and classroom discussions—we frequently give information without citing its source(s). Moreover, there exist contexts where plagiarism is not only acceptable but is expected and encouraged. Audience expectations and intellectual property conventions of the community in which the language use occurs determines whether adopting source material and expression without citation is acceptable or not. “Institutional plagiarism” frequently occurs and is accepted without even the lifting of an eyebrow in most daily business communications and in other bureaucratic contexts. For example, if a company employee were to try to compose a quarterly report with original language and organization, her supervisor would probably take her aside and explain that to be more efficient, she should simply adopt the organization and language of past quarterly reports. Some might argue that “institutionalized plagiarism” is acceptable because the language and forms being plagiarized are “common knowledge.” That may be the case in some instances of institutionalized plagiarism but not in every case. Too often, we decontextualize common knowledge, thinking of it as facts every child learns in school or as information that exists in at least five (or whatever number of) credible sources, as some textbooks have defined it. In fact, content alone does not define knowledge as “common.” Common knowledge is that which is presumed to be ubiquitous or, at least, widespread within a specific community—that is, in context. Not all institutionalized plagiarism fits that bill. Consider, for example, the annual reports that a company will publish and distribute to its investors and creditors and auditors and public officials and anyone else who might be interested. Annual reports are notoriously templated. They follow the same organizational structure every year. They almost invariably use a similar vocabulary, the same phrases, the same sentences in many instances. Yet, no one accuses the authors, often anonymous or named in the fine print, of plagiarism. No investors divest themselves of holdings in a company because its annual report is institutionally plagiarized. This excerpt uses two common examples of business writing in discussing ways in which information is plagiarized - or not - depending, perhaps upon the view of those in a particular business setting. There are two worthwhile questions to consider concerning what Nelms tells us about these seemingly plagiarizing practices of business/professional writing. In a short paragraph, respond to the following: 1) Based on your experience, have you seen such practices in your work? Give an example. Why do you think this practice is rather common in business/professional writing? 2) Where do you think the practice of using the same format, even the same language, for business documents might have come from? Can you think of any examples of when you have noticed the use of what is sometimes called "boilerplate" documents and language? Please note that you will not be able to see other students' responses to this discussion topic until you post your response.

Explanation / Answer

1) As already mentioned in the given text it is very common to witness institutional plagiarism at workplaces in almost every feild and arena. The thing that is to be of most concern regarding the institutional plagiarism is that no one bats an eye to it. The following is one form of institutional plagiarism which i have experienced at workplace -

Blog contents are often seen to be copied from other sources. Not whole of it but part of it and someties n the same template.

It is very often seen that a presentation/report to be present at meetings with clients made by junios are many a times used by their seniors in their name taking full credit to it. At most what they do is they mention the name of their junior who has made the presentation/report as a helping hand.

ANother most common example is using images from internet without permission to improve aesthetics of marketing collateral or marketing tools by web designers.

This practice is common in business/professional mainly because of the thinking that intellects and abilities to some point gets fixed and it becomes difficult to change, if not imposible, when we talk about common knowledge. It is also beleived that when employees copy from templates of from earlier writings then they are actually developing their skills as writer wich requires taking help from original sources initially.

2) This practice of using same formate and even keeping the same language might have come from the idea of reducing time in creating documents. Organzations and businesses have evolved much in recent times. Organizations always find ways to reduce resources at every action/activity to make it more effective and effecient. Resources not only in terms of capital/money but also interms of time and efforts. To reduce the resources (time and efforts) that can be used elsewehere in other activities, organizations might have ended up in creating standardized format of documents.

Boilerplate is the term that refers to standardized. hence boilerplate documents are those which are standardised in nature. generaly in law industry, in the feild of law these documents are used for increasing efficeincy such as a legal notice, a show cause notice etc.

Another place where we see such documeents are in writing mission statements.

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