You are here: UC Home » Campus Learning & Writing Centers » Writing Center » Safe Assign » Culture: A Complicating Factor

Campus Learning & Writing Centers

SafeAssign: Culture: A Complicating Factor

 

The culture and ethnicity of a student may also contribute to the occurrence of unintentional plagiarism. The writing of international students and other English language learners sometimes includes instances that appear to us as deliberate plagiarism but are not intended as such. As we teach students ways to prevent plagiarism, we should also keep in mind that notions of ownership and intellectual property vary from culture to culture. Western culture is particularly concerned with giving "credit where credit is due," much more so, in fact, than many other cultures. In his book The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington makes the distinction between the Western privilege of “individualism” and other cultures’ “collective” approach to intellectual property. “Again and again,” he writes, “both Westerners and non-Westerners point to individualism as the central distinguishing mark of the West” (72). This emphasis on the individual manifests itself in American writing and documentation processes as well as in our more material cultural practices.

 

Though American academic culture privileges the individual as the “owner” of writing at the level of both idea and expression, other cultures have different perspectives on the notion of intellectual property. In many cultures, the “collective wisdom” prevails and taking “individual credit” for something can be seen as a negative. In his article “The Classroom and Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition,” educator and China native Fan Shen writes insightfully about these differences, remarking that he "found that learning to compose in English [was] not an isolated classroom activity, but a social and cultural experience . . . learning the rules of English composition [was], to a certain extent, learning the values of Anglo-American society” (460). As he learned to reschool himself as an American rather than a Chinese writer, Shen points out that the preeminent American intellectual value stood out as “the principle of protecting and promoting individuality” (460). In yet another example, students from Arab cultures that emphasize the memorization of religious or literary texts may quote widely and freely from such texts without understanding that such quotations are not considered common knowledge or property in America. A further complication, of course, is the process of language acquisition itself. Because of their developing language abilities, English language learners may also find it difficult to paraphrase quotations appropriately and to identify instances when they have relied too heavily on source materials. Instead of simply labeling such instances plagiarism, instructors can use class discussions, comments on drafts, and tools like SafeAssign to educate students about the American conventions and help them develop the academic fluency they need to succeed in the university.

 

References:

 

Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

 

Shen, Fen. “ The Classroom and Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition.” College Composition and Communication  40.4 (1989) 459 – 466.

 

« Back to SafeAssign Homepage

 

Also in this section:

• Policing v Prevention
• Intentional v Unintentional Plagiarism
• Culture: a Complicating Factor