Academic Writing and Plagiarism: A Linguistic Analysis

Plagiarism has long been regarded with concern by the university community as a serious act of wrongdoing threatening core academic values. There has been a perceived increase in plagiarism over recent years, due in part to issues raised by the new media, a diverse student population and the rise in English as a lingua franca. This book examines plagiarism, the inappropriate relationship between a text and its sources, from a linguistic perspective. Diane Pecorari brings recent linguistic research to bear on plagiarism, including processes of first and second language writers; interplay between reading and writing; writer's identity and voice; and the expectations of the academic discourse community. Using empirical data drawn from a large sample of student writing, compared against written sources, Academic Writing and Plagiarism argues that some plagiarism, in this linguistic context, can be regarded as a failure of pedagogy rather than a deliberate attempt to transgress. The book examines the implications of this gap between the institutions' expectations of the students, student performance and institutional awareness, and suggests pedagogic solutions to be implemented at student, tutor and institutional levels.