Return-Path: <nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id f6REgof13805; Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:42:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:42:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.0.20010727090411.009f57d0@pop.netzero.net> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Christopher Schroeder <christopher_schroeder@netzero.net> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:1946] plagiarism, intellectual property, and intellectual work X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2 Status: O Content-Length: 6483 Lines: 99 i've had problems accessing some of the messages, as they've been appearing blank, so i hope that i'm not rehashing old comments entirely. if so, my apologies. what i think is missing in this discussion of intellectual property, plagiarism, etc. is the notion of academic culture. in addition to authors' concerns, academic institutions have a vested interest in maintaining traditional notions of plagiarism, but conventional approaches to other discourses/ideas merely prescribes acceptable ways for using these ideas, not identifying a demarcation between using them or not. in other words, the conversations that i hear from faculty across my campus (i'm the writing across the curriculum coordinator on one of the campus of the eighth largest private university in the U.S.) often frame the plagiarism issue as a binary, a black-white situation in which students are stealing or not. at the same time, traditional ways of talking about plagiarism presuppose that discourse is monologic, that its source is the solely the producer, as if language, ideas, meaning, etc. are owned by an individual. however, there are other ways of looking at these issues. some (e.g. bakhtin) argue that discourse is thoroughly dialogic, that it is always already a compliation of bits and pieces of other discourses that, while maybe recombined in innovative ways, can never be original, at least in the sense that its origins are with the producer. if you accept this dialogic perspective on discourse, then this notion of plagiarism changes. let's say i hear a joke from my brother that i reproduce at a workshop i'm giving. i _might_ cite my brother (e.g. "i hear this good joke from my brother . . . ."). but if i don't, no one is going to accuse me of plagiarism. if i use his joke in an academic article or book i'm publishing, i'm not sure whether i would cite him. (would academic readers want/need/benefit from knowing that my source for this joke is a stockbroker in st. louis?) it's probably not the best example, but it does suggest that these issues are more complicated than they might seem, at least to faculty on my campus. if we re-think this situation from this binary of stealing-not stealing to acceptable-unacceptable ways to use other discourses-ideas and from monologic to dialogic models of discourse, then the situation, to me, becomes a political debate, one that involves issues of exclusion and inclusion, hierarchy and rank, and so on. and such a reframing brings me to the issues of institutional cultures, particularly the institutional culture of the academy and its agenda in the intellectual property debate. which brings me to the question i'm most interested in exploring . . . i've recently written about the problems of electronic literacies. (in case it's helpful, my area is pomo (cultural) literacies.) in _reinventing the university_ <http://www.usu.edu/usupress/individl/ReInventing.htm>, i'm trying to talk about what, for a number of reasons, i call constructed literacies, or literacies that are emerge in context from conflicting practices, etc., and i'm intrigued by electronic literacies because of the ways that they presuppose particular cultural values that challenge those institutionalized within the academy (and elsewhere, i'd argue though i haven't). the promise of electronic literacies is that in presupposing different cultural values (e.g. alternative definitions of plagiarism), they enable different--both new and revised--ways of doing intellectual work. the problem of electronic literacies, at least from my perspective, is that in spite of this potential, they're being assimilated within academic institutions in ways that negate their potential. i'll give an example. i've just finished teaching graduate linguistics courses--cultural linguistics and sociolinguistics--in which i used a single e-list to which students posted (instead of writing traditional reaction papers, to which only i would respond). this list far exceeded my expectations--many of the students went beyond the minimum requirements for the course, and almost all of them did more than respond to readings (e.g. arguing with each other, challenging things i said in class, etc.). near the end of the semester, one of the students commented (yes, on-line) that what made the class work was that they were talking with each other, not just to me. however, i must confess that this semester was the first one in which this e-list actually was productive, and the biggest part of the reason is that i had to learn how to use them, which involved integrating pieces of electronic cultures. (and then i had to persuade students that electronic cultures were legitimate ways of doing graduate intellectual work, but that's almost another story.) a cursory survey the work that has been done on computers and academic classrooms suggests this same problem: while some are, indeed, arguing for electronic literacies as different ways of making-meaning, too many have assimilated electronic literacies in ways that reinforce conventional agendas in classrooms. in the terms of the previous example, those who are using electronic literacies for conventional ends might set up an e-list on which they, as the teacher-authority, answer students' questions. without abandoning this shift from teacher-driven, top-down cultural perspective, e-lists merely extend teachers' abilities to monitor students' behavior beyond classroom walls. okay, okay, i realize that i've written entirely too many words, which subverts the potential of e-lists, and i may have not been accessible enough in my ruminations. (i'll be happy to clarify although i'll be off-line for the latter part of next week.) if i had to summarize, i'd say that since no literacy is inherently liberal or conservative, the issue, it seems to me, is more about the context for electronic literacies. what other issues, besides plagiarism, do electronic literacies force us to rethink (e.g. authors, readers, meaning, etc.)? (david et al. have been doing this already.) and what implications do these rethinkings have for institutions--schools, governmental agencies, etc.? thanks for having-participating in this conversation . . . it's forcing me to think hard. chris NetZero Platinum No Banner Ads and Unlimited Access Sign Up Today - Only $9.95 per month! http://www.netzero.net
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