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Discourses of plagiarism: moralist,

proceduralist, developmental and
inter-textual approaches
a a
David Kaposi & Pippa Dell
a
School of Psychology, University of East London , London , UK
Published online: 07 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: David Kaposi & Pippa Dell (2012) Discourses of plagiarism: moralist,
proceduralist, developmental and inter-textual approaches, British Journal of Sociology of
Education, 33:6, 813-830, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2012.686897

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 British Journal of Sociology of Education
Vol. 33, No. 6, November 2012, 813–830

Discourses of plagiarism: moralist, proceduralist, developmental

and inter-textual approaches
David Kaposi* and Pippa Dell

School of Psychology, University of East London, London, UK

(Received 11 July 2011; final version received 6 February 2012)
Downloaded by [Umeå University Library] at 04:40 12 November 2014

This paper reconstructs prevalent academic discourses of student plagia-

rism: moralism, proceduralism, development, and writing/inter-textuality.
It approaches the discourses from three aspects: intention, interpretation
and the nature of the academic community. It argues that the assump-
tions of the moralistic approach regarding suspect intention, the transpar-
ency of interpretation, and the homogeneous nature of the academic
community are in effect sustained by discourses of proceduralism and
development. This results, first, in the simplistic rendition of student
identities as honest/dishonest, and, second, in the proposal of or acquies-
cence to the triad of prevention, detection and punishment. The paper
concludes that radical re-conceptualization of plagiarism may only be
discovered in the discourse of inter-textuality where intention, interpreta-
tion and the academic community are construed as social practices con-
cerning the negotiation of various identities and values – those of
students as well as those of academics.
Keywords: plagiarism; discourse analysis; moralism; proceduralism;
development; authorial identity; inter-textuality

Introduction
In the social sciences, it is an accepted way to establish the significance of
one’s contribution by evoking the prevalence of the phenomenon under scru-
tiny. In treatises on student plagiarism we regularly encounter percentages
cited: 19% … or 54% … or 66% of students paraphrasing without acknowl-
edgment (Walker 1998), or 80% ‘in more recent studies’ (Franklyn-Stokes
and Newstead 1995), or just 5–10% (Gerdy 2004), or 46% (Pittam et al.
2009) … or as few as 3% in 1988, climbing to 80% by 1995 (Park 2003).
Given the variability of these numbers one would be inclined to ask some
question of them rather than make broader claims on their basis. Are the
instruments used by the respective scientists reliable and valid? Is the con-
cept of plagiarism operationalized consensually? May it have an impact on

*Corresponding author. Email: D.Kaposi@uel.ac.uk

ISSN 0142-5692 print/ISSN 1465-3346 online
Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2012.686897
http://www.tandfonline.com
 814 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

these results that all of the studies cited above use self-reports by students
to establish rates of occurrence? How honest can these students possibly be?
And how much would they understand of the questions? Most crucially, is
the very concept underlying the cited investigations a consensual one – not
just as regards students but amongst us, researcher-educators (cf. Borg 2009;
Clegg and Flint 2006, 374; Flint, Clegg, and Macdonald 2006; Howard
2000, 473)? While all of the papers above summarize their findings along
the lines of ‘[i]ncidences of plagiarism and other forms of academic dishon-
esty have increased significantly’ (Pittam et al. 2009, 153; Park 2003, 477),
none of them ask these questions.
This is highly puzzling and would suggest that the wide consensus
regarding the importance of plagiarism may originate less in empirical fact
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and more in political/ideological conviction. And while such a conviction

may have some intuitive appeal in the age of ‘widening participation’ and
‘World Wide Web’, there can be no wonder that those occupying a sceptical
position on the spectrum of ‘plagiarism studies’ believe that the whole fuss
is indeed created by the unreflective and naïve (at best) or ideological (at
worst) countenance of the beholder, branding the prevalent conviction as
‘near-obsessive fear in the academy’ (Thompson and Pennycook 2008, 126)
or, simply, ‘paranoia’ (Anson 2008, 154).
The present paper will also be concerned with ‘plagiarism’. Yet it will
not try to assert its ‘real’ prevalence, the individual or situational ‘causes’
underlying it, or rush to discuss the strategies to be used to tackle it or to
teach how to avoid it (cf. Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead 1995). At the same
time, neither will it adopt an a priori sceptical position where issues of ‘pla-
giarism’ are but manifestations of power relations, historical inequalities and
implied ideological practices, with the responsibilities of students converging
to zero (cf. Pennycook 1996; Scollon 1995; Howard and Robillard 2008).
Rather, the aims of this paper are twofold. First, it shall consider the
various ways the concept of plagiarism is brought to being in academic
literature. It will analyse the discourses that, rather than just being attached
to an independently existing phenomenon, make the very concept recog-
nizable. As such, it will consider four discourses that can be considered
dominant in the academic literature in constituting plagiarism: moralism,
proceduralism, development and writing/inter-textuality. Second, however,
these different practices or the invocations of different dimensions of ‘pla-
giarism’ are certainly not interesting in themselves. We do not just want
to know how these discourses are put together, any more than what they
actually are. After all, the real place of interest is, amongst others, whether
we should discipline or teach, punish or educate, or discourse and invite
for political criticism. Thus, beyond identifying discourses and describing
some of their characteristics, it is some of the epistemological, moral,
political as well as policy-related consequences they entail that the paper
shall analyse.
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 815

In doing this, discourses will be assessed according to three constitutive

dimensions: first, the role of students’ intention in acts of plagiarism; sec-
ond, the function of interpretative practices in assessing what is and what is
not plagiarism; and third, the nature of the academic community, tradition
and principles underlying approaches to plagiarism. If this paper starts with
any preconceived notion, it is that plagiarism exists in the encounter
between these three dimensions.

Methodological considerations
Discourse analysis has increasingly been associated with empirical work in
the social sciences. Most radically, discursive psychology investigates char-
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acteristics of observable and demonstrable consequence for those partaking

in interactions (cf. Hepburn and Wiggins 2007). Yet even critical discursive
approaches advocate the investigation of how ‘broader forms of intelligibil-
ity’ evolve from texts (Wetherell 1998, 403). In this sense, theoretical con-
cerns may be seen to be relegated to a corollary of empirical matters in
prevailing forms of discourse studies.
This paper does not question the value of these endeavours or the impor-
tance of close reading. However, it invokes another strand of discourse anal-
ysis, acknowledged yet less and less accounted for by empirical studies: the
tradition of theoretical discourse analysis as developed within social theory
(Butler 1993; Foucault 1972). This has two implications for the objectives
of the present paper. First, what will be reconstructed as a discourse is a the-
oretical construct: an ideal type, the best and most coherent manifestation of
moralism, proceduralism, development and writing/inter-textuality. Crucially,
this may not happen fully in any piece of scholarship referred to in this
paper; any claim that the discourses reconstructed by the paper can simply
be spotted in any slice of the academic literature would be spurious.
Equally, no claim can be made about the purity of these academic texts:
they may also exhibit different discourses of plagiarism.
At the same time, the claim that does underpin the present investigation
is that, first, the four discourses comprehensively represent the academic
community’s approach to plagiarism; and, second, creating ideal types by
systematically unpacking the approaches’ implications helps us to under-
stand the grave theoretical concerns into which any empirical or practical
contribution is embedded. It is with these legitimate theoretical purposes in
mind that the reconstruction and analyses of the discourses of moralism,
proceduralism, development and writing/inter-textuality shall proceed.

Plagiarism as moralism
Plagiarism as moralism is one of the most distinctive discourses around the
nature of plagiarism. It is characterized by a highly charged language and
 816 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

vivid, evocative metaphors (cf. Furedi 2004). The act is essentially ‘theft’
(Park 2003, 472; Walker 1998, 89), the student does not simply ‘cheat’
(Larkham and Manns 2002, 339) but is occasionally described as a ‘kidnap-
per’ (Thomas 2004), with the phenomenon itself seen as an ‘epidemic’ or a
‘plague’ (Thomas 2004, 425 and 429). No wonder that such a discourse has
subsequently been described as ‘moral panic’ (Clegg and Flint 2006, 385);
that is to say, a terrain where not only the prevalence of the issue is recog-
nized, but its magnitude is coupled with increasing desperation as regards
counter-measures.
Of course, such an approach to the topic of plagiarism seems increas-
ingly taken to be the exception. As we will see in later sections, while the
importance of plagiarism is rarely in dispute, characteristics of ‘moral panic’
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are explicitly countered in most contemporary studies (cf. Clegg and Flint
2006). Nonetheless, the discourse of moralism is an important viewpoint in
the debate. Not simply because it has been the historical starting point, but,
as this paper will argue, because its guiding assumptions are often in fact
perpetuated implicitly by approaches opposing them explicitly. It is therefore
worthwhile unpacking the assumptions of the discourse of moralism.
What is it that makes a discourse of plagiarism ‘moralistic’? And why is
it different to simply considering the matter from the perspective of morality
and personal responsibility? In the discourse of moralism, issues of morality
are not simply scrutinized, not even simply assigned prominence (cf. Devlin
1965). They are purified from other practical concerns that could potentially
bear relevance to the phenomenon of plagiarism. Furthermore, they exist in
a predefined and black-and-white moral field that implicitly tags any other
concern as secondary. There are no educational, political or even psycholog-
ical concerns that would trump the framework of pure morality in defining
plagiarism.
The crucial rhetorical move of this discourse is to equate plagiarism with
the author’s intention. Plagiarism here is an act of pure will that speaks
transparently through the text. It is for this reason that prevalent metaphors
in this discourse are either ‘theft’ or ‘cheating’, where the intention of the
agent is not simply unquestioned but the sine qua non of the act itself. By
the same token, plagiarism originates in the students’ intention to commit
plagiarism. Accidental plagiarism, either as conceptual or practical matter,
does not play a constitutive part in this discourse. In so far as it is acknowl-
edged at all, it is immediately marginalized (cf. Walker 1998, 90).
However, while the bedrock of this discourse is the unquestionable inten-
tion of the agent (i.e. while morally or politically or educationally nothing
else needs to be ascertained in establishing an occurrence of plagiarism), the
question still remains as to how that intention may be detected. How shall
we interpret that intention from the text? Revealingly, like the possibility of
accidental plagiarism, this question is virtually never engaged with in moral-
istic treatises. The route from text to intention or from text to the judgement
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 817

of plagiarism is never specified: literature condemning plagiarism in equat-

ing it with dark motives never questions what it is that makes a text plagia-
rism in our eyes. Just as the intention in the act of plagiarism is never in
question, so the interpretation of that act is ignored.
The curious omission of accidental plagiarism and the neglect of the
question of interpretation is not due to spurious scholarship. It is the mani-
festation of two core assumptions. First, the location of the dark intention
behind texts is a straightforward, objective process as those texts are taken
to be transparent. While the interpretation of texts may be complicated and
ambiguous, the interpretation of texts as instances of plagiarism is unprob-
lematic. Second, the transparency of texts and the subsequent visibility of
suspect intent is not simply a function of the text itself but of the unambigu-
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ous interpretative framework of the reader. Plagiarism is simply, plainly, bla-

tantly there, just as the interpretative and moral community of academic
tradition is – simply, plainly, unambiguously – here. Transparency of inter-
pretation is dependent on the unquestioned nature of the interpretative com-
munity of the academic tradition.
However, such a state of affairs may still not in itself help to make any
clearer the intensity of the discourse of moralism. After all, if plagiarism is
a transparent matter, both in terms of the text itself and the spurious inten-
tion producing it, why the ‘panic’? What exactly is at stake morally if the
issue is that simple, intellectually?
While the intention of the plagiarist is both obvious and suspicious, it
still pales in comparison with the effects of their deed. Commentators occa-
sionally point out the etymology of the word ‘plagiarism’ originating in the
Latin word ‘plagiare’. The Latin expression does not simply mean ‘theft’
but ‘kidnapping’: ‘[A]n apt metaphore for the academic offence of the theft
of another scholar’s work and its representation as one’s own’ (Walker
1998, 89; cf. Thomas 2004). The plagiarist does not just take something
belonging to someone else, but steals someone. In stealing one’s intellectual
product, those plagiarizing steal a piece of one’s moral being.
Thus, plagiarism is not simply an unambiguous phenomenon in its
objective textual appearance and subjective origin. It threatens the imagined
unanimity of the very community of values that can unanimously recognize
it; rather than a simple and clear textual transgression, it corrupts the values
of the community. Rather than being simply offensive, it threatens to ‘under-
mine the traditions of scholarly study and research’ (Walker 1998, 90) and
‘[defeat] the aims of higher education’ (Aluede, Omoregie, and Osa-Edoh
2006, 98). At its worst, then, plagiarism in the moralistic discourse threatens
to destroy our very way of life. No wonder that plagiarism becomes an ‘epi-
demic’ in this discourse, where not only its prevalence but also its sub-
human nature is highlighted; the intent is not simply deplorable but becomes
the embodiment of evil. Plagiarists are not worthy of the name human – for
they threaten human-ness itself (cf. Thomas 2004, 429).
 818 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

The plagiarizing student is thus radically different from those adhering to

the academic tradition and integrity – ‘us’. Yet such radical difference actu-
ally depends on radical similarity. Students are already implied to be mem-
bers of the academic community: there is nothing radically transformative to
be learned. They are free to choose and they have chosen evil. The impor-
tant educational derivative of this view is therefore thoroughly anti-educa-
tional as far as practices of writing are concerned. The discourse of
moralism cannot conceptualize ‘plagiarism’ or the rules governing it as
unclear. Thus, it cannot quite imagine ‘plagiarism’ to be tackled by practices
of teaching. At the maximum, universities can ‘raise student awareness of
the unacceptability of student plagiarism’ (Walker 1998, 89), implying
thereby some kind of natural ‘awareness’ already existing, alongside the
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enforcement of disciplinary measures. The breakdown manifested in the

complete lack of this awareness is no direct educational matter.
The discourse of moralism, then, presupposes a perfectly unambiguous
field on which the act of plagiarism occurs. It is clear what constitutes pla-
giarism, and plagiarism is clearly obnoxious as it represents the breakdown
of the universal and homogeneous academic tradition/integrity. Its proximal
cause is the individual’s suspect morality, while its distal cause may be at
societal level, with a ‘new value system operating in society’ (Aluede,
Omoregie, and Osa-Edoh 2006, 102). Correspondingly, the educator
becomes either superfluous and without a task, or heroic and with a task of
Sisyphusean nature. No wonder, then, that the current state of affairs as
regards students writing practices elicits reactions of outrage or panic.

Plagiarism as proceduralism
As noted above, the discourse of moralism appears to have become less pre-
valent in the past decade in dealing with plagiarism. Whether it is due to its
anti-educational ethos, its subsequent ‘panic’ and near-acknowledged help-
lessness, or the practical reality of ‘widening participation’ at universities
exposing the unrealistic assumptions of treating students as automatic partic-
ipants in the academic tradition/integrity, moralism often figures as the expli-
cit counter-position in many recent treatises of the problem.
Authors have repeatedly pointed out that the issue is considerably more
complex than moralist publications would let us think. To many, the
response that ‘largely […] focus[es] on deterrence through detection and
punishment’ is clearly insufficient (Macdonald and Carroll 2006, 233). Vari-
ous dichotomies have been construed to capture the departure from moral-
ism. Thus, plagiarism is taken to be ‘inappropriate, unacceptable behaviour’
rather than a ‘criminal’ one (Park 2004, 294); a ‘subsection of cheating […]
“seeking unfair advantage”’ rather than a ‘sin’ (Larkham and Manns 2002,
348); a transgression of ‘convention’ rather than that of ‘morality’ (East
2010, 70); and, most fundamentally, a ‘transgression of rules’ rather than an
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 819

‘attack on principles of scholarship’ (Flint, Clegg, and Macdonald 2006,

153).
One characteristic discourse to have recently emerged is proceduralism.1
In terms of the main dimensions of discourses on plagiarism, the important
divergence of proceduralism from moralism is the apparent bracketing of the
question of intention and the removal of the automatic connection between
a student’s will and his/her (illegitimate) act (Carroll and Appleton 2001, 6;
Macdonald and Carroll 2006, 242). Plagiarism is identified not with student
intention, but with a breach of the technical rules of legitimate academic
writing. Furthermore, instead of attributing to students some sort of natural
‘awareness’ of these rules and thereby making them naturally accountable,
transparent practises constituting legitimate or illegitimate academic writing
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are to be clearly communicated to students (Brown and Howell 2001, 115;

Park 2004).
As a result, emphasis is shifted from students to institutional policies.
This means unambiguous definition of technical rules, transparent
guidelines, as well as the clear communication of these towards students.
Distribution of information about plagiarism and the clarification of guide-
lines can, of course, be coupled with subsequent detection and disciplinary
procedures. But those procedures are now much as they would be in other
rule-based activities: acts are punished because they (slightly or severely)
transgress the conventions of the game. The referee may blow their whistle
and show a yellow or red card. None of this is dependent on the assumption
that some suspect motive may be involved, or that the consequences of the
act pertain to principles beyond the game being played. It is simply that a
formal rule has been transgressed.
The onus, then, seemingly starts to be placed as much on institutions as
on students (Park 2003, 483; 2004, 294). The distribution of information
may still not qualify as education in any transformative sense. Yet, at the
very least, the assumption of the continuity between students and academics
becomes exposed to scrutiny. Students are no longer taken to be, in essence,
academics, and no corresponding expectation or damnation is therefore
directed at them. Focusing on practice rather than principle, the discourse of
proceduralism can acknowledge the prevalence of plagiarism without sound-
ing alarmist or desperate. Focusing on definition, rules and clear sets of
guidelines, it can promise to transform the issue from a moral one to one of
neutral rules. What is more, rather than automatically stigmatizing students,
it offers to cast light on the role institutions may play in preventing plagia-
rism.
However, as intent is bracketed and thus deposed as the constitutive ele-
ment of plagiarism, questions arise as to the nature of plagiarism. Procedu-
ralism assumes that plagiarism would equal the (breach of the) set of
objective rules explicated in university documents and, as such, would be a
universal textual feature across the disciplines. Yet if plagiarism is simply
 820 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

defined in terms of the breach of technical rules, one may wonder why pro-
ceduralistic approaches continue to entertain the need for disciplinary action
as an answer to those breaches. ‘University values’, as asserted, ‘do not
judge plagiarism as poor academic practice. [ …] [I]t is wrong, whether
done deliberately or accidentally, to claim someone else’s work, thoughts or
ideas as one’s own’ (Carroll and Appleton 2001, 6; cf. Park 2003, 471).
Whatever the removal of ‘criminalization’ or ‘sin’ entails, proceduralism still
treats plagiarism as an affront to ‘principles’, and plagiarists as ‘cheats’.
Why should though a breach of rules, however well defined and clearly
communicated, be branded as dishonesty and an affront to principles? Three
crucial assumptions operate here. First, rules and guidelines defining plagia-
rism are certainly no arbitrary creatures; they are supposed to derive from
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academic tradition in both epistemological and moral sense. They explicate

correct academic writing practices and exemplify principles of academic
integrity (Park 2004, 297–298; cf. Clegg and Flint 2006, 385). Second, both
the academic tradition and the virtuous principles of academic integrity are
assumed to be non-questionable, homogeneous and universal entities. The
community of practice and its values are not simply codified in rules on pla-
giarism but are done so in an absolute, unexamined fashion. Plagiarism is
therefore more than a mere breach of arbitrary conventions, it is an affront
to the context from which those universal conventions organically evolve.
Far beyond the transparency of rules, it is the automatically invoked intellec-
tual and moral authority of a supposedly unitary academic tradition that ren-
ders plagiarism both visible and visible-as-transgression. Third, although the
onus shifts towards institutions providing clear and straightforward informa-
tion, students are merely assumed to be able to easily appropriate these.
Once again, students are reduced, in essence, to academics-in-waiting as
they begin to master writing practices. Failing to do that, the only identity
available for them remains that of the ‘cheat’ (cf. Valentine 2006).
Thus, the discourse of proceduralism is marked by bracketing some, yet
reiterating other, central assumptions of the vilified approach of moralism.
On the one hand, the focus is shifted onto institutional practices, the clarity
of guidelines and the dissemination of information. This removes the
emphasis from natural moral sense and the student’s suspect intention/iden-
tity. As such, it is an important outcome of the discourse of proceduralism
that it de-demonizes the phenomenon and the identities of those found to
commit it. On the other hand, plagiarism itself remains absolutely unambig-
uous: it is both clear and clearly bad for all (who can be bothered) to see.
The discourse of proceduralism does not exist in a vacuum. Its rules are
those of the academic tradition and the principles it defends are those of
academic integrity, where both academic tradition and integrity are assumed
to be homogeneous, universal and (relatively) easily accessible. As a result,
proceduralism is legitimated by the very context – and the unambiguity of
the context – that was found to be constitutive of the discourse of moralism.
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 821

And in the course of rendering plagiarism itself unambiguous and transpar-

ent, these assumptions effectively re-inscribe the students’ intention into the
act itself and mark their identities as immoral (East 2010, 80).
Not demonized, not ‘sub-human’, but students are rendered morally sus-
pect beings by the sanitized language of proceduralism all the same. Corre-
spondingly, the virtuous epistemological–moral community of academics
remains the ultimate arbiter passing unambiguous judgement. As the leap
into this community is unproblematized, practices of writing are still subject
to moral disciplining rather than education.

Plagiarism as development
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While the discourse of proceduralism exhibited some of the crucial assump-

tions of the discourse of moralism, it also pointed towards a different take
on plagiarism. It started to eliminate the idea that students should show
some natural awareness of what academic integrity may be, and should,
therefore, be academics-in-waiting even before their academic education has
properly begun. If simply in the largely neutral idea of transparency of
information, proceduralism raised the notion that students may be qualita-
tively further than assumed from the finished article. What their textual prac-
tices require may be neither simple ‘awareness’ of self-evident moral issues,
nor the mere exposition of information on the right practices. Rather, the
issue of plagiarism as writing may necessarily be contextualized in terms of
development.
As a consequence of this shift, a further discourse has emerged since the
turn of the century, offering the re-conceptualization of plagiarism in terms
of development and education. Most dominantly, the ‘holistic’ approach
exerts increasing impact on the concept of plagiarism as well as on institu-
tional policies devised to tackle it. The ‘holistic’ take aspires to move
beyond simple concerns not only of the moralistic approach of honour codes
(McCabe, Trevino, and Butterfield 1999), but also of the triad of dissemina-
tion of information, detection and punishment. Instead, there is at least equal
focus on ‘skills of academic discourse and citation’ (Carroll and Appleton
2001, 4; Macdonald and Carroll 2006, 235) in trying to prevent dishonest
writing practices. Issues with plagiarism cease to surface merely after the
submission of coursework but become interweaved in the course design
from module content to assignments. Thus, the integration of skills to avoid
plagiarism into the practices of universities is taken to the next level in that
the phenomenon is considered less an illegitimate intruder into the purity of
academic writing practices, and more a part of the education of those very
practices.
A yet more radical shift towards a discourse of development can be dis-
cerned in recent empirical work on ‘authorial identity’ (Abasi, Akbari, and
Graves 2006; Ellery 2008; Pittam et al. 2009). Plagiarism here becomes an
 822 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

even more intricate problem as work on ‘authorial identity’ posits that what
needs to be nurtured by the academic environment are not straightforward
‘skills’, but the very subject position that students take in the context of the
academy. Without the appropriation of this subject position, any information
on or teaching of the proper way of writing may remain ineffectual. In con-
junction with the straightforward introduction of those practices to the stu-
dents’ perspective, it is that very perspective which needs to be engaged
with. Essentially, before students could be expected to write properly and
attribute ideas to proper sources, a sense of identity needs to be developed
where the subject is an independent thinker creating his/her ideas instead of
merely editing sources found. In this respect, work on ‘authorial identity’
puts educational practices at the heart of concerns with plagiarism. Students
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are no longer treated as either suspect or automatically capable of appropri-

ating taken-for-granted academic writing skills.
What, however, may a discourse of development entail in terms of the
major dimensions defining plagiarism: intention, interpretation and the
academic community? And what is their relation to those discourses ana-
lysed above: moralism and proceduralism?
Revealingly, ‘holistic’ and ‘authorial identity’ approaches offer rather
diverging views in confronting the vexing question of intention. ‘Holistic’
studies continue to simply bracket the question of intention and thereby
reiterate one of the definitive features of proceduralism (cf. Macdonald and
Carroll 2006, 242). At the same time, the ‘authorial identity’ perspective is
categorically more straightforward as it repeatedly specifies that ‘there is an
increasing recognition that plagiarism is often unintentional’ (Pittam et al.
2009, 154; cf. Ellery 2008, 507). Information on the right practices, direct
teaching of skills and use of detection software do not in themselves create
student identities where attribution of moral/procedural responsibility may
arise. In this sense, the developmental perspective focusing on ‘authorial
identity’ is anathema to the discourses of both moralism and
proceduralism.
Inevitably, the attribution of intent may not simply be taken as an empiri-
cal judgement but a political one. Just as with moralism and proceduralism,
inferring the intention behind a text becomes constitutive of the interpreta-
tion of that text itself. The denial of this intention, therefore, does not
merely assert a fact but creates the very phenomenon of an instance of pla-
giarism. While, in the discourses of moralism and proceduralism, plagiarism
was an objective property of a text caused by an intention explicitly or
implicitly attributed to students, ‘authorial identity’ researchers’ direct ques-
tioning of the presence of intention simultaneously starts to re-conceptualize
plagiarism as an inter-textual practice where identity is not asserted but
negotiated. And it is in so far as negotiation and the dialogical aspect of tex-
tual practice are acknowledged that writing becomes more a site of educa-
tion and less of moral opprobrium or disciplinary sanction. This promises
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 823

the revolutionary insight that writing itself cannot quite be taught, only
engaged with (cf. Thompson 2009).
It is all the more surprising, then, that, notwithstanding the crucial differ-
ence of emphases between ‘holistic’ and ‘authorial identity’ approaches on
unintentional plagiarism, they both perpetuate a whole set of assumptions
characterizing the discourse of moralism and proceduralism. Crucially, while
there is acknowledgment of development and thereby the necessity of
(some) education that would transform students’ writing practices or even
identities, developmental discourses entertain no doubts as to what the end-
point of that transformation may be. There is still no doubt about what
plagiarism is. There is no interrogation of the actual writing practices that
constitute it. Likewise, there is no real examination of the identity of ‘us’,
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the academic community that interprets plagiarism and into which students
should be socialized.
The unambiguity of the interpretation of plagiarism, and of the academic
tradition underpinning it, means that development-as-transformation becomes
a limited possibility in these discourses. Of course, such a state of affairs
has different implications for the considerably diverging paths that ‘holistic’
and ‘authorial identity’ discourses take. As to the former, it simply expli-
cates a focus on plagiarism as a problem and as a straightforward textual
practice; the concern is how to prevent or avoid this ‘problem’ with educa-
tion as a tool. Some teaching (possibly of citation conventions) may be
required but it is never supposed to be too sophisticated. As such, ‘holistic’
approaches suit proceduralism well. Disciplinary action or moral opprobrium
are certainly in place, if not yet. Correspondingly, while an alternative sub-
ject position is created for students exhibiting questionable writing practices
alongside those of ‘cheating’ and ‘honest’, this simply amounts to that of
‘not-yet-cheating’.
Contrary to the ‘holistic’ approach, ‘authorial identity’ promises to
reserve its main focus for the formation of legitimate student identities. In
so far as writing practices and their education are tied to identities, plagia-
rism becomes a secondary issue and perhaps postponed indefinitely as a
disciplinary concern. However, while the ‘authorial identity’ perspective is
an effective practical counter to disciplinary action and the stigmatization
of student identities, it will always reach the glass ceiling of procedural-
ism/moralism if the writing practices and identities, as well as their inter-
related nature in defining the very phenomenon of plagiarism, remain
unexamined. To do that, a focus on identity and practices of writing need
to replace the foundational assumptions of the transparent unambiguity of
the concept of plagiarism, as well as the unequivocality of academic tradi-
tion/integrity. If the proper way of writing and the proper identity under-
pinning it are only a few clear and objective steps away, the process of
developing novel identities may quickly be replaced by regulating and
policing them.
 824 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

Whether by design or by accident, therefore, the discourse of develop-

ment fails to re-conceptualize the perceived danger of students’ inappropri-
ate textual practices as a fully fledged educational matter. This may be less
of a concern for ‘holistic’ approaches that may by now be seen as a simple
extension of the core concerns of moralism and proceduralism. In studies of
‘authorial identity’, the continuing existence of the glass ceiling of procedu-
ralism may be seen as a more troubling issue. To shatter this and fully re-
describe students’ problematic writing practices, more is required than the
emphasis on identities which may underpin those writing practices. Those
very practices need to be interrogated as they represent various negotiations
of identities: students’ as well as, ultimately, academics’.
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Plagiarism as writing/inter-textuality
Up to this point, we could detect the continuity of certain assumptions on
plagiarism. In particular, the interpretation of texts as acts of plagiarism was
assumed to be straightforward. This meant that textual features constituting
these acts were transparent, objectively detectable, technical matters; the
practices of writing, alongside their appropriation, have not been considered
integral to the phenomenon. While undoubtedly manifesting in writing, pla-
giarism was nowhere really considered a dilemma of just that – writing. It is
this assumption about the transparency of interpretation and writing practices
that is confronted by the discourse analysed in this last section (cf.
Chandrasoma, Thompson, and Pennycook 2004; Pennycook 1996; Robillard
and Howard 2008; Scollon 1995; Thompson 2009). As we shall see,
engagement with those textual practices radically re-defines plagiarism itself
from the perspective of transformative development, culture and identity.
The crucial move of the discourse of writing is the recognition that,
extreme cases aside, it is in fact not clear at all what does and what does
not count as plagiarism (Clegg and Flint 2006, 374; Howard 2000 473;
Robillard and Howard 2008; Roig 2001; Sunderland-Smith 2005, 83). No
universal definition has yet been proposed, let alone agreed on. The homo-
geneous and authoritative gaze of interpretation is therefore taken to be ficti-
tious. And if the judgement involved in establishing plagiarism is taken to
be an act of real and meaningful interpretation, then the text scrutinized
ceases to be the simple product of straightforward intent, and becomes the
complex outcome of various sorts of inter-textual practices. Writing there-
fore becomes the focus of investigations where plagiarism, or any other
meaning, is concerned. Certainly, some acknowledgment of plagiarism mani-
festing itself through the medium of writing was already in place in the dis-
courses of proceduralism and of development. Information, after all, on
proper practices needed to be disseminated; clear guidelines needed to be
drawn up. Even some direct teaching of skills was advocated. Yet the major
break from the prevailing tradition in the inter-textual approach is that the
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 825

very idea of writing is taken to be not a technical matter but a social prac-
tice:

The meaning of any textual event, including one potentially classified as pla-
giarism, is determined not by foundational categories and decontextualized
procedures but by people involved in the event, and the ways in which their
writerly identities are constructed by their social situation. (Robillard and
Howard 2008, 5; cf. Pennycook 1996, 227; Valentine 2006, 93–94)

Correspondingly, as the identity of the student becomes that of the writer,

instead of simply an honest/dishonest person, the question of transparent
intent becomes virtually superfluous. A whole range of intentions becomes
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possible, with only a fringe purposefully renouncing the entire identity of

the writer and opting for forgery (Robillard 2008, 40). The main question,
therefore, will not be whether there is such a thing as unintentional plagia-
rism, but how various intentions and identities may be negotiated in writing.
Far from a one-way street from intention to text, writing as such becomes a
site for the encounter of a variety of intentions, cultures, politics and identi-
ties. While other discourses may have acknowledged these encounters mani-
festing in ‘normal’ or ‘academic’ texts, the major shift in the discourse of
writing/inter-textuality is that even ‘plagiarism’ is approached as such an
encounter. It, too, is a matter of genuine writing and interpretation, rather
than simply of dishonesty and lack of integrity revealing itself in objective
textual properties.
Such a considerable shift in emphasis, from the problem of plagiarism to
a concern for students’ writing practices, is manifest both in scholars’ expli-
cit calls to stop using the concept of plagiarism, and their implicit re-
description of it as ‘textual borrowing’ (Pennycook 1996, 226; Thompson
and Pennycook 2008, 127) or transgressive ‘intertextuality’ (Chandrasoma,
Thompson, and Pennycook 2004, 171; Thompson 2009). The question by
now may be what exactly remains of plagiarism if it is considered an aspect
of writing. What kind of account of plagiarism does the perspective of writ-
ing offer at all?
What is important is that these questions do not simply concern leniency.
It is not the case that these researchers and educators would choose to focus
on writing and ignore the problem of plagiarism. Rather, from the perspec-
tive of writing, the whole concept of plagiarism is seen in a radically differ-
ent light. In as much as ‘academic literacy’ takes precedence over ‘academic
integrity’ (Thompson and Pennycook 2008, 127), plagiarism itself becomes
a function of student and academic writing/interpretation. Researchers
approaching plagiarism from the perspective of writing do acknowledge that
moral opprobrium or disciplinary action may theoretically be retained for
some extreme acts. Yet for an approach focusing on writing, just as any
meaning of the text is established through dialogue, so is plagiarism. Even
 826 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

cases of immorality, instances where the act of writing and the identity of
the writer is ultimately relinquished, cannot proceed as a single-handed
judgement based on objective properties of the text. A variety of aspects
have to be taken into consideration as meaning is assigned to the text as
social action. Any meaning of the text shall be determined with regard to
the encounter of various concerns, such as, at the very least, the question of
intention, the development of the student, the identity of the student, as well
as the possibility and nature of resistance (cf. Chandrasoma, Thompson, and
Pennycook 2004, 190).
There are two important consequences of a theoretical stance emphasiz-
ing the inevitability of interaction in determining what plagiarism is. First,
the discourse of writing would presumably acknowledge many, perhaps
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most, practices denounced as plagiarism/cheating as honest attempts in the

course of a development and, as such, legitimate acts of writing. As
Rebecca Moore Howard has been arguing forcefully, ‘patchwriting’, ‘copy-
ing from a source text and then deleting some words, altering grammatical
structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym-substitutes’ (Howard 1992,
233; cf. Howard 2008, 94; Thompson 2009), is often exactly such an act.
Instead of making accusations that can only ever be refuted or upheld, a
genuine engagement is proposed with the students’ attempts to appropriate
academic discourse. Second, moreover, as Howard’s treatise on ‘patchwrit-
ing’ also points out, in making plagiarism a disciplinary matter the academic
community does not just stamp on students the mark of immorality, but
effectively prevents their development. In so far as ‘patchwriting’ may be
considered an honest attempt at writing and, as such, an important element
in the development of academic writing practices and identities, outlawing it
in fact outlaws development. And if so, what started in this paper as a
straightforward moral issue with the community of ‘them’ turns out to be a
political concern with ‘us’: how the academic community polices its bound-
aries and what identities it authoritatively reserves for its subjects. Rather
than some natural homogeneity, it is these exclusionary practices that main-
tain the semblance of the unity of the cherished academic tradition (Howard
2000, 2008).
To summarize, the discourse considering ‘plagiarism’ as writing/inter-tex-
tuality offers a radical re-conceptualization of its subject matter. Instead of
assuming plagiarism to be transparent and focusing on it as a problem, it
subsumes it under the category of writing. Here, writing is not a simple
technique or a clearly defined set of skills, but a complex social practice
where negotiation of identities and values takes place. Therefore, it may not
be directly taught; only socialized into. Thus, plagiarism becomes a function
of the social practice of writing. From the radical other it becomes another
participant in the encounter that produces texts and establishes the meanings
of texts. As a consequence, ‘plagiarism as writing’ introduces the possibility
that those who change in the process of education may not just be the
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 827

students – that socialization into a community may not simply change its
newcomers. In the discourse of writing, plagiarism is recognized as serving
to protect the community of academics from infiltrators. While how and
why this policing is done is illuminating, from the inter-textual perspective
it is also thrilling to imagine what may happen once the walls of separation
are removed. In this sense, the ultimate consequence of the inter-textualist
take on plagiarism is that the writing of students ceases to be a threat, and
starts to be an opportunity for the academic community to understand and
transform itself (Chandrasoma, Thompson, and Pennycook 2004, 180).

Discussion
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This paper has attempted to reconstruct and analyse the divergences and
convergences of moralistic, proceduralistic, developmental and inter-textual
discourses of plagiarism as regards three main dimensions: intent, interpreta-
tion and the nature of the academic community. In terms of intent, major
differences seemed to have been found. Moralism took suspect student
intent to constitute the act of plagiarism; proceduralism appeared to bracket
it; developmental discourses either continued to bracket it (‘holistic
approaches’) or removed it altogether as a constitutive feature of plagiarism
(‘authorial identity’); and the inter-textual approach reconceptualised it as
the outcome of the social practice of interpretation.
Regarding the interpretation of plagiarism and the nature of the academic
community, some of these differences unravelled. In none of the first three
discourses was any doubt entertained as to the objectivity of the interpreta-
tion/detection of plagiarism, just as there were no attempts to problematize
the unambiguous and homogeneous nature of the virtuous academic commu-
nity whose interpretative authority would underpin those judgements. This
had two important implications. First, practices concerning ‘proper’ aca-
demic writing were never taken to be the outcome of transformative educa-
tion. Writing was ultimately conceptualized in terms of technical skills.
Second, and more importantly, as the genuine student identity was thereby
implicitly removed from constituting practices of (legitimate or illegitimate)
writing, the moralistic idea of the cheat and the role of suspect intent in
effect became re-inscribed as constitutive of plagiarism.
The black and white epistemological–moral assumptions of moralism
were thereby sustained by discourses of proceduralism and development,
sometimes compromising their explicit intentions. The only exception to this
was the discourse of inter-textuality where ‘plagiarism’ was treated as a
function of the social practice of writing, and where both interpretation and
the nature of the academic community were conceived as contingent,
socially constructed entities. This did not reflect a naïve belief in the benev-
olent intentions of students but an acknowledgment that intention, interpreta-
tion and community all arise from legitimate social encounters.
 828 D. Kaposi and P. Dell

Although the main aim of this paper was theoretical, attempting to recon-
struct four discourses of plagiarism and unpack their implicit assumptions,
the practical question of ‘what to do’ cannot escape a conclusion on the
issue of plagiarism. Arguably, present university policies in Britain still echo
the concerns of moralism and proceduralism in that they operate explicitly
on the basis of the transparency of plagiarism and implicitly on the identity
of the plagiarizing student being that of a cheat. Essentially, they are domi-
nated by the use of detection software and the subsequent application of dis-
ciplinary measures. Perspectives informed by the discourse of development
generally advocate the mere postponing of the latter measures, perhaps to
the second or third year of undergraduate studies, alongside the introduction
of mostly technical aspects of academic writing skills into the curriculum.
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Yet, in their present form these corrective measures merely leave essen-
tial aspects of plagiarism untouched. They do not account for the fact that
the use of detection software is not unambiguous: ‘Turnitin’ reports inevita-
bly require interpretation. Plagiarism, much as the disciplinarian thrust of
moralism would like it otherwise, is not a straightforward empirical matter.
Moreover, even in cases where the software can be consensually applied,
issues underlying instances of plagiarism still remain untouched. It says
nothing about why students would borrow texts without acknowledgement,
and what it reveals of their understanding of crucial matters underpinning
received academic writing practices; let alone broader ranging issues con-
cerning students’ identities as academic writers.
Writing as social practice is mostly neglected in the current curriculum
of the natural and social sciences. In line with the discourses of moralism/
proceduralism/development, it is only engaged with in terms of technical
aspects of writing. Yet, according to the discourse of ‘inter-textuality’, this
paper would argue that in an increasingly fluid and diverse world it seems
inevitable for any meaningful and successful practical approach to the
dilemma of plagiarism to acknowledge the constitutive role of academic
writing as a social practice that can only be appropriated via genuine dia-
logue and exploration – acts that may not only transform students, but the
academic community itself.

Note
1. ‘Proceduralism’, in many respects, is not unlike legalism as conceived by Judith
Shklar (1964). The term is preferred, however, as the law in general scrutinizes
the suspect’s intention, whereas the main consequence of proceduralism is that
it brackets it.

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