Journal of Second Language Writing 30 (2015) 109–110
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Journal of Second Language Writing
Disciplinary Dialogues
Language re-use and the notion of culture: A response to
Diane Pecorari’s ‘‘Plagiarism in second language writing:
Is it time to close the case?’’
John Flowerdew *
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
This invitation to write a short piece on the topic of plagiarism gives me the opportunity to bring together two studies that
I conducted some years ago and that hopefully throw some light on one of the four areas Diane Pecorari highlights as a
possible area for future research on plagiarism, that of plagiarism and culture.
A culture corresponds to the norms, values, attitudes, modes of behavior, and genres of a given community, large or small.
When scholars have invoked the culture card and brought it into play in the context of plagiarism, they most often have in
mind large, often (East) Asian communities (e.g., Matalene, 1985; Sowden, 2005), and this cultural group is compared with
Western, or, more specifically, ‘‘Anglo-Saxon’’, culture. I would note from the outset that such broad comparisons are often
erroneous and have come in for a lot of criticism (Ha, 2004; Liu, 2005). That is not to say that we should ignore culture as a
possible factor in plagiaristic practices.
The two studies in question here are first an article I wrote with Lindsay Miller, published in TESOL Quarterly (Flowerdew
& Miller, 1995) and second a later piece co-authored with Yongyan Li and published in Applied Linguistics (Flowerdew & Li,
2007). I will argue that the cultural framework developed in the first of these studies might be applied to consider the results
of the findings in the second. The TESOL Quarterly article, with the title ‘‘On the notion of culture in second language lectures’’,
was a situated ethnographic study of how Hong Kong university students go about listening to lectures. Based on
the ethnographic data, a framework was developed for understanding the culture surrounding that particular genre. The
framework consisted of four dimensions: ethnic culture, local culture, academic culture, and disciplinary culture. The article
thus broke away from the sort of narrow cultural stereotyping referred to at the beginning of this piece, by broadening it out
into four dimensions. The second article was titled ‘‘Language re-use among Chinese Apprentice Scientists Writing for
Publication’’, and it focused (non-judgmentally) on the copying practices of a group of doctoral science students in a
university in Mainland China. As Pecorari states, ‘‘it is . . . very difficult to tease out culture from language and other
background factors’’ (this section[1_TD$IF]). My goal in bringing these four dimensions of culture to bear on the findings of the article
on the copying practices of the group in question is to show how the four-dimension model might help to overcome this
problem. Hopefully, readers will be able to extrapolate my application of this framework to other situations with which they
are familiar.
So let me consider now the copying practices of the group of doctoral science students as they might be analyzed using
the four-dimensional framework. The first dimension is that of ethnic culture. A highly prized norm of Western culture,
which goes against the notion of ethnic culture, and which can be traced back to the Enlightenment (Pennycook, 1996;
Scollon, 1995), is the overwhelming emphasis on the authorial self, on the individual as owner of their contribution to
society, no matter whether such a contribution is material or semiotic. It is argued in some plagiarism studies that this is a
tradition which is alien to Asian, Confucian-heritage societies, which are more collective in orientation (although, as Pecorari
notes, there are also denials of such claims (e.g., Liu, 2005)). Given this collectivist orientation, it follows, according to such
* Correspondence to: English Dept., City University, 83 Tat Chee Ave., Kowloon, Hong Kong.
E-mail address: enjohnf@cityu.edu.hk
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2015.08.008
1060-3743/ß 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
110
J. Flowerdew / Journal of Second Language Writing 30 (2015) 109–110
studies, that individuals may not feel any stigma attaching to the copying of other work. In line with this ethnic cultural view,
it could be that this is a contributory fact in the copying behavior of the doctoral students in the language re-use study. Such a
factor would have to be empirically validated, of course, by interview or focus group, for example. And, by considering also
the other three dimensions of the model to be sketched out below, such an investigation should guard against the sort of
ethnic stereotyping which has been critiqued, as noted above by writers such as Liu (2005). In particular, with China’s
opening up to the West since the early 1970s, it is unlikely that earlier views of Chinese attitudes to copying still stand, even if
they might have been valid at one time.
The second dimension of the four-dimensional model of cultural influences from Flowerdew and Miller (1995) is that of
local culture. The doctoral students in the Chinese university who were the focus of the language re-use study operated
within a rather closed community, working in groups in a laboratory overseen by their supervisor, whom they referred to as
their ‘‘boss’’. Given that the practice of copying was widespread among these students, this could be considered to be a
feature of the local culture. Again, empirical evidence would need to be obtained to corroborate such a hypothesis.
Turning now to the third dimension of the four-dimensional model of Flowerdew and Miller (1995), that of academic
culture, it is well known that the Chinese education system relies a lot on rote learning and memorization – even critiques of
ethnic stereotyping recognize this (e.g., Liu, 2005). Such an approach may lead to imitation of previously memorized texts
and less emphasis on originality. Furthermore, there is a reverence for the literary masters and a good literary style requires
copious citation from the texts of these writers, as noted as far back as at least Matalene (1985), although this may also be
breaking down as China opens up to the international community. Such a trait of academic culture could carry over to
writing in the field of science. Here again, empirical evidence would be needed.
Finally, let us consider disciplinary culture, the last dimension of the four-dimensional model of cultural influences from
Flowerdew and Miller (1995), as a possible contributory factor to copying behavior. In the Flowerdew and Li ([3_TD$IF]2007) article,
we argued that in science, when plagiaristic practices are considered, a distinction is made between the copying of language
and the copying of ideas, the latter being considered a much more serious infringement on disciplinary practice. This is in
contrast to the humanities, where great importance is placed on the way an issue is discursively constructed, in addition to
the content of the argument. Furthermore, scientific writing tends to be highly formulaic (Halliday, 1993) and therefore
susceptible to copying, it can be argued. Perhaps for one, or both, of these reasons, the doctoral students, when interviewed,
did not consider that their copying practices constituted an infringement. Perhaps if we had studied students in the
humanities we might have found a different attitude. But that, of course, is an empirical question.
So, to conclude, through a consideration of two of my earlier publications, I have argued that the investigation of the
cultural dimension of plagiarism, or, more specifically, language re-use, might benefit from being broken down into the four
dimensions of ethnic, local, academic, and disciplinary culture. To what extent each of these dimensions helps to explain the
practice in any given situation is an empirical question (and, of course, these dimensions may overlap with each other). That
is no doubt why Pecorari has called for further research in this area and why I think such as approach might help to ‘‘tease out
culture from language and other background factors’’[2_TD$IF] in the words of Pecorari. Finally, I would point out that such an
investigation might be best carried out through qualitative methods such as interview, focus group, diary study, and thinkaloud protocol, methods which are best suited to teasing out subtle cultural differences.
References
Flowerdew, J., & Li, Y.-Y. (2007). Language re-use among Chinese apprentice scientists writing for publication. Applied Linguistics, 28(3), 440–465.
Flowerdew, J., & Miller, L. (1995). On the notion of culture in second language lectures. TESOL Quarterly, 29(2), 345–374.
Ha, P. L. (2004). University classrooms in Vietnam: Contesting the stereotypes. ELT Journal, 58(1), 50–57.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1993). On the language of physical science. In M. A. K. Halliday & J. R. Martin (Eds.), Writing science: Literacy and discursive power (pp.
59–75). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Liu, D.-L. (2005). Plagiarism in ESOL students: Is cultural conditioning truly the major culprit? ELT Journal, 59(3), 234–241.
Matalene, C. (1985). Contrastive rhetoric: An American writing teacher in China. College English, 47(8), 789–808.
Pennycook, A. (1996). Borrowing others’ words: Text, ownership, memory, and plagiarism. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2), 201–230.
Scollon, R. (1995). Plagiarism and ideology: Identity in inter cultural discourse. Language in Society, 2(1), 1–28.
Sowden, C. (2005). Plagiarism and the culture of multilingual students in higher education abroad. ELT Journal, 59(3), 226–233.