It was the “toingk” heard around the world.
Melania Trump, clad in virginal, angelic white, was loudly applauded by spectators when she delivered a moving speech lauding her husband, United States presidential candidate Donald Trump, at the recent Republican National Convention.
Some critics lauded Melania’s speech, saying it showed Trump in a softer and more congenial light. There was only one thing wrong with it—at least two paragraphs were cribbed from a 2008 speech by First Lady Michelle Obama that she delivered at the Democratic National Convention—exactly mirroring the event where Melania gave her speech.
Subsequent news reports on the Internet established that Melania claimed she herself had written the speech. Her official speechwriters said they had written a different speech but she changed many parts of it, and that they did not recognize the speech when she delivered it.
The Internet jeered, saying that her speechwriters were Mr. Copy and Mr. Paste, and coming out with the hashtag #FamousMelaniaTrumpQuotes, attributing to her other people’s lines, among them: “Luke, I am your father.”
But was it really plagiarism?
Two years ago, Benjamin Muller wrote a commentary published on Poynter.org about the different kinds of dishonest writing. He quoted Norman Lewis’s definition of plagiarism: “Using someone else’s words or original ideas without attribution.” Muller also gave a rule of thumb: using seven to 10 words verbatim from another source.
Another type of intellectual dishonesty is patchwriting, where writers reword material taken from another source while “relying heavily on the vocabulary and syntax of the source material,” Muller said, quoting Kelly McBride, Poynter vice president.
In Melania’s speech, not only were some sentences lifted verbatim from Michelle’s, but the sequence of thoughts was the same, though some rewording was done in other sentences. Therefore, she seems to have committed both plagiarism and patchwriting.
The Republican Party, which chose the Orange One as its official candidate, sprang to Melania’s defense with a downplay of the incident and brushed aside accusations of plagiarism. This was the same approach taken by a certain Philippine senator’s staffer who was found to have copied parts of a foreign writer’s research article in something he wrote for the senator—and that the senator defended.
Contrast that behavior with this: just a few days ago, one of my Facebook friends found instances of patchwriting in a piece published in Huffington Post that was written by a Filipino writer who styled himself as a “political science scholar.” After my FB friend called the attention of HuffPo’s editors to it, citing the original source materials, the writer apologized and took the piece down. Also, some years ago, a corporate honcho who delivered a university commencement address that was found to have been copied largely from foreign speeches apologized and took responsibility for the matter, although he did not write the address himself.
Plagiarism is not only the scourge of academe but of the “real world.” Few people are as honorable as Corporate Honcho. Most people, many of them young students, are bewildered with all the fuss about copying; they see nothing wrong with it. But plagiarism is the same lying to others and stealing from others; it is dishonest, a mark of laziness, and perhaps even a sign of limited critical or original thought.
Using other’s ideas or quotes in your own work is allowed, provided that attribution is made. It is not hard to write, “according to…” “She said…” It is plagiarism only if the source is not mentioned; just remember to give credit where credit is due.
This is one of the points of thesis writing in college: to instill in each student the value of intellectual integrity, by teaching them to cite their sources in detail.
Melania’s on-stage debacle is a lesson about honesty. Don’t spread the plagiarism virus. There’s too much of it going around already.
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