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I'm from a different country (or culture)
Q: I'm from a different country (or culture), where there is less emphasis placed on things like individual credit for ideas and originality. My friends and family would find the rules about plagiarism strange, at the least.
A: Welcome to the Principality of Academe. Be assured that we welcome your visit and will try to make your stay as worthwhile as we can. To avoid any misunderstandings, we ask that you read the pamphlet on local customs before you leave the airport. It includes the local regulations on business conducted here, which you will find under "Academic Policies."
I understand that, in some ways, academics is a foreign culture for many students (regardless of their country or culture of origin). Ursula Le Guin wrote once that no one speaks the "language of power" from birth, and the same is true for citing the work of others (see "Bryn Mawr Commencement Address," in Dancing at the Edge of the World, New York, Grove, 1989). Nonetheless, we expect you to do as faculty do when using the work of others.
References
Sharon Myers' article, "Questioning author(ity): ESL/EFL, science, and teaching about plagiarism," Teaching English as a Second Language Journal 3 (March 1998).
Texas Tech University's writing list had a discussion about Western notions of original work and ownership in February 1997.
Cal State University Los Angeles' online plagiarism pamphlet briefly discusses cultural differences in intellectual ownership.
Comment on plagiarism and cultural differences for international students on Ohio State University discussion board
Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin) explains that manners is the set of arbitrary rules each culture creates to maintain civility. Almost any of her books (like my favorite, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, reissued in 1997 by Budget Book Service) explains that manners is something we have to learn. No one is born with manners. Similarly, no one is born knowing the conventions of academe.
(Judith Martin's style has influenced this tutorial in a few places, such as my response to claims that a prior teacher taught her or his students to plagiarize. She is, like others who have helped me directly or indirectly, not responsible for my work.)
Second Thought/Exercise for the Reader
When I first drafted this page, I thought that Le Guin's commencement address at Bryn Mawr College was in her The Language of the Night (HarperCollins, 1992), and I put that reference up in the paragraph above, by mistake. Was that plagiarism?