Redefining Plagiarism: Martin Luther King's Use Of An Oral Tradition

The two articles “A Plagiarism Pentimento” and “Redefining Plagiarism: Martin Luther King’s Use of an Oral Tradition” by Rebecca Moore Howard and Keith D. Miller discusses exclusively about plagiarism. While as Miller’s article mainly focuses on oral plagiarism, Howard’s article focuses on both oral and written plagiarism while giving more emphasis on the written plagiarism. According to Hacker in Howard’s article, plagiarism can be defined in two ways. First, plagiarism can be defined as the act of using another person’s ideas or information without mention the source. Secondly, it can be defined as the act of paraphrasing closely word from a source without using quotation marks to show that the words belongs to another person even though
He give an example of a sermon which had a similar title with one of Martin Luther speeches which is a form of plagiarism. Moreover, he states that scholars editing Martin Luther’s graduate and doctoral dissertation papers at Stanford University realized that Luther King used repeated appropriation language and unacknowledged sources. However, Luther’s academic discourse was far much outweighed by his public borrowed language which raised more issues about copyright and plagiarism. Miller stated that Luther may have learnt the act of borrowing words from his father, colleges, older member of the church as well as his mentors. This is evident in how folk preachers who were not properly trained would exchange sermons which is legally
He give an illustration of how he gives his students a chapter to read then tell the students what they have understood from what they have read. He acts as the secretary by writing on the board and the whole class helps in the recollections. We that they make a complete summary of the chapter and it is from there that they discover that the part that the students forget happens to be the hardest part of the chapter. He therefore argues that for students to avoid plagiarism, they have to read their sources first then take their time before embarking on writing their summary for that will enable them to be original in what they write instead of just coping