Pragmatic Plagiarism: Authorship, Profit, and Power by Marilyn Randall (review)

344 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Part 2 (fourteen chapters) is devoted to >Architectures and Experiences.= The focus here is more on the implementation side of designing a multimodal dialogue system than on the theory, although some fundamental questions are raised, guidelines provided, and positions stated. Chapter 18, for instance, proposes that a taxonomical approach towards user behaviour is useful in facilitating efficient and smooth HCI. Chapter 23 emphasizes that language is essentially multimodal and that the study of integrated dialogues should be central to the attempt to understand how human communication and cognition work. In addition, it is pointed out that computational multimodal dialogue opens new possibilities that are not granted in natural circumstances and this merits investigation. I believe that although the implementations discussed in the book may be outdated today, this does not discredit the fundamentals presented throughout. This multidisciplinary field is still in its infancy and, like a human infant, it is fascinating and full of potential. The papers in the book are well-written and the book itself is designed to be self-sufficient; it is certain to prove useful for anybody interested in any aspect of dialogue, communication, HCI and AI B novice and veteran alike. (MOHAMMAD HAJIABDOLHOSSEINI ) Marilyn Randall. Pragmatic Plagiarism: Authorship, Profit, and Power University of Toronto Press. xviii, 322. $60.00 >To steal a hint was never known, / But what he writ was all his own.= This couplet was first recorded in Denham=s 1667 elegy for Cowley. A generation later, the lines appeared verbatim yet without attribution in Swift=s verses on his own death; in the poem, they are spoken in praise of Swift by an >impartial= assessor of the poet=s achievements. Scholars assume Swift knew the lines were Denham=s. Swift, they say, was making a joke, ironically plagiarizing a claim for originality in order to deflate the pretensions of authorship. Yet why do scholars believe that Swift was playing a game and not actually committing theft? Since nothing in the lines indicates an intent to deceive or even an awareness of a prior original, the argument could be made that what seems a case of mock-plagiarism is simply an interpretation of the lines, one that=s credible only because it is accepted within the academy. This interpretive community, the argument goes, thinks Swift is too good an author to be ignorant or fraudulent and, accordingly and in furtherance of its own interests, takes seriously only those interpretations which confirm its view of Swift as a supreme ironist. This is essentially the argument that Marilyn Randall presents in her study of what she calls the >discursive construction and effects= of literary plagiarism. Plagiarism, she contends, >is in the eye of the beholder=: the words and ideas of one work may echo those of an earlier one, but it=s up to humanities 345 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 an interpretive community to decide whether such repetition constitutes theft, allusion, negligence, homage, imitation, or unoriginality. By upholding or dismissing charges of plagiarism, the literary institution determines what qualifies as literature and who can be an author, and in so doing works to guard its borders against upstarts who threaten its authority. Quarrels over plagiarism, Randall proposes, are contests for legitimacy, but, as only the institution has the power to grant legitimacy, it can never lose. Randall thus uses Foucault and Bourdieu to describe the cultural functions served by the idea of plagiarism, which helps to make the line between art and non-art seem a matter of ethics rather than hegemonic control. Unlike previous accounts of the topic, Randall=s deals not with specific findings of theft or the psychology of plagiarists. Instead, she examines a number of critical controversies, mainly French and AngloAmerican disputes from the past two centuries, for what they reveal about the interests and beliefs of the combatants, the metaphors used to characterize acts of plagiarism, and the appropriative strategies of postmodern authors seeking to challenge the cult of originality. Randall=s argument is clear and compelling, but it reads like a position paper that has been...