Every day we are faced
with situations that are a lot more serious than the next. There are countless
“gray areas” in life that may be a little difficult for us to comment on with a
straight forward and honest answer. We all have different ways in which we
handle discussing these tough topics. Everyone has their own tactic, (sometimes
unknowingly) unique to their language that helps them get through some of the
more uncomfortable conversations they may find themselves in. In an interview
between myself, B, and my participant, J, I was able to see some of his tactics
in getting around the more challenging questions that came along with my
interview.
In my interview, I asked a series of questions in hopes
to find out what students really
think about plagiarism. My participant, J, was very honest with his answers,
even when it came to the questions that revealed a bit more of his academic
character. Or was he? I began to notice a pattern of laughter in his more
detailed answers to some of my most serious questions. After analyzing my
interview transcript, a total of five times was recorded in correlation to a
serious question and some giggles within the answer I received. I want to focus
on my participant’s use of laughter in his language and how I believe it is
used to make light of a topic far from comical.
J and I dove right into the interview after some very
brief small talk. When asked about his overall writing process, J was very
stern in his answer. There was no hesitation as he explained his usual sequence
of planning. I followed up by asking him when he thinks it’s a good idea to
paraphrase. This is where the pattern begins. The beginning of J’s answer to
that was, “I actually paraphrase a lot. I think it's always a good time for paraphrasing!
(laughs)” Here, J’s laugh
indicated hesitation in his answer. What
was so funny about what he just said? The laugh was more nervous than of
something humorous. Culturally, paraphrasing is one of those “gray areas” I
mentioned earlier. The use of his laughter at this very moment led me to
believe J was a bit nervous and even unsure of whether his answer was
culturally acceptable or not. So to make light of the situation, a little
chuckle was inserted. I smiled, he continued on to say, “It definitely helps to add in some extra info to your paper
instead of just your own made up ideas, and I think it helps because it makes
your paper look a lot more accurate.” The use
of the word “look” also stood out to me. By using the word “look”, J is giving
the impression that paraphrasing helps to mask
the body of a paper by giving it a better appearance.
The interview continued
to flow and J told me how he cites some of his sources. After explaining his
logic for citing some things and leaving out others, I asked him how he avoids
plagiarism altogether. His answer started with, “Well, I never
copy and paste. (laughs)” Here I noticed the pattern of
laughter continuing on. It is very common throughout the student culture to
believe that as long as you’re not copying material word for word, plagiarism
isn’t being committed. This belief is controversial, as not copying word for
word would lead to paraphrasing. J’s use of laughter after that statement
indicates that he doesn’t fully believe himself and it was almost funny to him.
The word “well” also stood out to me. The use of “well” in this sentence, gives
the impression that not copy and pasting was good enough, in terms of not committing plagiarism.
It wasn’t long before the pattern of laughter continued
to develop, J gave me his definition of plagiarism and I proceeded to ask him
one of the core questions for my interview. I asked him if he thought his peers
used the internet as a crutch to help develop their ideas when writing. J’s
answer started off with him sounding very sure of himself, “Yeah, for sure” was
the first sentence he used. It was short and sweet, and straight to the point
with no hesitation in his voice. J told me that a lot of students like to use
websites that offer things like message boards and chat rooms to get ideas from
others, live and online. Then he said, “Message boards
are a great place for this, or even yahoo answers or just some sites that
professors don't really like us using (giggles).” J’s use of laughter here was a bit different
from his use of laughter in the previous excerpts. This time, the laughter used
in his language did not seem to come from nervousness, or to be cunning, but he
just didn’t seem to take the idea too seriously. By saying “or just some sites that professors don't really like us using”
J creates a genre of sites that professors prefer their students not use for
reliable information. Laughing afterwards, shows he doesn’t take that genre
seriously, and also implies that students may just use them anyway.
J uses laughter to give the feel of the situation at hand
a little twist twice more. I asked him if he’d ever add the sites “professors
don’t really like us to use” to his works cited page. J said, “yeah these I’d just leave those out (laughs). I feel like
once a professor sees those names on a paper, it's automatically trash.” Not
only does his laughter indicate that he knows leaving these sites out
contribute to committing plagiarism, but the sentence that follows helps to
confirm this belief. J “feels” that these sites will discredit his work. The
word “trash” is a strong one because no student wants to consider their work as
garbage. Knowing that his efforts may be overlooked due to the name of a site,
and not wanting his work to be “trash”, he deliberately leaves those sites out
of his paper and knows this is a part
of plagiarism. That’s why he laughs at the thought of just leaving them out.
This sets the tone for J’s final outburst of laughter. I
finally asked J if he did this because he wanted to avoid embarrassment, his
response to that was, “Ummmm... It's not really about
being embarrassed; I just wouldn't want to do it over because the professor
thinks the info is useless. But when they don't know I get the grade. (laughs)”
It
is clear that in the end, J’s laughter derives from being able to get one over
on his professor and get his grade without getting caught for plagiarism. Of
course, he did not say this so bluntly. But the use of laughter in his language
helps to mask this serious issue into one that isn’t such a big deal.
I don’t think J realized what he was doing, as he was
doing it. Our interview flowed very naturally. Laughter was such a strong
pattern and it was used in a series of ways. It was used in conjunction with
nervousness. It was used unknowingly when he didn’t take things serious. And it
was used as almost a relief when he knew he was getting away with something
that could possibly hurt his entire college career.
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