A Cultural Understanding of Ownership of Texts and Academic Integrity
Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
The production of texts in alignment with the principles of academic integrity hinges on a cultural understanding of ownership of written texts. Considering that writing involves a variety of skills that range from a writer’s cognition, language, and creativity, it is widely accepted that generating a text is a complex process. When culture is considered in the mix, this process becomes even more challenging and difficult to tease apart. Indeed, a cultural understanding of text production makes for a hotly debated issue due to a lack of an all-encompassing and broadly accepted conceptualization of culture. And yet, an understanding of ownership of text in cultural milieus is crucial in the context of teaching and learning of writing. In particular, in post-secondary academic settings where students are expected to weave intertextual references into the texts that they produce to demonstrate the depth and breadth of their knowledge on a given topic, a cultural understanding of textual ownership becomes vitally important. Considering the extent of intercultural exchanges in academic institutions, especially in post-secondary contexts where students with a variety of sociocultural and academic backgrounds from all around the world assemble to learn and engage in scholarship, the importance of a cultural understanding of ownership of text cannot be overemphasized. This is to ensure that knowledge acquisition toward writing occurs with a sense of clarity of purpose and in alignment with academic norms. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to unpack the notion of culture as it relates to writing with a focus on ownership of text and present a few pedagogical strategies that will help orientate readers toward this important aspect of academic writing skill development.
In what follows, first, I situate the notion of culture in the context of writing with a particular emphasis on second language (L2) writing. Next, I discuss the culture framework conceptualized by Flowerdew and Miller (1995), followed by some activities and strategies to enact this framework in the classroom as a way to broaden our perspectives on a cultural understanding of ownership of written texts.
