Apparently, from the legal stand, there's a fine line between theft and appropriation, but the problem is, nobody knows where one ends and the other one begins. A few months ago a well known the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd became a headline news, because she copied a paragraph from an article published on-line by Josh Marshall, one of the sharpest bloggers around and pasted it without any changes, word for word into one of her columns. Clearly, on her part this was nothing but a mix of a laziness, arrogance and stupidity. She underestimated intelligence of her readers a critics, assuming nobody would notice. Surely, a writer of her format, so popular, well connected and VERY generously paid must be aware she's under the scrutiny all the time and she can never get away with anything like this. If she made just a little tiny effort and simply attributed those statements she borrowed to their original source, there would be no issue and therefore nothing to discuss. This way however, she found herself in a hot water for nothing and the whole thing got quickly overblown out of the proportions. She was called a fraud and a looser, some people demanded her immediate resignation, others asked for an apology, while some folks were ready to forgive her under the condition, she'll be using only "her own words" from now on.
Wait a minute! Her own words? Is there a such thing? Doesn't everybody use the same words as the other people do? Granted, the utilized vocabulary vary from person to person, for instance, a farmer may not need to know more than 500 or 600 words to carry on throughout his whole life, but not so a novelist or a scholar. Nevertheless, either one of them goes to the BAKERY to buy a loaf of BREAD and asks for a glass of WATER when they're THIRSTY. Nobody's got "their own words" for any of these things and if they had, they wouldn't be too much help within the context of their conversations.
From our earliest age, as soon as we start talking, all we do is copy what we hear around us. What other options do we have? We don't understand the word's meaning and we have no clue, how to construct the sentences. So - does it mean by using our parents language and thoughts we're acting dishonestly and committing an academic fraud? After all, we are stealing their intellectual properties and representing them as our own. Or are we? Just as the count of words in the English dictionary, that's the million dollars question.
And as for me - even right now, when I express my thoughts and it feels so strongly, these are all my ideas, I know better than that. Knowingly or unintentionally, I may be using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of the others. Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't. However, I can make one claim for a certainty - in my daily communication I NEVER opt to use my own words. Instead, I'd rather resort to the commonly accepted vocables from the English dictionary, the ones everyone else knows and understands their meaning. If it be to the contrary, I believe, my expressions would certainly come to nought. But hey! Why don't I try to close my meditation using MY OWN WORDS:
"Loofr nacous rauqsa adiloh bdiluig!!!"
Comprehend? Didn't think so... and neither do I.................... ((((:
M.
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