Abstract
Plagiarism has long been a concern and topic of conversation in higher education, but since the technological boom of the internet during the 1990’s, the concern of student plagiarism among instructors has grown exponentially. Plagiarism detection services (PDS) are a newer type of technology widely used in academic institutions, which promises to address these concerns. However, leading experts in the field, such as the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the largest professional researching and teaching composition organization, are questioning the ethical use of PDS, which they deem as invasive systems and poor pedagogical practice that infringes on students’ privacy and creates an atmosphere of mistrust within the classroom. Clearly, there appears to be a gap in effective communication between the teachers and administrators who are choosing to use this type of software and the experts in the field who would be most knowledgeable about its appropriateness. How are PDS companies able be rhetorically effective with their audiences when the most esteemed writing experts in the discipline have released strong calls to reject the practice? To better explore this question, I utilized Toulmin’s method to conduct rhetorical analysis of a key document from each side of the debate, a position statement from the CCCC and a rebuttal from Turnitin. Findings showed that while the commercial PDS company gave no backing to their arguments, both sides engaged in effective rhetoric for their potential target audiences. These conclusions suggest writing experts should broaden their target audiences to include k-12 teachers and parents of students in future messages.