Did Melania Trump really plagiarise that speech?

Yeah, she totally did. But how can you tell if someone is copying someone else’s work? How do plagiarism checkers work? And can you beat them?

Linguist Daniel Midgley shows his work on this episode of Talk the Talk.


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Promo

Promo with Kylie Sturgess, 2016-07-26: Plagiarism

Cutting Room Floor

Cutting Room Floor 254: Plagiarism

Sick day! Ben and Kylie are the walking wounded. Not even Daniel’s robust health or sage advice is enough to perk them up. Who’s got the better cold?

But then we swap student plagiarism stories, and we find out the most common 5-grams in the Corpus of Contemporary English.


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Show notes

Authorities fry hard to fix Korean menus lost in translation http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2016/07/116_209371.html

Korea to fix mistranslations on English menu http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/culture/2016/07/135_209516.html

Kylie’s post on signs on the Sydney foreshore https://www.facebook.com/rtrfmtalkthetalk/posts/1364794563547332

Melania Trump speech appears to plagiarize Michelle Obama
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/288274-melania-trump-speech-plagiarized-paragraph-from-michelle-obamas-2008

Team Trump shows how not to respond to a controversy
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/team-trump-shows-how-not-respond-controversy

Trump campaign rolls out brand new plagiarism explanation
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-campaign-rolls-out-brand-new-plagiarism-explanation

So that’s pretty blatant, right? pic.twitter.com/EPnHME7afV

— Mike Hearn (@mikehearn) 19 July 2016

Plagiarism? “Not when 93% of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama’s speech.” –@GovChristie https://t.co/C280sUME33 — TODAY (@TODAYshow) 19 July 2016

Where Does “Your Word Is Your Bond” Come From, and Why Did Melania Steal It? http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/07/19/your_word_is_your_bond_history_and_origins_from_matthew_to_hip_hop.html

Anne Charity Hudley’s Facebook post: “Your word is your bond” https://www.facebook.com/AnneHarperCharityHudley/posts/10100909532616217?pnref=story

Here’s Why Some People Believe Melania Trump’s Speechwriter Doesn’t Really Exist http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/heres-why-some-people-believe-melania-trumps-speechwriter-doesnt-really-exist.html

Yes, Melania Speech Fall Woman Meredith McIver Is Real. Here’s Proof. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/20/yes_meredith_mciver_is_a_real_person_here_s_proof.html

Text: Remarks by First Lady Laura Bush to the Republican National Convention http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50438-2004Aug31.html

Melania Trump: Astrophysicist calculates there was one in 87 billion chance speech was not plagiarised
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-20/maths-on-melania-trump-speech/7643658

Melania Trump speech: The odds of a word match
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/19/melania-trump-speech-the-odds-of-a-word-match.html

Weird and Funny Novelty Bets offered by William Hill and Notable Payouts
http://www.soccerwidow.com/football-gambling/betting-knowledge/betting-advice/bookmakers/weird-and-funny-novelty-bets-offered-by-william-hill-and-notable-payouts/

N-grams data: Corpus of Contemporary American English
http://www.ngrams.info/download_coca.asp

Did Melania Trump Rickroll in her Republican convention speech? http://www.rappler.com/entertainment/news/140321-melania-trump-rickroll-republican-convention-speech

Nowhere to Hide: Finding Plagiarized Documents Based on Sentence Similarity (PDF) http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=facpub

Turnitoff – Defeating Plagiarism Detection Systems (PDF) http://www.cs.surrey.ac.uk/BIMA/People/L.Gillam/downloads/publications/HEA-ICS_turnitoff.pdf

Plagiarism Detection across Distant Language Pairs (PDF)
http://mt-archive.info/Coling-2010-Barron.pdf

Melania Trump And The Age Of Borrowed Language http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodgerdeanduncan/2016/07/20/melania-trump-and-the-age-of-borrowed-language/

Stop referring to Pokémon Go as augmented reality
http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/14/stop-referring-to-pokemon-go-as-augmented-reality/

L. Frank Baum envisioned AR glasses: Augmented reality history, background and philosophy https://wiki.mq.edu.au/display/ar/Augmented+reality+history,+background+and+philosophy

Sorry AP, there is an accent mark in Pokémon
http://mashable.com/2016/07/12/pokemon-spelling-ap-style/

What’s that é doing in Pokémon? Wiktionary: saké
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saké

There May Be Four Region Exclusive Pokemon in ‘Pokemon GO’ http://toucharcade.com/2016/07/22/pokemon-go-exclusives/

#115: Kangashkan
http://pokedream.com/pokedex/pokemon/kangaskhan

The Straight Dope: Did humans descend from “aquatic apes”?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1991/did-humans-descend-from-aquatic-apes


Image credit: http://newscurry.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/melania-michelle-800.jpg


Transcript

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