16.2: Citation as a Rhetorical Act

Strict attribution of sources has not always been necessary, and indeedn in many cultures and contexts, it is still not (necessarily) required. Ancient texts often did not follow any formal rules of attribution, since it was assumed that the audience would already be familiar with the body of scholarly work. I have also heard (somewhere) that in Chinese culture, the words of others are used without attribution as a way of honoring those whose words were considered so important that they needed no attribution (1). That is, it would insult the reader to tell him or her where a quotation was from as much as it would insult an author to assume that his or her words would not be recognized by a reader without such attribution.

In most Western cultures, the invention of the printing press is often cited as an important turning point, especially in discussions of citation and intellectual property. For one thing, the printing press allowed for texts to extend in both time and space in ways that oral texts could not. Even the elaborately illuminated and hand-copied-bymonks texts were prohibitively expensive and jealously guarded so that it could safely be assumed that the audience for these works would be limited. However, the printing press (eventually) allowed for cheaper yet supposedly perfect copies, making knowledge—or at least making printed works purporting to be knowledge—more readily available to the general public. And, of course, free public education extended that general reading public to, well, anyone who wanted to take the time to read a given work. Thus, it could no longer be assumed that readers would be familiar with the body of work referenced by an author.

Today, a scientific publication is easily recognized by its footnotes,
endnotes and references to other scientific articles or
books. This is one of the features which make scientific texts
so different from a journalist’s story or a novel. A scientist
seems to be—at least in his [or her] professional life—an annoyingly
precise person, whose claims are painstakingly documented.
(Wouters 2)

Outside of academia, of course, citation practices aren’t always so formal. Newspapers and magazine articles do not usually include a list of works cited or references after all. But they do (usually) cite their sources. The Associated Press allows use of anonymous sources only under condition that

1. The material is information and not opinion or speculation,
and is vital to the news report.
2. The information is not available except under the conditions of
anonymity imposed by the source.
3. The source is reliable, and in a position to have accurate information.
(APME)

Of course, not all news organizations are as careful about their use of sources. Nonetheless, even tabloids often attempt to present information in such a way as to appear credible. For example, an article on UFOs in The Sun, a British tabloid known for sensationalist reporting, does identify its source even if the claims presented may be questionable according to scientific standards: “Dr. Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into us above Siberia on June 30, 1908” (Watson). But what does an average reader know about Dr. Labvin’s credentials? Would it matter if his doctorate is in UFOlogy from the University of Mars or if, instead, he holds a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT? And what about the foundation over which he presides? (2) What do we know about it? Well, I think you get my point!

A tongue-in-cheek example of the importance of evaluating the possible biases of one’s sources can be seen in the movie trailer advertising the 1959 Peter Sellers film, The Mouse that Roared (TCM). “Here’s what some of the world’s keenest and most objective minds have said about The Mouse that Roared,” the advertisement proudly exclaims:

“Could not be improved upon!”
—The Producer

“Completely delightful!”
—The Director

“The title role is exquisitely played!”
—The Mouse

Even if we agree that the Mouse’s acting was superb, we probably wouldn’t want to cite the Mouse as saying so!

Television commercials and magazine advertisements may include what is often termed fine print to qualify the claims they make. One mouthwash claims to be the “#1 Dentist Recommended Brand” but with an asterisked note that modifies the claim: it is the number one brand “among fluoride mouth rinses” (ACT). The ad also includes a note identifying a study to support its claim (and, in the case of this online ad, a link to the study itself). Of course, not all research studies are equal. Publication information is essential to aid scholars in determining the authority of a given source: Where was the study published? Was it a scholarly journal or a book published by a university press? If not, did it undergo peer review? Scholarly and professional journals in the field may agree—or not—with the results of such commissioned studies. Thus, it is essential to conduct further research to determine the credibility of such sources before relying on them to make an effective argument. (For more information on evaluating sources, see “Evaluating Sources of Information” at http://owl.english. purdue.edu/owl/resource/553/01/).

Academic writers, in other words, are held to the highest standards of reliability for sources. Thus, academic citation formats include information that will not only help a reader to locate a given source and give credit to others for their work, but that will also help a reader to determine a source’s credibility, for example, by identifying authorship and/or publication information. However, just as the printing press made it necessary to develop ways to cite information for unfamiliar readers, the advent of new media has made it necessary to develop new ways to cite them. That is, scholars nowadays may rely equally (or even more) on types of resources that quite simply didn’t exist a century—or even a decade—ago.