Personas of plagiarism: the construction of the 'plagiarist' in Australian university subreddits

Plagiarism is a central concern of universities, students, and researchers. Despite this, investigations into student perspectives of plagiarism remain relatively rare in the literature. This paper draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics to analyze the language used to describe “the plagiarist” in Australian university subreddit discussions. The findings reveal that the plagiarist is consistently construed as a criminal, and that this categorization could be further analyzed into specific sub-types, or personas. Implications for pedagogy include the need to carefully consider responses to plagiarism against the different personas. Implications for theory and research include the potential for dialogue between Linguistics, Education, and Criminology in order to further explore the connection between the plagiarist and the criminal.