Borrowed Words

Sunday, 13 July 2014

DVPOs: Domestic Violence Protection Orders

On Monday, 30th June 2014, Barry Coppinger Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland (PCC), along with the PCCs for Durham and Northumbria, launched a new power to help save victims of domestic violence.

The strategy is well worth studying as is the report of the pilot which gave rise to the new Domestic Violence Protection Orders (DVPO)

The Gazette reported the launch on Tuesday, 1st July 2014.

On Saturday, 5th July 2014, The Gazette's letters page contained the following letter:

"Understandings led to changes:

The Gazette article (01.07.14) Domestic Violence Protection Orders (DVPOs) has to be welcomed. It was not until the feminist movement of the 1960s/70s that public interest in "domestic violence" piqued.

The recent increase in the recognition of the problem by state agencies has arisen from the action of the "woman's movement", and particularly, "woman's aid".

Having looked at the historical recognition of "domestic violence", it seems appropriate to evaluate and conclude that in the past 20 years, progress in dealing with "domestic violence" victims has been made.

Since the 1970s woman's organisations have called for the criminalisation of "domestic violence". This campaign became a strategy, a successful one in many respects: in that it led to the seriousness of the problem of "domestic violence" being recognised, and that it also promoted policy development.

Any understanding of a social problem must include a consideration of history, cultural beliefs and ideals. These understandings have led to the changes that have been made through the criminal justice system and social policy, which have helped deal with "domestic violence" victims"

The letter was in the name of: Alison Huggan, Coulby Newham.

Leaving aside the superfluous use of quotation marks around each instance of domestic violence and the reference to woman's movement and woman's aid when it clearly should be women's (which does not need to be contained within quotation marks either), the letter is most notable for its curious use of the word piqued.

I shall examine the word piqued and its usage in my next post.

Sunday, 13 July 2014

Piqued, peaked or peeked?

"It was not until the feminist movement of the 1960s/70s that public interest in "domestic violence" piqued."

wrote Alison Huggan in her letter to The Gazette (as quoted in my previous post) and she cannot have been using any of Wikipedia's uses of the word nor, presumably, did she intend it to be interpreted as a high point (peak) or a glimpse (peek).

A succinct explanation is here and so the obvious and only sensible usage (from a Google search for the word piqued) is in the definition that it means:

to stimulate (interest or curiousity) as in "you have piqued my curiosity about the man" or "my curiosity was piqued".

Note that piqued is only used in the past tense or as a past participle.

So Alison is to be congratulated on her vocabulary and on choosing an appropriate word which not many others would have even known about, albeit that she got the tense completely wrong in her usage.

The use of piqued is so obscure that several people have assured me that it was a mistake and that the correct word to use should have been peaked but they are wrong and Alison is right.

I am willing to bet that a miniscule minority of people in Cleveland would have known the usage of piqued and that even fewer would have had the confidence to use the word.

So, my hat goes off to Alison ... or does it?

Methinks this merits further investigation.

Sunday, 13 July 2014

Review of Domestic Violence Policies in England and Wales

In 2011 The School of Social Work, Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences 
Kingston University and St George’s, University of London issued a Review of Domestic Violence Policies in England & Wales produced by Anna Matczak, Eleni Hatzidimitriadou & Jane Lindsay.

It is quite a considered, comprehensive document and well worth reading.

It comes with the proviso, clearly stated on the first page:

"To be cited as follows: Matczak, A., Hatzidimitriadou, E., and Lindsay, J. (2011). Review of Domestic Violence policies in England and Wales. London: Kingston University and St George‘s, University of London. ISBN: 978-0-9558329-7-0"

 as they, collectively, presumably own the copyright.

A perusal of the review discovers the following sentence on page 21:

"Since the 1970s women‘s organisations have called for criminalisation of domestic violence. This campaign became a strategy, a successful one in many respects (Hester, 2005) in that it led the seriousness of problem of domestic violence being recognised and promoted policy development (Radford & Gill, 2006)."

It is noticeable that the sources for this statement are correctly attributed as 'Hester, 2005' and 'Radford & Gill, 2006'. This is no more than one would expect from an academic review. Superfluous quotation marks are, however, absent but the correct usage of 'women's organisations' is also noted.

Just a minute. This rings a bell surely. Let's go back to the letter in The Gazette. There we find the following sentence:

"Since the 1970s woman's organisations have called for the criminalisation of "domestic violence". This campaign became a strategy, a successful one in many respects: in that it led to the seriousness of the problem of "domestic violence" being recognised, and that it also promoted policy development."

Hang on. I'm finding it hard to spot the differences here. Aside from the lack of citations there is only the error of using the singular 'woman's' instead of the plural 'women's' and if it was 'woman's organisations' which woman was it that had all of those organisations?

It would take an awful lot of monkeys, on an equivalent number of typewriters, an inordinate length of time to come up with that duplication. But it is just possible - isn't it?

Then there is the matter of the extra colon and the missing 'to' & 'the' ...

Monday, 14 July 2014

Audi Alteram Partem

Now I'm no legal expert, criminal or otherwise, but it strikes me that there must be an explanation to the coincidental sentences in the previous post.

I won't speculate but there must be an explanation.

So I offer to Alison Huggan the right of reply and the opportunity to explain.

If she wants to take advantage of this opportunity then all she has to do is post a comment below and I will publish her explanation in its entirety on this blog. I have already informed her, by way of twitter, of this offer.

For now I shall desist from alluding to her until she responds or it becomes obvious that she is not going to respond.

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Why Write Your Own Essay?

... when you can go to an interesting web site called:

http://www.ukessays.com/

They claim to be:

"The original provider of custom written academic work"

and their proud boast is that:

"Every year we deliver over 10,000 custom written pieces of work to students just like yourself who are looking for a little extra help to boost their grade. With the cost of university study increasing in the UK we know how important it is to make the most of your studies and get the grade you need to kick-start your career.Our passionate team is dedicated to improving your university learning experience by helping you achieve more with your essays, dissertations and coursework. We offer a wide range of services including our premier custom essay and dissertation writing services, a comprehensive marking service and a wide variety of other services to help you succeed in your studies."

Is using an Essay Writing Service cheating? - that's a question you may well ask yourself and, fortunately ukessays.com provide us with their answers, indeed they devote a page to addressing the matter.

However their assurances as to the legality of their service comes with the following caveat:

"(Is using custom essay writing ever cheating?) Yes, if you try to pretend that the work is your own, but that is also true if (without a correct reference) you copy from, or paraphrase, a textbook or get a friend to write for you (which often happens)."

Their prices start at £100 but I would imagine the average price to be well in excess of that and beyond the reach of most students. Fortunately they also have a free repository of "over 3000,000 free essays" but they remind anyone who may use any of the free essays to reference them correctly to www.ukessays.com.

It might be useful to state that I do not know of anyone who has used any of these services and also that I have no intention of accusing anyone of using these services.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

The Denouement?

"It was not until the feminist movement of the 1960s/70s that public interest in "domestic violence" piqued"

wrote Alison Huggan in her letter to The Gazette which was published on Saturday, July 5th 2014. Where did she get her inspiration from?

Well back in 1982 the South End Press in Boston published 'Women and male violence: The visions and struggles of the battered women's movement' by S. Schechter.

This work was cited by Fran S. Danis, in 'The criminalization of domestic violence: What social workers need to know' published by Social Work on April 1, 2003.

Then an unknown author wrote an essay which contained the following sentence:

"Not until the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s was public interest in domestic violence piqued (Danis, 2003, citing Schechter, 1982)."

Note that evidence is given for the statement by way of correctly attributing the original sources and also that 'piqued' is used in the correct tense within the context of the sentence. Minor points maybe but important nevertheless.

Anyway, our old friend 'piqued' makes a welcome return and the only differences between the sentences are that Alison omits 'late' and substitutes 'that' with 'was'.

But where is the new essay from?

Let's go back to ukessays.com and there, amongst the free Social Work Essays is one about Domestic Violence and the second paragraph of the third section (Historical Evolution ...) contains the very sentence:

"Not until the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s was public interest in domestic violence piqued (Danis, 2003, citing Schechter, 1982)."

So in Alison's letter there are now two instances of her making statements which are, clearly, the words of others. There are no attempts to reference or cite the original sources.

In stark terms a third of Alison's letter constitutes the words and opinions of others. Can we rely on the remaining two thirds?

Time for someone to put the record straight?

Saturday, 26 July 2014

Postscript to Plagiarism

Putting the Record Straight

At last Alison Huggan has expanded on, if not entirely explained, her copying of the words of others for inclusion in her letter to The Gazette.

Whilst she was busy making false and baseless allegations in the comments section of a local parliamentery candidate's Facebook page a certain Al Mitchel took her to task:

"Al Mitchell: Alison, your letter was copied word for word from other people's work, that's a fact! It was your work only in the sense that you posted the letter, and it's dishonest of you to claim otherwise. Ask questions by all means, and I congratulate you on your bedroom tax work, but you've been used to attack the wrong target here."

Alison wasn't slow in responding:

"Alison Huggan: I beg to differ, Mr Mitchell, that work was all my own, given the fact my field is Criminology. You really must not listen, to others, Snowdon in fact. Since when did knowledge have to be referenced in a letter, feel free to ask me any time if my letters I write, their us (sic) more to come."

My reading of 'Since when did knowledge have to be referenced in a letter' is that she now accepts that those were not her words but she claims there was no need to cite her sources. The answer to 'since when did knowledge have to be referenced' is that the words always have to be referenced if they are not your own. It is rather basic, especially in journalism and academia.

It's still plagiarism however, although a plea of culpable ignorance seems to have been entered.