Plágio : um problema forense

Abstract

Over the last decades, plagiarism has been seen as a serious problem in social and professional settings alike, from the academy to the legal community, with serious consequences. It is thus paramount to discuss the role played by forensic linguistics in these cases. This article begins with a discussion of plagiarism, in general, and academic plagiarism, in particular. It takes the UK as an example to debate the relevance of plagiarism policies and their enforcement in Brazil and in Portugal and the role traditionally played by forensic linguistics in detecting plagiarism. The article lists some of the contributions of this eld of linguistics for plagiarism analysis and detection, and then discusses the role of forensic linguistics in the analysis of plagiarism claims. Some of the linguistic markers that are most relevant when detecting and analysing plagiarism are identi ed, based on real cases. The article concludes with a discussion of the multidisciplinarity of forensic linguistics, to argue that forensic linguistic analysis of instances of plagiarism should go beyond the textual comparison and the explanation of the results thereof to enable a multidisciplinary interpretation of those results.