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The concept of plagiarism, as used both in considerations of academic writing and in international negotiations over intellectual copyright, assumes a model of communication based on autonomous, rational, individuals who behave as originators of their own discourses. But studies of communication, beginning with Goffman's concepts of production format and footing -and also including the concepts of enactment, social role, face, politeness pragmatics, metaphors of self and communication, and innatist/social concepts of knowledge -indicate that such a unified, autonomous, and original communicative identity presupposes an oversimplified model of communication, centrally based in the ideology of the rational, autonomous individual which has been dominant in Europe since the Enlightenment. The concept of plagiarism masks the assertion of this ideological position. (Plagiarism, ideology, identity, intercultural discourse) Intellectual copyright is a term which has been in the news for years. International negotiations over this concept cover everything from scholarly works to brand names of products and pornographic videos. Scholars and teachers have a primary interest in questions of intellectual copyright -both in regard to our own writing, and as an aspect of teaching expected forms of attribution to our students. One suspects that pornography and brand names are somewhat more central to the lawyers who participate in international negotiations; nevertheless attribution of authorship in academic writing remains a perennial problem in writing, and crosses lines of cultural identity.Treatments of academic plagiarism tend to presuppose a common ideological ground in the creative, original, individual who, as an autonomous scholar, presents his/her work to the public in his/her own name. Thus the issues raised in The Chronicle of Higher Education concerning a historian's originality (Magner 1993a,b) focus directly on the establishment of the facts

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