A Forensic Stylistic Analysis: The Plagiarism Identification of Margaret Canby’s Short Story “The Frost Fairies” in Helen Keller’s Short Story “The Frost King”

Abstract

This study aims to recognize the differences, similarities, and the types of plagiarism found in short story using forensic stylistic approach. Identifying plagiarism between two literary works requires a multi-dimensional analysis beyond just comparing and examining at only one or two levels. This study focuses on several levels, which are lexical, grammatical, figure of speech, and context and cohesion. The objects of this study are short stories from Margaret Canby “The Frost Fairies” and Helen Keller “The Frost King”. Each of the levels shows specific prove of plagiarism which was done by Helen Keller towards Margaret Canby. This study employed a qualitative method with content analysis as the research design and the words and sentences as the data. This study shows the differences are exist in every levels, with lexical differences being the dominant. Furthermore, the similarities are also found in every levels with context and cohesion similarities being the dominant. By initially recognizing the differences and similarities, the types of plagiarism can be also identified.