Distortion of Historical Facts

History stands on facts and its interpretations. It is generally considered that ‘all facts are constructed facts’. This problem with the historical facts opens the possibility of distortion of historical facts for promoting specific ideologies and agendas. This can be achieved by creating events that did not happen, altering events that did happen, or omitting events altogether. Over time, knowledge of historical truth will die with those who lived or witnessed it, and the alternate version will be universally accepted as true.

The distortions of historical facts could be due to the following factors:

• Historians have no direct contact with the events that he/she is dealing with
• Loss of records and archaeological evidence
• Politically and religiously motivated elements
• Historiography handled by non-professional and non-academic groups
• Ultra-Nationalism
• Cultural imperialism

Distorting history is an effective method of erasing events from the minds of the population. It is often, a conscious method of glorifying events and people in support of state ideals and vilifying events and people in conflict with state ideals. Presenting history in a way that supports the agenda of the state, and reinforcing it through the public education system and the media can be used to control the perceptions of the populace in ways that prevent dissent and promote nationalism.

The misinterpretation of history will make distorted versions of history. Vested interests misuse history to justify their own points of view. Manipulation of facts for the sake of justifying vested arguments is a common abuse of history. The main common forms of the distortion of history are:

• Altering historical truths
• Rewriting history with fabricated stories
• Manipulation of historical facts
• Using of history as propaganda and for inclusion and exclusion of people and groups

The distortion of historical facts creates a great threat to the discipline of history and the understanding of the past. Historical facts should not be distorted to further an agenda. Good historians do not preselect the evidence according to their point of view. The very act of choosing a fact over another makes it lose its authenticity. Although subjectivity and interpretation cannot be avoided, there is a need to keep both of them distinct.

Semiotics

The word ‘semiotic’, derives from se-meîon, the Greek word for a sign. Semiotics is the academic field dedicated to the study of signs and symbols. The fundamental question in semiotics is how meanings are formed. Semiotic research approaches signs as existing in various forms: pictures, words, letters, objects, natural objects, gestures, phenomena, and actions. Semiotics explores the content of signs, their use, and the formation of meanings. It also analyses the broader systems and structures formed by signs. The two important and original contributors to the theory of semiotics are the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the well-known American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce.

Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce

Saussure proposed a science that he called ‘semiology’ and stated that linguistics and other social sciences are only parts of this new field. Saussure explained semiology as ‘a science that studies the role of signs as part of social life'. In his book Course in General Linguistics, he argued that language is a system of signs in relation.

Sign: Signifier/Signified

According to Saussure, language is a system of signs. A sign is constituted of two elements: “signifier” and “signified.”

• A signifier is a sound image or its written equivalent.
• A signified is a concept evoked by the signifier.

A sign becomes a ‘sign’ only when it evokes a concept. The signified is not the object, but the concept or meaning evoked by the signifier. Saussure imagines language as a piece of paper: thought is the front and sound is the back; one cannot cut the front without also cutting the back. The sign once established “always eludes the individual or social will.” This laid the foundation for semiotics.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce argued that 'semiotic' was the 'formal doctrine of signs' which was closely related to Logic. He declared that 'every thought is a sign'. One of his major contributions to semiotics was the categorization of signs into three main types: (1) an icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for falling rocks); (2) an index, which is associated with its referent (as the smoke is a sign of fire); and (3) a symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention (as with words or traffic signals).

Semiotic is a Theory and Methodology

Semiotics is a field of study involving many different theoretical stances and methodological tools. It represents a range of studies in art, literature, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and the mass media rather than an independent academic discipline. Umberto Eco stated that 'semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign'. Semiotics involves the study not only of what we refer to as 'signs' in everyday speech but of anything which 'stands for' something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures, and objects. Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as part of semiotic 'sign systems'. To them, Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. Rolland Barthes, Levi Strauss, Umberto Eco, and several others contributed to the development of contemporary semiotics.

Semiotics and History

Signs are part of everyday life. Thus, semiotics proposes a method of investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. The historical past is an outcome of semiotic relations and transmission. Semiotic historians consider history as not a phenomenal event, but as an entity producing meaning, as a signifier capable of being assigned a signified. The study of history is therefore crucial in order to understand the question of how and why sign systems change. Semiotic historians generally consider history as ‘event-messages’ and ‘history as text’. The semiotic analysis looks beyond the peripheral meaning of the message. It studies the verbal, visual, and auditory signs. Further, “wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too”. Thus semiotics offers a tool for the analysis of deep structures that existed in the past. Thus, semiotics offer a tool for historical analysis.

Textual Analysis

Textual analysis is a method to describe and interpret a text in its context. Here ‘text’ refers to the written as well as sound and visual messages. A text is something that we make meaning from. It can be in any form – from a written text to a song or television program. The purpose of textual analysis is to describe the content, structure, and functions of the messages contained in texts.  It has been used to analyse content, bias, meanings, and perspectives in text. It is the analysis of the text with reference to the meanings, contexts, and intentions contained in messages. Textual analysis is useful for researchers working in cultural studies, media studies, mass communication, and perhaps even in sociology and philosophy. However, the method achieved greater popularity among social science scholars as well as a method of communication research.

Textual analysis is a way for researchers to gather information about how other human beings make sense of the world. Through the textual analysis, it is aimed to make an educated guess from the interpretation of the text. Before approaching a text for content analysis, the researcher has to consider the following features of a text:

• There is nothing inherent in a text. The meanings of a text are always brought to it by someone.
• Texts do not have single meanings. A text can be read from multiple perspectives and thus meaning will also change.
• Texts have meanings relative to particular contexts or purposes. Thus contextual meaning has to be found.

There are several methods of analysing the text. The popular text analysing and interpreting methods are:

• Structural method forwarded by the linguists
• Semiotic approach
• Content Analysis
• Discourse Analysis formulated by Michael Foucault

Textual analysis is a way of gathering and analysing information in academic research. It involves understanding language, symbols, and/or pictures present in texts to gain information regarding how people make sense of and communicate life and life experiences. Visual, written, or spoken messages provide clues to ways through which communication may be understood. Often the messages are understood as influenced by and reflective of larger social structures. For example, messages reflect and/or may challenge historical, cultural, political, and ethical contexts for which they exist. Textual analysis theorists claim meaning resides in the dialectical process between the text and the reader, which takes place in a particular social and historical context. Therefore, the analyst must understand the broader social structures that influence the messages present in the text under investigation.

Thus, in textual analysis and its presentation, the following elements should be considered.

• A summary of the text: Before presenting the analysis, it is necessary to present a summary of the text for the readers. 
• Attention to the context: All texts are part of ongoing conversations, controversies, or debates, so to understand the text, the researcher needs to understand the larger context.
• A clear interpretation or judgment: The goal of textual analysis is to interpret the text through careful examination of its various possibilities.
• Justify the conclusions with reasonable support: The researcher needs to support his/her analysis with evidence from the text itself and sometimes from other sources.

Plagiarism

The word plagiarism is derived from Latin plagiarius, which means ‘kidnapper’, and plagiare, which means ‘to steal’. Plagiarism, specifically, is a term used to describe a practice that involves knowingly taking and using another person’s work and claiming it, directly or indirectly, as your own. The MLA Handbook defines plagiarism as “the use of another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without giving proper credit to the source”. The American Historical Association’s ‘Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct’ defines plagiarism as the appropriation of “the exact wording of another author without attribution,” and the borrowing of “distinctive and significant research findings or interpretations” without proper citation. It is a wrongful act of taking the product of another person's mind and presenting it as one's own. The practice of plagiarism is a serious violation of the ethics of scholarship. It undermines the credibility of historical inquiry. Plagiarism can also be an offense against the literary rights of the original author and the property rights of the copyright owner.

Historical knowledge is a blend of both primary and secondary sources. Historians always use prior historical knowledge to substantiate his/her argument. Thus, historical research heavily depends on the sources and interpretations produced by others. Thus, a historian should acknowledge his sources, and should never simply borrow and rephrase the findings of other scholars. In this regard, it is necessary to uphold academic integrity and ethics. 

Intentional and Unintentional Plagiarism

Intentional plagiarism is a crime. The most obvious form of inappropriate borrowing involves the exact pirating of paragraphs, pages, or entire papers or chapters without quotation or attribution. A large amount of copying involved in such cases makes the occurrence of plagiarism undeniable. This can also include simply reproducing another person’s work without his consent, paraphrasing, copying someone else's writing word for word, or using ideas that aren't your own without proper citation.

Plagiarism is often unintentional. When a historian simply links one paraphrase to the next, even if the sources are cited, a kind of structural misuse takes place. Thus the writer often indirectly claims a shaping intelligence that actually belonged to the sources. In this case, a historian usually pleads that the lapse was unintentional. But, whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism should be avoided.

Forms of Plagiarism

• Intentional Plagiarism or Direct Plagiarism: It is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks. It is a severe form of plagiarism and it is a punishable crime.
• Mosaic Plagiarism or Remix: In this form, phrases and terms are lifted from the source and sprinkled together without attribution. The author does not use exact original sentences or words, but takes the idea or main points of the content and presents that by using their own wording and sentences.
• Self-Plagiarism or Recycle: It occurs when an author duplicates his or her own previous work or mixes parts of previous works.
• Paraphrasing - Find and Replace: In paraphrasing plagiarism, a writer usually copies or takes a central idea or some essential points from someone else’s work. After using some synonyms and restructuring the sentences, they add that content to their work and present it as their content without proper attribution.
• Accidental Plagiarism or Unintentional Plagiarism: Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source without attribution. Proper note-taking methods and knowledge of proper citation are necessary to avoid accidental plagiarism.

How to avoid plagiarism

• A basic rule of good note-taking should be adopted to distinguish carefully between the exact quotation and paraphrase.
• Always cite the source borrowed from the others (directly or indirectly), and thereby acknowledge the original author. Cite all sources and present full details of these in the list of references.
• Always use quotation marks to distinguish between the actual words of the writer and your own words. Quotation marks should be used to indicate the exact words of another.

Most cases of plagiarism represent a failure to properly paraphrase, quote, and cite sources. Presently academic institutions regulate several rules to prevent plagiarism in research. Plagiarism checking software is available for free to check the degree of plagiarism in a research paper.