Discussing English Usage on Wikipedia (original) (raw)

Abstract

The general public’s discussions about the questions of the ‘correct’ use of the English language have been traditionally reflected in the letters-to-the-editor sections of newspapers. These public complaints about ‘misused’ apostrophes, double negatives, and preposition stranding constitute well-kept records of the public’s attitudes on linguistic matters (McManus 2008:1). In the last two decades such debates have also appeared on numerous web platforms, on for a, and in comment sections of weblogs. Until now there have been only a small number of studies on the discourse of linguistic prescriptivism in the traditional media (McManus 2008, Percy 2009), while the number of studies on such discourse online has been even scarcer (Schaffer 2010). In this paper I present an analysis of the Wikipedia talk pages that are secondary to the Wikipedia articles which focus on English usage items, such as Disputes in English grammar, Serial comma, Split infinitive, etc., as an as yet unexplored medium in the analysis of prescriptivism. Wikipedia talk pages separate the Wikipedia entries from discussions on what information should or should not be included on the main pages (Viégas, Wattenberg and Dave 2004:576). They serve a number of functions in managing articles: strategic planning of editing, enforcement of Wikipedia policies, and conducting guidelines (Viégas et al. 2007). Furthermore, talk pages have a central role in obtaining the quality of Wikipedia articles. They differ greatly from print sources on the subject, as they enable wide participation and as there are no editorial restrictions on who contributes to the discussion. What differentiates them from other types of online discussion boards are their participants’ orientation toward a common goal of creating a Wikipedia article on the one hand, and the social norms governing the Wikipedia community on the other (Emigh and Herring 2005). This paper explores the processes of negotiation among Wikipedians and the use of argumentation strategies involved in finding solutions to the perceived linguistic problems. Emigh, William and Susan C. Herring (2005). Collaborative authoring on the web: a genre analysis of online encyclopedias. Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2005/2268/04/22680099a.pdf McManus, Jennifer (2008). Present-day prescriptivist discourse: a transitivity analysis. Paper for workshop “Normative Linguistics”, ISLE 1, Freiburg. Percy, Carol (2009). Periodical reviews and the rise of prescriptivism: The Monthly (1749-1844) and Critical Review (1756-1817) in the 18th century. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Wim van der Wurff (eds.), Current Issues and Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang. 117-50. Viégas, Fernanda B., Wattenberg, Martin and Kushal Dave (2004). Studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualisations. Proceedings of SIGCHI. Vienna: ACM Press. 575-582. Viégas, Fernanda B., Wattenberg, Martin, Kriss, Jesse, and Frank van Ham (2007). Talk before you type: Coordination in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. http://hint.fm/papers/wikipedia\_coordination\_final.pdf Schaffer, Deborah (2010). Old whine online: prescriptive grammar blogs on the Internet. English Today 26.4. 23-28.

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