Lay metalanguage on grammatical variation and neutrality in Wikipedia's entry for Che Guevara
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Tom Bartlett,
Tom Bartlett is Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at Cardiff University. His research interests include systemic functional linguistics and voice and hybridity in discourse. His most recent book-length publication is Hybrid Voices and Textual Change, Contextualising Positive Discourse Analysis (2012, Routledge). Address for correspondence: Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, CF10 3EU, UK 〈bartlettt@cardiff.ac.uk〉.
Abstract
This paper examines the editorial discussion of Wikipedia's policy of “Neutral Point of View” during the collaborative authorship of the entry for Che Guevara. Such data provide a rare source of unprompted lay metalanguage on the relationship between the lexicogrammatical form of a text and its evaluative orientation and make possible an inductive approach to exploring this longstanding issue in critical linguistics inquiry. The paper illustrates this inductive approach in selecting a stretch of text identified by the editors themselves as problematic and relating their metalinguistic commentaries to the lexicogrammatical features of both the original text and the variations proposed. However, recognizing that naturally occurring metalanguage is itself situated within its own social practice, the paper considers ways in which the editors' readings are a function of their role as Wikipedia “prosumers” and goes on to discuss the need to theorize specific reader types within critical linguistic approaches to discourse analysis.
About the author
Tom Bartlett is Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at Cardiff University. His research interests include systemic functional linguistics and voice and hybridity in discourse. His most recent book-length publication is Hybrid Voices and Textual Change, Contextualising Positive Discourse Analysis (2012, Routledge). Address for correspondence: Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, CF10 3EU, UK 〈bartlettt@cardiff.ac.uk〉.
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Lay metalanguage on grammatical variation and neutrality in Wikipedia's entry for Che Guevara
- The role of metaphor in tennis reports and forums
- Directing and requesting: two interactive uses of the mental state terms want and need
- Recruiting the reader in literary criticism
- He's absolutely massive. It's a super day. Madonna, she is a wicked singer. Youth language and intensification: a corpus-based study
- Suprasegmentals in the definition of narrative and intonational patterns in Turkish oral narratives
