Wikipedia defines itself as “the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the internet”, thus featuring an explicit language policy in its mission statement. Bearing in mind that the site has become the most popular source of encyclopaedic information online, its significance for public encounters with multilingualism should not be underestimated. This article offers a critical and multimodal discourse analytical approach to Wikipedia’s explicit and implicit multilingual policies and practices. I examine, under “explicit metalinguistic practice” (Woolard 1998), public disclaimers and exemplary user practice and talk on the “Multilingual Coordination” entry. Under “implicit metapragmatics”, I shall offer a multimodal analysis of Wikipedia’s multilingualism-oriented interface design; the corporate logo and its paratextual meta-commentary on a number of linguistic and journalistic websites; and a code-critical reading of Wikipedia’s “Babel” user language templates. My observations are discussed against the backdrop of postcolonialist theories on the role of English as lingua franca of the information age.
1990Deutsch, Englisch, Russisch und Französisch als Linguae Francae in Osteuropa: eine Expertenbefragung. Germanistische Mitteilungen 321, 67–81.
Ammon, Ulrich
1999Ist Deutsch noch internationale Wissenschaftssprache?. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ammon, Ulrich
(ed.)2000The Dominance of English as a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ammon, Ulrich
2003Global English and the non-native speaker: Overcoming disadvantage. In: Humphrey Tonkin and Timothy Reagan (eds). Language in the 21st Century. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 23–24.
Ammon, Ulrich
2006Language planning for international scientific communication: An overview of questions and potential solutions. Current Issues in Language Planning 7(1), 1–30.
Ammon, Ulrich
2007Global scientific communication: Open questions and policy suggestions. In: Augusto Carli and Ulrich Ammon (eds). Linguistic Inequality in Scientific Communication Today (AILA Review 20). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 123–133.
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
2006Multilingualism, diaspora, and the Internet: Codes and identities on German-based diaspora websites. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(4), 520–547.
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
2009Policing practices in heteroglossic mediascapes: A commentary on interfaces. Language Policy 8(3), 285–290.
2009A market of accents. Language Policy 8(3), 243–259.
Blommaert, Jan, Kelly-Holmes, Helen, Lane, Pia, Leppänen, Sirpa, Moriarty, Máiréad, Pietikäinen, Sari and Piirainen-Marsh, Arja
2008Media, multilingualism and language policing: an introduction. Language Policy 8(3), 203–207.
Boellstorff, Tom
2008Coming of Age in Second Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre
1991Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Castells, Manuel
2009Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cohen, Noam
2007Some errors defy fixes: A typo in Wikipedia’s logo fractures the Sanskrit, nytimes.com, 251 June 2007, [URL] (22 August 2008).
Crystal, David
2001Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Danet, Brenda and Herring, Susan
2007The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DiNucci, Darcy
1999Fragmented future. Print 53(4), 32.
Dor, Daniel
2004From Englishization to imposed multilingualism: Globalization, the internet, and the political economy of the linguistic code. Public Culture 16(1), 97–118.
Dvorak, John C.
2005The wikification of knowledge. PC Magazine, 071 Novembe 2005 [URL] (25/07/08).
Edwards, John
1995Multilingualism. London: Penguin.
Ehlich, Konrad
2000Deutsch als Wissenschaftssprache für das 21. Jahrhundert. gfl-journal 11, [URL] (15/03/10).
Ehlich, Konrad
2006Mehrsprachigkeit in der Wissenschaftskommunikation — Illusion oder Notwendigkeit?. In: Konrad Ehlich and Dorothee Heller (eds). Die Wissenschaft und ihre Sprachen. Bern: Peter Lang, 17–38.
Ensslin, Astrid
2011Zur Rolle des Englischen als Wissenschaftssprache im britischen Pressediskurs. In: Antonie Hornung (ed.). Lingue di cultura in pericolo — Bedrohte Wissenschaftssprachen. L’italiano e il tedesco di fronte alla sfida dell’internazionalizzazione — Deutsch und Italienisch vor den Herausforderungen der Internationalisierung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Ensslin, Astrid
2010Metalanguage and the ideology of creationist capitalism in Second Life®. Presentation given at the Language, Development and Cognition Seminar, Bangor University, 11 Februar 2010.
Ensslin, Astrid and Johnson, Sally
2006Language in the news: Investigations into representations of ‘Englishness’ using Wordsmith Tools. Corpora 1(2), 153–185.
Ensslin, Astrid and Johnson, Sally
2009Sprache und Identität in der englischen Nachrichtenpresse: eine korpuslinguistische Analyse. In: Oliver Stenschke and Sigurd Wichter (eds). Wissenstransfer und Diskurs. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 347–362.
Eoyang, Eugene
1999The worldliness of the English language: A lingua franca past and future. ADFL Bulletin 31(1), 26–32.
Fairclough, Norman
2006Language and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel
1980Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Trans. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon.
Frühwald, Wolfgang
2000Deutsch als Sprache der Wissenschaft. aviso 31, 10–15.
Goble, Carole
2007The return of the prodigal web: 1. In: HYPERTEXT 2007, Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, September 10–12, Manchester, UK. Alpha, NJ: Sheridan Printing, 2.
2009Media and Society into the 21st Century: A Historical Introduction. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hornung, Antonie
(ed.)2011Lingue di cultura in pericolo — Bedrohte Wissenschaftssprachen. L’ italiano e il tedesco di fronte alla sfida dell’ internazionalizzazione — Deutsch und Italienisch vor den Herausforderungen der Internationalisierung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
House, Juliane
2003English as a lingua franca: A threat to multilingualism?. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4), 556–578.
Hüppauf, Bernd
2004Globalization — threats and opportunities. In: Andreas Gardt and Bernd Hüppauf (eds). Globalization and the Future of German. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 3–24.
Irvine, Judith and Gal, Susan
2000Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In: Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.). Regimes of Language: Ideologies Polities and Identities. Oxford: James Currey, 35–83.
Ivkovic, Dejan and Lotherington, Heather
2009Multilingualism in cyberspace: Conceptualising the virtual linguistic landscape. International Journal of Multilingualism 6(1), 17–36.
Jaworski, Adam
2007Language in the media: Authenticity and othering. In: Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin (eds). Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum, 271–280.
Jaworski, Adam, Coupland, Nikolas and Galansiński, Dariusz
(eds)2004Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Johnson, Sally and Ensslin, Astrid
2007Language in the media: Theory and practice. In: Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin (eds). Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies. London: Continuum, 3–24.
Johnson, Sally and Milani, Tommaso M
(eds)2010Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics. London: Continuum.
Joseph, John E. and Taylor, Talbot J
(eds)1990Ideologies of Language. London: Routledge.
Kelly-Holmes, Helen
2006aMultilingualism and commercial language practices on the Internet. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(4), 507–519.
Kelly-Holmes, Helen, Moriarty, Máiréad and Pietikäinen, Sari
2009Convergence and divergence in Basque, Irish and Sámi media language policing. Language Policy 8(3), 227–242.
Koegler, Brad
2010Babel 2.0: Bridging the linguistic digital divide. Faculty of Information Quarterly 2(3). [URL] (29/07/2010).
Kohl, Christian and Liebert, Wolf-Andreas
2004Selbstorganisation in der Wissensvermittlung. Quellentransparenz, Kontroversität und Qualitätssicherung in der Internet-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia. Fachsprache 26(3/4), 133–148.
Krötzsch, Markus, Vrandecic, Denny and Volkel Max
2005Wikipedia and the Semantic Web — The Missing Links. In: Jakob Voss and Andrew Lih (eds). Proceedings of Wikimania 2005, Frankfurt, Germany. [URL] (21/12/2006).
Lane, Pia
2009Mediating national language management: The discourse of citizenship categorisation in Norwegian media. Language Policy 8(3), 209–225.
Leppänen, Sirpa and Piirainen-Marsh, Arja
2009Language policy in the making: An analysis of bilingual gaming activities. Language Policy 8(3), 261–284.
Liao, Han-Teng and Petzold, Thomas
2010Analysing geo-linguistic dynamics of the World Wide Web: The use of cartograms and network analysis to understand linguistic development in Wikipedia. Cultural Science 3(2), [URL] (25/05/2011).
Myers-Scotton, Carol
1990Elite closure as boundary maintenance: The case of Africa. In: Brian Weinstein (ed.). Language Policy and Political Development. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 25–42.
Oesterreicher, Wulf
2004Mehrsprachigkeit als Bedingung geisteswissenschaftlicher Produktivität und die Aufgabe einer Hierarchisierung der europäischen Sprachen. Philologie im Netz 301, 29–46, [URL] (15/03/2010).
1996Change, language and the developing world. In: Hywel Coleman and Lynne Cameron (eds). Change and Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 143–152.
Pennycook, Alastair
2002Ruptures, departures and appropriations: Postcolonial challenges to language development. In: Corazon D. Villareal, Lily Rose R. Tope and Patricia May B. Jurilla (eds). Ruptures and Departures: Language and Culture in Southeast Asia. Diliman: University of the Philippines, 212–41.
Pennycook, Alastair
2003Global Englishes, Rip Slyme and performativity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4), 513–533.
Pennycook, Alastair
2010Nationalism, identity and popular culture. In: Nancy C. Hornberger and Sandra Lee McKay (eds). Sociolinguistics and Language Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 62–88.
Pentzold, Christian
2006Dispositiv, Diskurs, Diskursfragment: Zum Vorschlag eines diskurstheoretischen, Foucault-inspirierten Analyserahmens für die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia, [URL] (05/03/2010).
Pentzold, Christian
2007Wikipedia: Diskussionsraum und Informationsspeicher im neuen Netz. Munich: Verlag Reinhard Fischer.
Pentzold, Christian
2008Bilingualer Vergleich von Argumentationsmustern in den Wissensaushandlungsprozessen von Wikipedia, presentation given at AILA 2008, Essen.
Phillipson, Robert
1992Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Phillipson, Robert
2000Rights to Language: Equity, Power and Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Phillipson, Robert
2003English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge.
Pörksen, Uwe
1995Plastic Words: The Tyranny of a Modular Language. Transl. J. Mason and D. Cayley. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Poser, Bill
2007Problems with the Wikipedia logo. Language Log, 271 June 2007, [URL] (22/08/2008).
Robertson, Roland
1995Glocalisation: Time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In: Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (eds). Global Modernities. London: Sage, 25–44.
Robins, Kevin and Webster, Frank
1999Times of the Technoculture. New York: Routledge.
Schieffelin, Bambi B., Woolard, Kathryn A. and Kroskrity, Paul V
(eds)1998Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Siebenhaar, Beat
2006Code choice and code-switching in Swiss-German Internet Relay Chat rooms. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10(4), 481–506.
Spolsky, Bernard
2004Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spurgeon, Christina
2008Advertising and New Media. London: Routledge.
Surowiecki, James
2004The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. New York: Doubleday.
Tardy, Christine M.
2003The role of English in scientific communication: Lingua franca or tyrannosaurus rex?English for Academic Purposes 31, 247–269.
Wales, Jimmy
2005Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, [URL] (30/06/2007).
Warschauer, Mark and Grimes, Douglas
2007Audience, authorship, and artifact: The emergent semiotics of Web 2.0. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 271, 1–23.
Wesch, Michael
2007Web 2.0: the machine is us/ing us,[URL] (15/03/2010).
2006The European Union in cyberspace: Multilingual democratic participation in a virtual public sphere? Journal of Language and Politics 5(2), 251–275.
Wong, ShunHa Sylvia, Beaumont, Anthony J. and Konečný, Michal
1998Introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 3–47.
Cited by
Cited by 13 other publications
de Bres, Julia
2015. Introduction: Language policies on social network sites. Language Policy 14:4 ► pp. 309 ff.
de Bres, Julia & Luc Belling
2015. Free Your Stuff Luxembourg! Language policies, practices and ideologies in a multilingual Facebook group. Language Policy 14:4 ► pp. 357 ff.
Fu, Mengyuan, Kunhao Yang & Yuko Fujigaki
2023. Introducing an “invisible enemy”: A case study of knowledge construction regarding microplastics in Japanese Wikipedia. New Media & Society► pp. 146144482211497 ff.
Gredel, Eva
2019. Wikipedaktik: Kollaborative Sachlexikografie als Lehr- und Lerngegenstand im Deutschunterricht. Lexicographica 34:2018 ► pp. 37 ff.
Góngora-Goloubintseff, José Gustavo
2020. The Falklands/Malvinas war taken to the Wikipedia realm: a multimodal discourse analysis of cross-lingual violations of the Neutral Point of View. Palgrave Communications 6:1
Hendus, Ulrike
2015. “See Translation”: explicit and implicit language policies on Facebook. Language Policy 14:4 ► pp. 397 ff.
Li, Wanqi
2019. Proceedings of the 2019 2nd International Conference on Information Management and Management Sciences - IMMS 2019, ► pp. 33 ff.
Li, Wanqi
2020. The language of bullying: Social issues on Chinese websites. Aggression and Violent Behavior 53 ► pp. 101453 ff.
Mamadouh, Virginie
2019. Wikipedia: Mirror, Microcosm, and Motor of Global Linguistic Diversity. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.
Mamadouh, Virginie
2020. Wikipedia: Mirror, Microcosm, and Motor of Global Linguistic Diversity. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 3773 ff.
Miquel-Ribé, Marc & David Laniado
2018. Wikipedia Culture Gap: Quantifying Content Imbalances Across 40 Language Editions. Frontiers in Physics 6
Rubira, Rainer & Gisela Gil-Egui
2019. Wikipedia as a space for discursive constructions of globalization. International Communication Gazette 81:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Vaisman, Carmel L., Illan Gonen & Yuval Pinter
2018. Nonhuman language agents in online collaborative communities: Comparing Hebrew Wikipedia and Facebook translations. Discourse, Context & Media 21 ► pp. 10 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.