“Gua means scrape”: a conversation analysis of identity construction and negotiation in polylogal Wikipedia paratext

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to multidisciplinary research exploring the role played by paratext in the construction of identities. First, it develops a theoretical and methodological framework inspired by recent scholarship on conducting conversation analysis in digital contexts and on the ways in which speakers claim positions of expertise through their turns-at-talk. Next, it presents a case study examining translation-focused discussion forum comments posted within the so-called “Talk” pages that surround the mainspace content of the online user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia. The analysis highlights the often intensely interactive nature of digital paratext and probes the implications for participants’ identity work: I argue that the polylogal nature of this paratextual space requires the constant negotiation of identities as Wikipedia contributors relentlessly jostle with one another for recognition of their epistemic authority. In the final section, I discuss the implications of this Wikipedia case for broader areas of scholarship on translation and digital paratext.

KEYWORDS:

• Paratext
• identity
• digital media
• Wikipedia
• translation
• conversation analysis

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Kathryn Batchelor, Chiara Bucaria, Jan Buts, Maeve Olohan and the two anonymous peer reviewers for their detailed and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data analyzed in this article can be accessed directly on the Wikipedia platform at the following links: “Gua Sha” Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gua_sha; “Gua Sha” Talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gua_sha.

Notes

1 There are interesting parallels here with Genette’s (1997) suggestion that factual information can have paratextual value: Genette argued that knowing the gender of an author, for example, may often influence how we receive their text. Similarly, a professional’s uniform can be seen to function paratextually as a “consciously crafted threshold” (Batchelor 2018, 142) shaping how their interactants in conversation (patients or colleagues) interpret and design turns-at-talk.

2 Wikipedia uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

3 Wikipedians contribute pseudonymously but, to add an additional layer of anonymity, I have replaced all usernames with numbers.

4 As Gavioli (2015) notes, asking a question typically signals lower epistemic status and an attempt to attribute the interlocutor with higher epistemic status.

5 When User 1 published this post, they were not logged in to their Wikipedia account. This means this post is attributed to an anonymous IP address instead of User 1’s username. From the content of the post it is clear, however, that the anonymous IP editor and User 1 are the same person.

6 Rather than placing this comment sequentially below the latest comment in the thread as is conventional in Wikipedia, User 3 inserts this information in the middle of User 2’s first post, between entries 1 and 2 in the numbered list. This unusual placement would suggest that User 3 is seeking to respond not to User 1’s opening post directly, but to the specific passage of User 2’s reply in which the meaning of the Chinese character 痧 (sha) is discussed.

7 Unlike User 1, User 2 and User 3, User 4 is a so-called “IP editor”, meaning they have made these contributions anonymously, without registering a user account and logging into the Wikipedia platform; as such, the creator of all three of the posts reproduced in Figures 7–9 is recorded only by their IP address. The IP address for Figure 9 is different to that in Figures 7–8 but it can reasonably be assumed these are the same individual based on the patterning of their contributions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council under Grant AH/V013203/1.

Notes on contributors

Henry Jones

Henry Jones is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. He is a co-coordinator of the Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network and co-editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2021). He is also Principal Investigator on the WikiAltMed project, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (2021–2023). His work has been published in international journals such as Translation Studies, Target, Globalizations and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and in edited volumes including the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2020) and the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media (2022). His current research interests lie in the medical and health humanities, media theory, digital culture and corpus-based methodologies.