Itis-Kombinatorik auf den Diskussionsseiten der Wikipedia: Ein Wortbildungsmuster zur diskursiven Normierung in der kollaborativen Wissenskonstruktion

This paper presents a corpus study of talk pages on Wikipedia combining morphologic and discourse linguistics approaches. The study reveals that –itisis a highly productive suffix in meta(-linguistic) discourses of the online-encyclopaedia: Wikipedia authors using word formation products with the suffix –itis(e. g. Newstickeritisor WhatsAppitis) try to standardise the collaborative knowledge production with the help of these linguistic innovations. The corpus analysis delivers evidence for the fact that certain linguistic innovations and special types of word formation characterise the community of Wikipedia authors and their discourse traditions. Thereby, this paper contributes to the discussion about digital discourse analysis of natively digital data taking stock of the Wikipedia corpora in the German Reference Corpus (Deutsches Referenzkorpus). The peculiarities of Wikipedia's data will be explained, modes of analysis discussed and the challenges of the suggested integration of morphology and discourse linguistics will be explored.