Intertextual and polyphonic relations in the Wikipedia article “European Union Reactions to the Gaza War” for Humanitarian Knowledge Building
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15162/2974-8933/2516Keywords:
Intertextuality, Polyphony, Critical Discourse Analysis, Knowledge building, WikipediaAbstract
Drawing on the concepts of “polyphony” (Bakhtin 1981) and “intertextuality” (Kristeva 1986), this paper proposes to analyse, through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, the presence of multiple, often contradictory, voices that coexist within Wikipedia discourse. Notably, the “ideological struggle” emerges both through the use of different voices, which re-contextualise the speech from its original co-text and context, and the presence of «a permutation of texts, intertextuality in the space of a given text» (Kristeva 1986: 36). The extracted passages illustrate different perspectives (e.g., direct EU statements, individual Member States’ reported positions, criticisms, and editorial notes) while contributing to humanitarian knowledge co-building, presumably under the Wikipedia principle of the “neutral point of view”. In this context, the study aims to explore how Wikipedia discourse re-enacts ideological tensions and power dynamics between voices by examining such passages. The results demonstrate that knowledge is continuously produced and renegotiated in a polyphonic and intertextual, digital space.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Désirée Russo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The journal Cross-media Languages. Applied Research, Digital Tools and Methodologies is published in Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
The author is free to:
• share, distribute, and transmit the work;
• use the article in whole or in part;
under the following conditions:
• Attribution and citation – the work must be properly attributed and cited, including the name of the authors, the journal, the title of the article, the publisher, and the year.
with the understanding that:
• Waiver – any of the above conditions can be waived if explicit permission is obtained from the copyright holder;
• Public domain – if the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license;
• Other rights – the license in no way affects the following rights: fair use or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations; the moral and intellectual rights of the author and the publisher; rights others may have in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
• Notice – for any reuse or distribution, others must be made aware of the terms of this license. The best way to do this is to include a link to this web page.
