Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of exophonic writers


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Clearly no consensus for deletion, and editors are encouraged to further consider merging through normal processes and discussion. postdlf (talk) 16:31, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

List of exophonic writers

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IMO a pretty much arbitrary criterion for a list. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:28, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.  sst  ✈  02:14, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  sst  ✈  02:14, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  sst  ✈  02:14, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I disagree - I created the list because there is significant debate on the topic, both academically and in general media (I am aiming to pull in the various links in due course, when time permits), but the terminology is mixed and each article tends to list only a few of the examples, so there is a need for a more comprehensive list - where better than here? Ozaru (talk) 11:51, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Weak keep: The title of this list strikes me as unlikely to be the first one that people think of (though I can't think of a definitely better one in that respect), but the criterion is far enough from arbitrary that it is the subject of significant awards (for instance, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize and, for quite a few of the authors listed (for instance, Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov), the influence of their first language on their later writing in another language is frequently considered in scholarly works on their writing. Having said that, some narrowing of the criteria for the list might, after further discussion, be useful, so that it is more explicitly about writers in areas (for instance, fiction or poetry) likely to be discussed at least as much for their style as for their content - it would not help this list to have it swamped (as it could be) by, say, writers on legal or scientific topics in periods when writing on them was expected to be in languages that were not the first languages of many of the authors (for instance, Latin in the European Middle Ages or rather later, or English today). PWilkinson (talk) 22:33, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
 * re: " the subject of significant awards" - awards for what? For exophony? Chamisso prize is for non-Germans written in German. There may be other similar, specific prizes. Language-specific lists would make sense. The generic list will be huge. For example, all recipients listed in Adelbert von Chamisso Prize  will go here. But I would rather see List of writers in German as second language - A maintainable, sepecific list, with understandable title. I agree that the concept of "exophony" is overlooked. How about creating Category:Exophony? Staszek Lem (talk) 02:38, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Merge to Exophony. There's no real need for two articles when the main one is so short. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:39, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "Exophony" is a neologism, and I am not sure wikipedia has to promote neologisms.Staszek Lem (talk) 02:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Maybe there's no need for two articles at present, and the suggested merge is one idea - although I recall other pages where editors have suggested it's a bad idea to have a list inside an article, and they're better split off. Maybe they could be merged for now, then later (if & when the article has grown into something more substantial), one could consider splitting the list off again? BTW I did also create a Category but have yet to find time to apply it to the various writers in the List, so the List itself is so far the only entry (I didn't add the Article page).

Re the title, one reason I created the article was because I was searching for the definitive word to describe this, and encountered instead numerous rather woffly descriptions ('writers who write principally in a language which is not their mother tongue' etc.) - exophonic does appear to be quite a recent coinage, but that's probably because the topic itself is only recently coming to the forefront, so the new term is needed - and there's no single better candidate. Ozaru (talk) 13:48, 19 January 2016 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 08:49, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Weak keep, but merging to exophony may be desirable for now. Suggest focusing on expanding that article and improving sourcing. Exophony appears to be a legitimate area of study, so a list of exophonic writers is appropriate if the inclusion criteria are sufficiently tight. Pburka (talk) 02:51, 25 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.