Co-Constructing Virtual Identities: Insights from Linguistic Analysis

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Burkholder Ross
2019 DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix

This article critically examines the co-construction of personae for fictional characters in virtual environments. Expanding upon Gee’s (2003) tripartite notion of identity in virtual worlds, this paper focuses on how virtual identities are created, and who does the creating. Using sociolinguistic methodology, I show how alterations in behavior based on avatar characteristics (The Proteus Effect: Yee and Bailenson 20007) can be used as a window into the virtual identity creation process. Potential contributions to virtual identity from three sources are analyzed: the community, the creators of the virtual environment, and influences from the non-virtual world, concluding that community created knowledge seems to play the most significant role in virtual identity construction.

 

How to Say Things with Actions I: a Theory of Discourse for Video Games for Change

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Rao Valentina
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper proposes the interpretation of video games as discourse (in the explanation of discourse commonly used in linguistics and studies of natural language, not as understood in semiotics or cultural studies) to explore further the dynamics through which video games can propose structured meaning and articulate an argument. Such topic is especially relevant for video games with an agenda, whose goal is not just to produce an engaging game experience, but also to convey a message and have some control over the desired outcome (persuasion, information, expression, aesthetic experience). The notion of discourse can help classify serious games according to their specific aim, and can help understand how meaning production in procedural rhetoric takes place.