Pewdiepie: Hey I’m jumping on you. What…
Cry: Whaa, you jerk!
Pewdiepie: There’s gonna be a lot of that Cry. Oh so if you duck you can’t die? That makes sense… What the hell am I doing?
Cry: What have you done?!
Pewdiepie: We’re gently patting each other’s back.
Cry: Wait, I can’t stop jumping on your back..
Pewdiepie: Don’t kill me please.
If you don’t watch gaming vlogs, you probably think I suffer from a serious mental dysfunction. In this blog I shall dive into the much unknown territory of sociolinguistics in gaming. (Trust me if there was anything to do with this on wikipedia, I would have copied and pasted it hours ago). There has been increasing attention on the educational power of video games in recent years (2006; Thorne,2008;Purushotma). I aim to investigate ‘World of Warcraft’ as a platform for second language socialization, specifically in the area of pragmatics. A study by Dionne Palmer a student at M.A. (University of California, Davis) 2007 explains how through ‘World of Warcraft’ he learned a 2nd language (Spanish). ‘World of Warcraft’ gave him a platform where he could interact with Spanish gamers, whom initially helped him construct a basic understanding of their language.
My Swedish friend Dennis, never enjoyed studying English at school, nor did he speak it at home. Through MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-play games, The terms MMO or MMOG are umbrella terms that cover any type of massively multiplayer online game) his understanding of English grew, due to his enjoyment of playing games, he wanted to be able to communicate and understand other players. No doubt this type of engaging, inclusive experience could be achieved in a range of other contexts, but for Dennis it was realized through participation in a multiplayer online game. To further my point, Gee describes thirty six learning principles throughout his book; that are featured in video game. They include:
“Psychosocial Moratorium” Principle: Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered.
Multimodal Principle: Meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, sound, etc.) not just words.
Video games are multimodal semiotic platforms that can apply language learning in context bound computer games. Pragmatic competence involves participation in a range of speech acts in a first language and interlanguage pragmatic competence involves the ability to do all those things in a second language.
In conclusion to this blog I will end with a quirky, hipster quote “In the world “out there,” there are no verbs, no speech events, and no adjacency pairs. There are particles of matter moving around in certain recurrent and yet not fully predictable patterns. We interpret such experiences as and through symbolic means, including linguistic expressions. That’s what it means to be human.” ― Duranti a Alessandro, Linguistic Anthropology.
If you are interested in learning more about the subject I have linked a gaming YouTube channel, where the youtuber Pewdiepie is playing a MMO with fellow gamers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ec8uY7x4mE
By Lauren Wilson
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