ERIC Number: EJ1351517
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0742-7778
EISSN: EISSN-2056-9017
Available Date: N/A
The Linguistic Environments of Digital Games: A Discriminant Analysis of Language Use in Game Mechanics
Dixon, Daniel H.
CALICO Journal, v39 n2 p150-171 2022
This study quantitatively measures the variation in language derived from a targeted set of digital game mechanics. Mechanics refer to the design elements of a game that make up the overall gameplay experience, determining player actions and the degree of language interaction. A corpus was compiled by extracting the language files from two popular commercial games, Fallout 4 and Skyrim, using modification software. The extracted language files were organized into three register categories following the register analysis framework detailed in Biber and Conrad (2019). The three categories include one spoken (dialogue trees) and two written registers (quest objectives and quest stages), which are common mechanics in many modern commercial games. Comparing results from three discriminant analyses, the findings indicate that statistical models cannot distinguish between the two games' linguistic environments at the level of the game; however, when considering the linguistic environments at the level of game mechanics, the model has high precision in accurately identifying the texts' game mechanic register categories. The results provide empirical evidence that digital game-based language learning (DGBLL) research designs could benefit from targeting specific design aspects and game mechanics rather than generalizing results at the level of genre or game title.
Descriptors: Language Usage, Computer Games, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Computational Linguistics, Computer Software, Oral Language, Dialogs (Language), Comparative Analysis, Language Variation, Discourse Analysis, Written Language
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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