Language, Gender and Videogames: Using Corpora to Analyse the Representation of Gender in Fantasy Videogames

Description

This book explores how corpus linguistic techniques can be applied to close analysis of videogames as a text, particularly examining how language is used to construct representations of gender in fantasy videogames. The author demonstrates a wide array of techniques which can be used to both build corpora of videogames and to analyse them, revealing broad patterns of representation within the genre, while also zooming in to focus on diachronic changes in the representation of gender within a best-selling videogame series and a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). The book examines gender as a social variable, making use of corpus linguistic methods to demonstrate how the language used to depict gender is complex but often repeated. This book combines fields including language and gender studies, new media studies, ludolinguistics, and corpus linguistics, and it will be of interest to scholars in these and related disciplines. Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Tables 1 Introduction Listen to My Story, This May Be Our Last Chance Moving from Pong to More Recent Games Dungeons and Dragons and the Influence on Videogames Gender and Videogames Language and Gender Discourse, ideology, and representations Corpus Linguistics Summary of the Chapter So Why Write This Book? Ludography 2 Language, Gender, and Videogames A Century of Progress? Language and Gender Research—Historical Developments Gender Performativity From Speech to Writing Gender in Videogame Paratext Gender in Videogame ‘Communities’ Gender in Videogames—As a Text Conclusions Ludography 3 Corpus Approaches to Ludolinguistics Armchairs Are Too Comfortable What Is Corpus Linguistics? Building a Corpus Analysing a Corpus (Key)Word List Analysis Collocation Concordance Line Analysis Corpus-Based and Corpus-Driven Studies Corpora and Videogame Studies Conclusions Bibliography 4 Building a Corpus of Language from Videogames How Do We Get the Data? Language Around Videogames Language Within Videogames Using Computer Coding: Generating Text Dumps Transcribing Narrative Permutations Text from Fans Using Websites Summary Ludography 5 Gender in a General Corpus of Videogames What Data to Look At Selection Criteria Looking at He Looking at She A Discourse Shared Across Both Pronouns Man and Woman Discussions and Conclusions Ludography 6 Gendered Language in The Witcher Videogame Series Magic in the Book Background to The Witcher Aims of This Chapter Collecting (and Analysing) the Data Keyword Lists for Individual Games The Witcher 1: Keywords The Witcher 2: Keywords The Witcher 3: Keywords Keywords from the Three Games Combined Analysing Trophy Conclusions Ludography 7 Gendered Character Speech in World of Warcraft Beware the Daughter of the Sea Men and Women Speak World of Warcraft: Background WoW Quests What WoW Games to Analyse Constructing the Corpus Frequencies of Who Is Interacted With Who Says What? What Do Women Talk About? What Do Men Talk About? Summary from Keywords From Frequencies to Semantic Domains Female Characters’ Semantic Domains Male Characters’ Semantic Domains A Difference Within a Similarity Discussion Conclusions Ludography 8 Conclusions Game Over What Can We Conclude from the Research? Some Limitations Singular Modes of Communication Videogames, Paratext, and Triangulation Developments in Technology Challenging Binaries More Games, More Data Directions for Future Research Directions for Implementation in Industry Concluding Remarks Ludography Index