4.2 Linguistic Practices of League of Legends Gamers
4.2.3 Offensive Slang
Another set of vocabulary that may be revealing about LoL gamers’ membership in the community is offensive words, or fixed expressions understood as impolite by people. These
words are stereotypically related to males, youngsters, and people who engage in
“misconduct” defined by the society. Out of the 400 co-players, 55 (13.75%) are involved in
the use of such terms. I categorize my findings of them into two: taboo words and pejorative names.
Taboo words, viewed interchangeably with cursing (Jay, 1992, 2000) and swearing (Ljung, 2011), are lexical items that serve emotional needs of the speakers and produce emotional impacts on listeners. In old times, most of them were strictly forbidden in media and government held institutions. Examples of taboo words from the LoL chat log include
gan (幹 or 乾), chao (耖), kao (靠), kaobei (靠北), made (媽的), and fk (abbreviated from
fuck). Excerpts below demonstrate some of their employment in the virtual context:
(7) Game No. 1 (recorded on August 2, 2015) 1 伊芙琳 (Jungle)： 抓輸出?
zhua shuchu
‘Why didn’t you catch their damage dealers?’
2 乾
gan
‘Fuck.’
(8) Game No. 52 (recorded on September 20, 2015)
1 達瑞斯 (Top)： 耖
wo yao dai chuansong jieguo an dao pangbian de jinghua
‘I originally planned to take the summoner spell Teleport to the game but ended up mis-picking the nearby Cleanse.’
As shown in Excerpts 7-9, swear words resemble interjections in that they are used primarily for emotional purposes, especially for a relief of anger or frustration. In Excerpt 7, 伊芙琳 is pissed at her teammates for not focusing attacks on enemy Carries; she swears gan to manifest this emotional state. In Excerpt 8, chao is the emotional reaction of frustration 達瑞
Tamade in Excerpt 9 is an expression of 卡特蓮娜’s self-blame over her picking the wrong
summoner spell to use in the game. With taboo words, one has to notice that negative emotions are not the only kind of responses elicited. Consider Excerpt 10:
(10) Game No. 8 (recorded on August 15, 2015) 1 達瑞斯已經成為傳說啦！
daruisi yijing chengwei chuanshuo la
‘Darius is legendary!’
2 飛斯 (Support)： CC
‘Let me borrow your power.’
3 易大師 (Jungle)： 靠 kao
‘For crying out loud.’
4 我軍消滅敵隊！
wojun xiaomie didui
‘Ally team has scored an ace!’
5 葛雷夫 (AD Carry)： 幹 XDDD gan
‘Fuck.’
When 達瑞斯 becomes a legendary (chuanshuo)49 and later annihilates the whole group of enemy champions, his teammates express their astonishment by saying swear words. Here
kao and gan have no connotation of anything bad; instead, their evocative power is used by
the speakers to unleash surprise emotions at the moment.
The other major category of offensive words in LoL is pejorative names, also called
epithets (Ljung, 2011). In most cases, pejorative names are negatively evaluative nouns
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directed at people who have frustrated the speakers in some ways. Within the many pejorative names LoL gamers use to call others, lese (垃圾), 87 (or beiqi, 北七, baichi, 白痴), feiwu (廢物) are the most frequently used ones. Excerpts below show how they are used during interaction:
(11) Game No. 41 (recorded on September 6, 2015)
1 雷玟 (Top)： 垃圾打野
(12) Game No. 58 (recorded on September 25, 2015)
1 犽宿 (Mid)： 你白癡嗎
‘You use your ultimate ability like this.’
4 阿姆姆 (Jungle)： = =失誤一次需要罵人嗎 shiwu yi ci xuyao maren ma
‘Do you really have to blame me for making a single mistake?’
(13) Game No. 34 (recorded on September 6, 2015) 1 希維爾 (AD Carry)： 你們
nimen
‘You,’
2 卡特在後面
kate zai houmian
‘The enemy Katarina is right behind her allies.’
3 哀廢物一堆
ai feiwu yidui
‘(Sighing). A lot of rubbish.’
4 這上路只會追
zhe shanglu zhi hui zhui
‘Our top laner can do nothing but chasing enemies recklessly.’
5 哀
ai
‘(Sighing).’
As shown, calling the addressees lese, baichi, and feiwu are acts of ritualistic insulting, by
which the speakers are able to achieve a negative impact on the listeners. Behind such verbal aggression are particular reasons that have incurred the speakers’ displeasure, e.g. the fact
that a player is incompetent (lingzuoyong) (Excerpt 11) or makes a mistake (shiwu) (Excerpt
12). Importantly, an act of name-calling “provides information about how the speaker views him/herself in relation to others” (Jay, 2000, p. 85). That is, by name-calling, the speaker
indicates the notable differences on the part of the addressee by comparing or reducing him/her to an entity with unfavorable properties. In the terms of conceptual metaphor, the speaker is transferring negative connotations from a source concept to the addressee as the
the qualities of uselessness from lese and feiwu and intellectual disability from baichi to the offended. This associative power is even more evident on the ethnographically specific pejorative names that are found in my data. See the following excerpts:
(14) Game No. 47 (recorded on September 13, 2015) 1 逆命 (Mid)： 不來幫
‘No wonder the bottom lane was losing.’
4 布里茨 (Support)： 我？
wo
‘Me?’
5 逆命 (Mid)： 銅牌 SUP 無解 tongpai SUP wujie
‘Bronze medal Support, you have played so bad that we cannot do anything about it.’
(15) Game No. 84 (recorded on October 25, 2015) 1 卡特蓮娜 (Mid)： 我被住爆 jg 在哪裡?
wo bei zhubao jg zai nali
‘Our jungler was nowhere to be found when I was ganked time after time.’
2 勒布朗 (Support)： 自己不會插眼?
ziji bu hui chayan
‘You should ward and gain vision by yourself.’
3 沃維克 (Jungle)： 自己不插眼 ziji bu chayan
‘You should ward and gain vision by yourself.’
4 低端 diduan
‘Low Elo player.’
By calling people tongpai and diduan, the players are taking a superior stance in another blatant way. The two pejorative names, compared to lese, baichi, and feiwu, are not as conventionalized for the general public but rather innovative and only viable in the game worlds of LoL or other MMOGs alike. LoL has a ladder ranking system where players compete with each other to win medals, including Bronze (tongpai, 銅牌), Silver (yinpai, 銀 牌), Gold (jinpai, 金牌), Platinum (baijin, 白金), and Diamond (zuanshi, 鑽石), in an order
from low Elo50 (diduan, 低端) to high Elo (gaoduan, 高端). Therefore, tongpai and diduan are ideal source concepts for disparaging name calling in this context because they represent the group of players who are the worst at the game. It is clear that 逆命 and 沃維克 from the above excerpts try to associate bad performances of those players with their addressees.