4.1. The Categories of Speech Acts Produced in the MMORPG
4.1.4 Summary of Findings in terms of Categories of Speech Acts
In the MMORPG interaction, the dominant categories of speech acts are Representatives and Expressives. The dominance of Representatives showed that players in this MMORPG have a large number of opportunities to produce speech that functions to fill the information gap between one and another. This finding is consistent with Throne (2008)’s and Rankin et al. (2008)’s findings in which players
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were found to produce speech to fill the information gap between one and another.
The dominance of Expressives indicated that in the game world language learners tended to be more excited and more direct in expressing their emotions. Another reason for its dominancy is that speech that functions to express feelings is comparatively easy to learn and use since they are shorter and contain fewer difficult words.
In the MMORPG interaction, the most infrequent categories of speech acts are Negotiations of meaning and Language specific correction, which is inconsistent with the findings of previous studies conducted by Throne (2008), Zeng et al. (2009), and Reinders and Wattana (2010). In the studies conducted by Zeng et al. (2009) and Reinders and Wattana (2010), the adapted MMORPG for language learning purposes and a commercial MMORPG for educational purposes were adopted, whereas in the present study a common fight-for-pleasure MMORPG was used. This might be the reason why in Zeng et al.’s and Reinders and Wattana’s studies Negotiation of meaning and Language specific corrections were frequently identified while in the current study these speech acts were hardly found. In the study carried out by Throne (2008), the author adopted a common MMORPG WOW. The number of interlocutors, however, was only two and the two interlocutors were familiar with each other, which might be the reason why they could negotiate for meaning and provide or receive language specific corrections. The present study showed that the most important thing for players in the real MMORPG world is to make their meaning across rather than to speak error-free language.
In terms of differences between language learners and fluent English speakers, participants were found to frequently carry out Greetings and farewells while Directives was produced less frequently. Greetings and farewells accounts for the third largest proportion. This result confirmed the findings of Throne (2008), Rankin
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et al. (2008), Reinders and Wattana (2010) and Peterson (2012) that conversational openings or greetings and conversational closings or leave-takings are essential speech acts in the game worlds. This result showed that the participants in the study had tried to establish or maintain relationship with other teammates. Directives were frequently produced by fluent English speakers but seldom by the participants. In the studies carried out by Throne (2008), Rankin et al. (2008), Reinders and Wattana (2010), and Petersons (2012), players were found to produce speech to influence others’ action or the world around them. This might result from the fact that in the previous studies the participants were advanced learners while in the current study the language learners only achieved intermediate English level. Another possible reason is that, compared with their team members, participants in the present study had less GW2 gameplay experience.
4.2 The Subcategories of Speech Acts Produced in the MMORPG 4.2.1 The Subcategories of Speech Act Produced by Language Learners
The total number of the eight participants’ produced sentences is 110. Table 9 presents the number of occurrence and the percentage of the 22 subcategories in the speech of the participants. Five subcategories account for more than ten percent respectively. Seeking factual information (s3) accounts for 12.73%; reporting on actions (s6) accounts for 10.91%; showing gratitude (s14) occupies 10.91%;
expressing excitement and emotion (s12) takes up 13.64%; greetings (s19) occupies 10.91%.
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Table 9
The Number of Occurrence and the Percentage of the 22 Subcategories of Speech Act in the Speech of Language Learners
Coding number
The name of the subcategory Number of occurrence
Percentage
s1 Providing factual information 7 6.36%
s2 Providing perspective/opinions 5 4.55%
s3 Seeking factual information 14 12.73%
s4 Seeking perspective/opinions 1 0.91%
s5 Expressing need 1 0.91%
s18 Clarification requests 0 0.00%
s19 Greetings 12 10.91%
s20 farewells 4 3.64%
s21 Correcting others’ language 0 0.00%
s22 Correcting their own language 0 0.00%
Total 110 100.00%
Figure 5 presents the 22 subcategories in the speech of the eight participants from the most to the least. The five speech acts subcategories of higher rates (higher than 10 percentage) would be discussion in the following paragraphs.
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Figure 5. The 22 subcategories in the speech of participants from the most to the least
The speech act that accounts for the most is expressing excitement or emotion. In is observed that participants tended to be more emotional and excited during the combats, which might be one of the reasons they constantly produced speech to express their feelings. In addition, participants were found to frequently use emoticons, i.e. pictorial representations of facial expressions, to display their emotions.
This finding is consistent with Reinders and Wattana (2010)’s discovery that emoticons were commonly used in the MMORPG worlds. The possible reason is that emoticons and exclamatory words are simple and easier for players to produce during the fights. Some examples from the data are presented as follows.
(1) Scenario 1:
Learner 6: r u going to ac story mode?
Player 1: No Sorry Learner 16: Alright Learner 16: : ) [s14]
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
s14 s3 s6 s12 s19 s7 s9 s1 s2 s11 s20 s15 s13 s4 s5 s16 s8 s10 s17 s18 s21 s22
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Scenario 1 showed that the participant used an emoticon to express that he was feeling fine with the rejection.
(2) Scenario 2:
Player 1: Sorry.
Player 1: I keep losing connection.
Learner 10: OH > < [s14]
In scenario 2, the participant used the exclamation word and an emoticon to show his feeling about the problem his teammate met.
(3) Scenario 3:
Learner 8: Oh no [s14]
Learner 8: I dropped in the river and die…
Player 1: : ‘ (
In scenario 3, the participant produced exclamation words to show his depression of the problem he encountered.
From these examples it could be inferred that in the MMORPG world language learners may have a great number of opportunities to produce speech that aims to express their emotions and feelings in the MMORPG worlds.
The second largest speech act subcategory is seeking factual information (s3).
Since this is the first time the participants joined an instance, it would be reasonable that they may ask for more information from other players who had more experience in the gameplay. By carrying out this speech act, participants can upgrade themselves and have close cooperation with their group members. This result dovetails with Rankin et al. (2008)’s discovery in which players were shown to make requests for game information. Followings are some scenarios taken from participants’ speech.
(1) Scenario 1:
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Learner 1: What’s casket? [s3]
(2) Scenario 2:
Learner 3: Do u guys know how to pt someone? [s3]
Player 1: Pt?
Player 1: Idk ask him to clarify. (Idk= I don’t know)
From Scenario 1, and 2, it could be inferred that in the MMORPG world participants asked factual questions in order to get the game-related information he wanted.
Reporting on actions (s6) occupies the third highest rate. The action or status of each player in the group is essential for the achievement of the whole group; as a result, players may report their own actions in order to let other members have a clearer idea of what the present situation is and what they will do next as a group. The cooperation could be more coordinated. The followings are some speech produced by the participants in the present study.
(1) Scenario 1 Learner 10: Oh no
Learner 10: I left the map. [s6]
Learner 10: Are you still fighting?
Player1: y
Learner 10: How (can) I go back to you?
(2) Scenario 2:
Learner 10: I can’t go out [s6]
Player 1: why?
Learner 10: trapped [s6]
In scenario 1 and 2, the participant reported his action, allowing his group mates to know his present status so that other members can have a better understanding of present combat condition. Therefore, reporting on actions is an important speech acts
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that participants need to produce in the MMORPG worlds.
Showing gratitude (s12) is as well the third largest subcategory. This discovery corresponds to most of the previous studies (Throne, 2008; Rankin et al., 2008;
Reinders ,& Wattana, 2010; Zeng et al., 2009; Peterson, 2012) on MMORPG interaction that players may produce certain speech in order to maintain good relationship with other players. Participants in the current research were observed to express their gratitude in two conditions. First, they would show their gratitude when they were saved or assisted by other group members during the fights. Second, they showed their gratitude after the instance was finished in order to praise all the members’ efforts. Almost all the participants would show their appreciation in the two conditions, and thus showing gratitude takes up a large proportion of produced speech.
(1) Scenario 1: (during the instance fight) Learner 2: hah
Learner 2: Thanks, u r my hero [12]
Player 1: lol Player 1: np
In scenario 1, the participant was assisted by another player during the instance fight, and thus he expressed his appreciation for the player’s help.
(2) Scenario 2 : (the whole instance fight is over) Player 1: Thanks for grp guys
Player 1: was really clean Learner 1: Thanks [s12]
In scenario 2, the participant thanked the group members for their efforts after the whole instance was over.
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From the findings it is shown that expressing gratitude is one of the important speech acts for players in the MMORPEG world.
Greetings (s19) is also the third largest speech act subcategory in the present study. It is an important speech act that helps to establish relationship with other players, and thus previous researchers, including Throne (2008), Rankin et al. (2008), Zeng et al. (2009), Reinders and Wattana (2010), and Peterson (2012), all identified this speech act in their studies. The followings are some examples from participants’
speech.
(1) Scenario 1:
Learner 1: hi [s19]
Learner 1: yo [s19]
Learner 1: you want to go to AC?
Player 1: Hell yeah (2) Scenario 2:
Player 1: add you
Learner 3: nice to meet you [s19]
Player 2: =)
Player 2: nice to meet you too
From the results, it is shown that greetings is an important speech act that was often carried out by the participants in the MMORPG world.
4.2.2 The Subcategories of Speech Act Produced by the Fluent English Speakers In total, the fluent English speakers produced 380 sentences. Table 10 shows the number of occurrence and the percentage of the 22 subcategories of speech act in the speech of these players.
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Table 10
The Number of Occurrence and the Percentage of the 22 Subcategories of Speech Act in the Speech of the Fluent English Speakers
Coding number
The name of the subcategory Number of occurrence
Percentage
s1 Providing factual information 45 11.84%
s2 Providing perspective/opinions 51 13.42%
s3 Seeking factual information 21 5.53%
s4 Seeking perspective/opinions 11 2.89%
s5 Expressing need 20 5.26%
s18 Clarification requests 0 0.00%
s19 Greetings 13 3.42%
s20 farewells 6 1.58%
s21 Correcting others’ language 0 0.00%
s22 Correcting their own language 0 0.00%
Total 380 100.00%
Four subcategories of speech act take up more than ten percent respectively.
Providing factual information (s1) account for 11.84%, and providing perspective or opinions (s2) occupies 13.42%. 13.16% goes to reporting on actions (s6) and 10.53 % goes to expressing excitement and emotion (s14).
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Figure 6. The 22 subcategories in the speech of the fluent English speakers from the most to the least
Figure 6 displayed the 22 subcategories in the speech of the fluent English speakers from the most to the least. The subcategory that accounts for the most is giving commands (s10). This result matches Rankin et al. (2008)’s observation that players may produce speech to influence other PCs’ future actions. In order to achieve cooperation and coordination, players with more gameplay experience tend to give commands to others with less experience in the instance. Giving commands is more efficient than giving suggestions, which might be the reason why players may command other members to do something rather than request others to do something especially during the intense fight. The following are examples excerpted from the speech data.
(1) Scenario 1
Player 1: Wait for all [s10]
Player 1: Stop! [s10]
Player 1: Don’t trigger fire [s10]
Learner 1: I know
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
18.00%
s10 s2 s6 s1 s14 s3 s12 s5 s19 s4 s7 s13 s15 s11 s20 s8 s9 s16 s17 s18 s21 s22
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(2) Scenario 2
Player 1: Keep them separated [s10]
Player 1: Open on at a time [s10]
Player 1: We are not super heroes or the fantastic 4 Player 2: yes we are lol
(3) Scenario 3:
Player 1: Go [s10]
Player 2: Don’t go up [s10]
Player 2: Don’t leave me too far, buf [s10]
In scenario 1, 2, and 3, the players would give orders, asking others to do or not to do something.
(4) Scenario 4:
Player 1: Just pt me. [s10]
Learner 3: pt?
Learner 3: I don’t know what is pt (I don’t know what pt is) Player 1: Click the arrow and put my name with invite [s10]
In scenario 4, it is shown that player 1 attempted to teach Learner 3 how to do something, and he/she gave orders to achieve this purpose.
This result showed that giving commands is an essential speech act in the speech of players in the MMORPG world. The most important thing in the MMORPG worlds is to have achievements in combats. In order to make the group play more coordinated, sometimes it is necessary to give orders or commands to others, which indicates MMORPG worlds provides many opportunities or conditions for players to carry out the speech act of commanding.
The subcategory of providing perspectives or opinions (s2) takes up the second largest proportion. This result is consistent with Throne (2008) and Rankin et al.’s
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studies where they found that players may produce speech to provide game-related knowledge or produce statements to reveal their knowledge of the game, self, or world. Before they entered the instance or after they finished the instance, it is observed that players may exchange opinions or perspectives related to the game.
This might result from the fact that before players began the fight, sometimes they need to wait for other members to come to the place, which allowed them to have time to chat with their teammates and exchange opinions. After they finished the instance, players as well gained some time to chat with each other and they tended to share some opinions about the group play they just completed. The followings are some examples from the present study.
(1) Scenario 1 (before enter the instance)
Player 1: Can’t find a dungeon in my home world lol Player 2: Wouldn’t be any diff here lol [s2]
Scenario 1 occurred before the players entered the dungeon. Player 2 shared his/her opinions about the difficulties of finding dungeons.
(2) Scenario 2 (after finished the instance) Player 1: Thanks all
Player 1: That was the smoothest I’ve ever done this [s2]
Player 2: I’ve done this a lot lol
(3) Scenario 3 (after finished the instance) Player 1: thanks for that run
Player 1: was fun [s2]
Player 2: nice one [s2]
Player 3: sadly no troll lol [s2]
Learner 3: thanks
Learner 3: that was fun [s2]
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Scenario 2 and Scenario 3 occurred after the players finished the instance. They expressed their positive perspectives of the group play.
This finding shows that players like to share their perspectives or opinions of the game-related topics when they gain time to do so.
Reporting on actions is the third largest subcategory of speech act. As discussed in the previous section of results of the eight participants, the speech that functions to report on actions is indispensable in the group play because the real-time condition of each player may make a great impact on the accomplishments of the group as a whole.
The followings are some examples from the present study.
(1) Scenario 1
Player1: 1 sec…running to bathroom. I’ll catch up. [s6]
Player 2: ok.
Player 2: Guys, don’t go in till he’s back.
In scenario 1, Player 1 reported that he/she needed to go to the bathroom. On the basis of this notification, another player asked everyone not to start their next fight until Player 1 is back.
(2) Scenario 2
Player 1: I’m seeing the exp window [s6]
Player 2: Just close it.
In scenario 2, one player reported that he saw something and thus another player commanded him or her to take some other action.
(3) Scenario 3:
Player 1: I’m lagging a bit. [s6]
Player 1: Sorry.
In Scenario 3, a player reported his or her Internet condition was not stable so that he/she was lagging, which might have negative effects on the group play, and
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thus the player apologized to the whole group.
From this result, it is evident that reporting on action is an essential speech act for group play in MMORPG gameplay.
Providing factual information (s1) occupies the fourth largest proportion in the speech of the 29 players. This result is consistent with Throne (2008)’s and Rankin et al. (2008)’s findings that players may offered game-related expert knowledge or provide assertive statements to show their knowledge of the game, self, or world. In the group play, it is essential for players to have some common knowledge of certain things so that they can achieve the target with less misunderstanding. Therefore, players may produce speech to inform other players of certain facts. Followings are some examples excerpted from the current research.
(1) Scenario 1:
Player 1: We are doing story not exp [s1]
Player 2: Throw up story mode for us!
In scenario 1, one player provided a piece of factual information in order to remind the group members that what they will do next.
(2) Scenario 2:
Player 1: Oh well wanna do exp?
Player 2: You need to be level 35. [s1]
In Scenario 2, Player 2 produced a piece of factual information so that Player 1 would know he/she did not have the capacity to join the instance.
From this result, it could be inferred that providing factual information is one of the important speech act in the group play of MMORPG.
The fifth largest speech act is expressing excitement or emotions (s14). The first possible reason is that this speech act helps to alleviate intense emotions and they are comparatively easy to produce since the expressions are relatively short and
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grammatically simple. Some scenarios are as follows.
(1) Scenario 1:
Learner 6: I press the wrong bottom Player 1: lol [s14]
Player 1: nvm (never mind) (2) Scenario 2:
Player 1: There
Player 1: Thank god. [s14]
Player 2: It worked.
(3) Scenario 3:
Player 1: I’m dead.
Player 1: thx Player 2: np
Player 2: Dam lol [s14]
The above three scenarios display the players’ realization of the speech act of expressing excitement or emotions. From this result, it is evident that the speech act of expressing excitement or emotions is an essential part of players’ speech.
4.2.3 Comparison between the Subcategories of Speech Act Produced by the Two Groups of Players
Figure 7 displays the distance between the occurring percentages of subcategories of speech act identified in the speech of the eight participants and those of fluent English speakers.
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Figure 7. Comparison between the percentage of the of speech act subcategories in participants’ speech and those of the fluent English speakers’ speech
4.2.3.1 The Dominant Subcategories of Speech Acts in the Speech of Both Groups As shown in Figure 7, two subcategories of speech act are dominant in the MMORPG interaction are reporting on actions (s6) and expressing excitement or emotion (s14), both of which takes up more than ten percent respectively in the speech of two groups of people.
Reporting on actions (s6), as discussed in previous sections, is an indispensable speech act because the condition of every member in the group play may affect the outcome of the game. As a result, no matter they are familiar with the instance or not and no matter their command of English is good or not, all the people join the group play may produce speech to report the real-time condition of their own characters or of themselves.
During the play, players tend to be more emotional and excited and therefore expressing excitement and emotions (s14) is a way to vent their emotions. In addition, the use of words and the grammatical structure of the expressions are usually simpler.
For example, exclamation words such as “oh” or “wow” and emoticons such as “:)”
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
18.00%
s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 s6 s7 s8 s9 s10 s11 s12 s13 s14 s15 s16 s17 s18 s19 s20 s21 s22
Participants' speech The other players' speech
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are easier for the players to type really fast during the play, where the players are busy with controlling their avatar to fight against enemies. Therefore, the speech act of expressing excitement and emotions accounts for a relatively large proportion in the
are easier for the players to type really fast during the play, where the players are busy with controlling their avatar to fight against enemies. Therefore, the speech act of expressing excitement and emotions accounts for a relatively large proportion in the