The Subcategories of Speech Act Produced by the Fluent English

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