英雄實踐聯盟：從語言學角度探討大型多人線上遊戲玩家的社會認同

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論. 文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 英雄實踐聯盟：從語言學角度探討大型多人線上遊戲玩家的社會認同 League of Practice: Identity as Linguistic Construction in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. 指導教授：蘇席瑤 Advisor: Dr. Hsi-yao Su 研究生：張哲瑋. 中華民國一零六年一月 January 2017.

(2) 摘要本研究以社會語言學的觀點探討大型多人線上遊戲 (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) 中參與者們是如何透過言談以創建一虛擬的實踐社群 (Community of Practice)，又團體中是如何協調彼此的角色定位或身份認同 (Identity)。科技變遷，網際網路早已成為許多人不可或缺的生活伴侶，而大型多人線上遊戲尤其是當今文化中主流的社交場域。儘管如此，該互動平台卻甚少於學術界探討；在網路論壇和即時通訊應用程式漸漸為社會語言學者關切的同時，令人好奇的是，通常被視為休閒活動的線上遊戲是否亦乘載著豐富的社會訊息。本論文採人種誌研究法 (Ethnography)，研究者以「田野調查」的方式深入線上遊戲世界，共同參與該虛擬社會中的活動，並觀察紀錄玩家之間的互動模式。語料來源為英雄聯盟 (League of Legends) 此款於全球風靡已久的多人在線競技遊戲 (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)，共蒐集了一百場遊戲間玩家在對話窗口的互動情形。從玩家們的言語行為 (Speech Act)，和其所透露的立場表達 (Stancetaking)，我們得以推衍出該實踐社群的成員是藉何種互為主體性的策略 (Tactics of Intersubjectivity) 以認同自我及他人的社會角色。身份認同的概念在以往被看作是個體生理或心理素質的體現，直到後現代主義時期成為能夠透過言談建構的社會意涵，進而發展為二十一世紀的學者們口中，社會互動及意識型態編織下的結晶 (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, 2005)。本研究以此對社會認同之現代觀點為跳板，視線上遊戲中玩家們之間的言談為相互定義及塑造個體社會形象的重要媒介，以進一步探究該社群網路中的人際與社會動態。研究結果指出，英雄聯盟玩家為一實踐社群的假設不僅可從該團體中對彼此的行為規範 (Norms of Conduct) 見端倪，成員們之間所使用的語言亦是有力的證據。不管是就語言形式或功能來看，英雄聯盟的玩家似乎有著一套共通且獨特的用語，外界的人不易理解。在此社群中最常見的語言溝通模式包含戰略消息通報、情緒反應、情勢分析、遊戲表現評論，以及行動策劃；大部份的成員尤其會用命令的口吻要求隊友配合執行任務，或因為遊戲中的挫折而責難他人，說明著他們習慣用較具攻擊性 (Aggression) 的態度來展現自己相對專業的玩家身份。值得注意的是，本研究所討論具攻擊性的行為表現不應標籤於全體的英雄聯盟玩 i.

(3) 家，而需被視為區辨該社群內一次團體的重要因素，此類型的玩家視遊戲內建的聊天系統為遊玩時行使社會權力 (Social Power) 的最佳途徑。本研究試圖藉著對言談詳細的描述來帶出線上遊戲玩家遊玩的過程中社會意義的協調 (Negotiation of Meaning)，包括該實踐社群理念與目標的共建，以及成員間社會地位的相互認同。我們從調查中得知線上遊戲對某些人來說並非如想像般「休閒」，反而牽涉嚴肅的人際議題，也就是說，線上遊戲這個社交平台可以被看作是玩家與他人、更是與自我對話的學習基地。關鍵詞：大型多人線上遊戲、實踐社群、身份認同、言語行為、立場表達、互為主體性策略. ii.

(4) ABSTRACT As technology thrives, the Internet has become a life partner for almost each person in this modern generation; we also cannot deny that massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) play an important role in social networks for some of us. Despite that, this social platform has barely been touched upon in academia. While online forums and instant messengers have been heatedly discussed among many sociolinguists, little attention has been paid to the question whether massively multiplayer online games, well known as a type of leisure activities, are also imbued with social meaning. From the perspective of sociocultural linguistics, the present study aims to examine how online game “inhabitants” construct a community of practice and negotiate social positions and identities through discourse. We follow the ethnographic method of conducting fieldwork, immersing ourselves in the online game world through participation in gameplay activities and observing participants interaction with each other. I chose the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game League of Legends (LoL) to be my data source, because it is one of the most popular MMOGs around the world in recent years; I recorded one hundred matches of the game and focused my analysis on the textual communication in their game chats. It is expected that the speech acts performed through the exchange of talk could be interpreted as stancetaking moves that implicate on the intersubjectivity tactics used by the players to establish identity relations. The concept of identity had previously been seen as a representation of an individual’s physical or mental character; it was not until the era of postmodernism that it started to be treated as interrelated with discourse, which opens a channel to the 21st century view that identity is a product of both micro-empirical interaction and ideology. This viewpoint serves as a springboard for the present study, which treats iii.

(5) the game chats as an important medium for the co-construction of players’ personas and thus their interpersonal dynamics. The result of the study shows that the sense of community of practice characterizing LoL players can be evident in not only the members’ shared norms of conduct but also their use of language. It seems that LoL players as a social group have a specialized register for communication that is esoteric to outsiders, with regard to linguistic forms and pragmatic functions. The communicative practices that are most frequently seen in the community include tactical reports, expressions of feelings, analyses of the current situations, appraisals of previous plays, and plans of actions. Among them, most players are involved in the use of directives for asking for allies’ cooperation and negative appraisals against others’ bad performances, which shows that they are used to taking aggressive stances to display their professional gamer identities. What is worthy of notice is that such aggressive verbal behavior should not be over-generalized to all LoL players but serve to distinguish a subgroup within them, who tend to exert their social power via the in-game messaging service. The current study attempts to bring out the negotiation of social meaning among a group of MMOG players, including the joint enterprise and its members’ intersubjectivity. It seems that, for some, playing MMOGs is not so much a leisure activity as a way of life where they engage in serious thought on the matter of identity; that is, an MMOG is not only a platform for players’ mutual communication but also a social learning system for their communication with themselves about what kinds of gamers they shall present. Keywords: massively multiplayer online games, community of practice, identity, speech act, stancetaking, tactics of intersubjectivity. iv.

(6) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This has been a happy journey, yet with torment of all kinds. I stepped into the field of academia with pride and drive, but my confidence has ever been shaken so badly. Honestly speaking, these four years of study are not at all concentrated; they are interwoven with one year of part-time teaching, one year of military service, and any minute of uneasiness caused by teaching jobs preparation. The journey has lasted so long that I sometimes forget what I set out to do in here. Without the love others have given to me, I would never be able to go this far. For starters, I would like to show my thanks to my dearest instructor Professor Hsi-Yao Su, who I have known since my undergraduate days in the department. Her mind-blowing lectures on Language and Gender, Sociolinguistics, and Identity and Language Ideologies inspired and further motivated me to become a sociolinguist. Special gratitude goes to her encouragement and support during the hard times, as well as her belief in my ability to carry out a pioneering study. Because of her, my work could really reflect who I am and what I deem to be meaningful in this world. I would also like to appreciate the help from my thesis committee members, Professor Miao-Hsia Chang and Professor Hong-Chi Shiau, with regard to their incisive comments and useful suggestions that brought my work to the next level of significance. Particularly, I want to thank Professor Miao-Hsia Chang for the effort she has put in to make my research better position in the field of linguistics. My gratitude also goes to Professor Hong-Chi Shiau for his generous sharing of ideas and materials that have broadened my intellect within the media and communication discipline. I shall take the opportunity to show my appreciation to the professors of the English Department at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) who have always v.

(7) been supportive of my career goals. I thank Professor Lindsey N.H. Chen for being willing to instruct me in conducting a cultural study on youth slang when I was just an undergraduate wandering about the future; I thank her for letting me pluck up the courage to pursue academic excellence in the field of linguistics. My sincerest gratitude also goes to Professor Jen-I Li, who prepped me for my first ever research presentation at an academic conference; I appreciate her encouragement and faith in me throughout the graduate school years. I want to furthermore deliver my thanks to Professor Yuh-Show Cheng, who has been accompanying me at many times of decision making on this treacherous journey. If there is any bit of pride I have in this study, I will give a great part of the credit to the company of my friends in all these days. I thank my fellow graduate classmates Jennifer Hsu and John Lu for their academic and emotional support when we together embarked on the life as both part-time students and part-time teachers. I would also like to thank my study partners Perry Lin, Sheng-Yu Kao, and Simon Shih for their positive and hard-working aura; this work is a memento for the valuable time we spent with each other. Finally, I am thankful for the love and care from my best friends Anita Chiang, John Lu, Vian Hsu, and Ying Chou. None of the hardship would turn into joy and sense of achievement if it weren’t for them. I want to dedicate the last lines to my beloved family; I cannot imagine how lucky I am to have them in this lifetime of mine. I thank my father Chien-Pang Chang for his trying to become a better parent; I love him for accepting me the way I am, instead of turning me into someone else. I thank my grandma A-Yeh Yang for her delicious meals as always, which have made me healthy enough to fight off the obstacles ahead. I am grateful to my cousin, Jerry Chou, whose brotherhood with me is one of the things I cherish the most in my whole life; all the joy we shared together has given me the strength to carry on with my dream. My indescribable gratitude goes vi.

(8) to my “mother” Su-Huei Chang for walking me through all those trials with her benevolence and generosity; the outpouring love and care I receive from her has always been the source of my power to live a life where nothing is impossible. For all the people who have helped me in regards to the study or made me who I am today, I love you from the bottom of my heart. This thesis is heartily dedicated to my mom, who took the lead to heaven years ago; thank you for always being by my side, my beautiful angel.. vii.

(9) TABLE OF CONTENTS CHINESE ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... i ENGLISH ABSTRACT ................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... viii LIST OF TABLES................................................................................................................................ x LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................1 1.1 Overview ..........................................................................................................1 1.2 Motivation and Research Questions ................................................................3 1.3 Outline of the Study .........................................................................................7 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................8 2.1 Theorizing Identity...........................................................................................8 2.1.1 Identity in the Flow of History ..............................................................9 2.1.2 Discourse and Identity .........................................................................10 2.1.3 Community of Practice ........................................................................17 2.1.4 Identity and Its Relevant Concepts ......................................................22 2.2 Identity in Cyberspace ...................................................................................26 2.2.1 Online Identity .....................................................................................27 2.2.2 Massively Multiplayer Online Gamer Identity ....................................33 2.3 Summary ........................................................................................................40 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................42 3.1 Data Collection ..............................................................................................42 3.1.1 Why League of Legends? .....................................................................42 3.1.2 Virtual Ethnography .............................................................................46 3.2 Data Analysis .................................................................................................53 3.2.1 An Integrative Approach ......................................................................53 3.2.2 Practices of Language Use...................................................................57 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF IN-GAME TEXTUAL INTERACTION ...................................61 4.1 League of Legends Gamers as a Community of Practice ..............................62 4.2 Linguistic Practices of League of Legends Gamers .......................................71 4.2.1 Morpho-Syntax ....................................................................................73 4.2.2 Youth Slang ..........................................................................................76 4.2.3 Offensive Slang....................................................................................81 4.2.4 Computer-Mediated Communication Slang ........................................87 4.2.5 Massively Multiplayer Online Game Jargons .....................................95 4.2.6 Typos and Wrong Input Language ..................................................... 111 viii.

(10) 4.2.7 Implication for Identity ...................................................................... 113 4.3 Communicative Practices of League of Legends Gamers ........................... 114 4.3.1 Tactical Reports ................................................................................. 115 4.3.2 Expressions of Feelings ..................................................................... 118 4.3.3 Analyses of the Current Situations ....................................................124 4.3.4 Appraisals of Previous Plays .............................................................131 4.3.5 Plans of Actions .................................................................................144 4.3.6 Frequencies of Use ............................................................................154 4.4 Identity Categories of League of Legends Gamers ......................................158 CHAPTER 5 ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEW RESPONSES AND DATA DISCUSSION ..........198 5.1 League of Legends Gamers as a Community of Practice (Revisited)..........198 5.2 The Ostensible Marriage between Discourse and Identity ..........................200 5.3 The Contextualization of Identity Work ......................................................206 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION .........................................................................................218 6.1 Summary of the Study .................................................................................218 6.2 Significance of the Study .............................................................................222 6.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research .......................................224 BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................................227. ix.

(11) LIST OF TABLES Table 1. The stereotypical matching of locations in charge to team positions and champion roles ..............................................................................................65 Table 2. The norms of practice expected for the five team positions .........................67 Table 3. Linguistic identity practices of League of Legends gamers ..........................72 Table 4. Jargons of game mechanics used by League of Legends players..................99 Table 5. Collocate jargons of game mechanics used by League of Legends players ....................................................................................................................105 Table 6. Jargons of player ideologies in League of Legends ....................................107 Table 7. Slang meanings of GG, lei, and OP in League of Legends and real life..... 110 Table 8. Examples of tactical reports ........................................................................ 116 Table 9. Examples of analyses of the current situations (single turns) .....................124 Table 10. The implied suggestions of the analyses of the current situations in Games No. 29 and 58 ..............................................................................................128 Table 11. The possible meanings of the analyses of the current situations in Games No. 14, 32, 63, 69, and 92 as acts of impoliteness ............................................130 Table 12. Examples of commissives as plans of actions in League of Legends game chat ..............................................................................................................145 Table 13. Examples of directives as plans of actions in League of Legends game chat ....................................................................................................................147. x.

(12) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. A screenshot of League of Legends gameplay.............................................49 Figure 2. A zooming-up chat window during League of Legends gameplay..............49 Figure 3. Interrelationships among community of practice, stancetaking, and tactics of intersubjectivity ............................................................................................55 Figure 4. The zooming-up minimap from the screenshot of gameplay before Excerpt 2 conversation ..................................................................................................76 Figure 5. The numbers of players (out of the 400 informers) who participate in the communicative practices of tactical reports, expressions of feelings, analyses of the current situations, appraisals of previous plays, and plans of actions ....................................................................................................................155 Figure 6. The numbers of players (out of the 400 informers) who participate in the communicative practices of positive appraisals of previous plays, negative appraisals of previous plays, promises of actions, and directions to actions ....................................................................................................................157 Figure 7. A screenshot of the team getting ready for the game by positioning themselves in the key passages on the map ................................................161 Figure 8. A screenshot of the bottom laners helping the jungler kill the Krugs .......162 Figure 9. A screenshot of the enemy champions invading the team’s home base after the losing team fight ...................................................................................172. xi.

(13) CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION. 1.1 Overview It has become a platitude that social technology is growing massively in the early twenty-first century. Concomitant with the digital revolution is the development of computer-simulated reality on the Internet. This virtual environment provides users with a platform for social interaction and, more importantly, a sense of presence in another dimension of the world. In most virtual realities, people are required to create user accounts, with which they share with others their thoughts and respond to others’ posts. Since it is not necessary that the users display their “true” identities there, some seem to be able to step out their comfort zones to show off whatever they have got or to communicate with people in a bolder way. In other words, the constructed persona in the cyberspace could be a very different one from its real-life correspondence. Maybe because of this, virtual or online identities, together with their intellectual property and reputations built online, start to be taken seriously and protected by. 1.

(14) laws.1 This sense of integrity attributed to online identities themselves, with no reference to the real-world users, has also expanded a new research area in the field of sociology and anthropology where what matters is the selves in a “network” of relationships within the boundaries of particular virtual worlds. Among virtual realities for entertainment, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are the category that has dominated the market for at least twenty years, executed from network-capable platforms from personal computers to smartphones and other mobile devices in recent days. Although the popularity of mobile games appears to gradually outgrow that of console games, there are still some games on the PC that hold their positions in the market of the younger generation. The multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends is the most successful example in early 2010s, not only in the West but also in Taiwan. From the perspective of discourse-based ethnography, the present study aims to explore the emergence of online identities from computer-mediated communication (CMC) found in League of Legends. I take League of Legends as a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) whose members construct their characters’ identities as intersubjective 1. In May 2016, a Taiwanese player of the online video game League of Legends was sued for maliciously calling another player naocan ‘moron.’ He was punished for committing defamation on the grounds of the fact that the avatars’ social statuses on the Internet are also built on interpersonal relationships and reputations managed and maintained with great effort. 2.

(15) to each other, through the social practice of textual interaction. For this end, I choose the in-game chat logs as my conversational database for analysis, which are gathered from one hundred matches of League of Legends. Along with detailed description of how the participants utter and interpret language, including its forms and pragmatic meanings, I bring their stancetaking (e.g. Du Bois, 2007; Englebretson, 2007; Jaffe, 2009; Ochs, 1996) moves to the level of acts of identity and community membership in the terms of tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, 2005). By resorting to this identity framework, I am able to present the players’ claims to themselves or others being a particular member type with more precise vocabulary and clearer organization.. 1.2 Motivation and research questions Although MMOGs have been treated as complex worlds for social learning in prior studies from an ethnographic stance, self-categorization or identity has rarely been the focus, not to mention reference to identity theories and their use on linguistic data. This niche opens up unanswered questions about how identity emerges from the specific discourse of League of Legends.. 3.

(16) For starters, it is interesting to see whether the aggregate of LoL players can be defined as a community of practice, given the players’ regular interactions during the mutual engagement in LoL gaming. If it can, then concerns with identity here could be seen as matters of membership, which have been meaningfully addressed in sociological terms. Next, in line with the premise that LoL community is a community of practice, we linguists need to tease out which linguistic levels of structure and use are of great importance in the indexical processes of instantiating gamer identity, those treated as part of the community’s competence that distinguishes members from outsiders. These two main research gaps are rephrased in the form of questions below: 1. Can the LoL community be regarded as a community of practice? If yes, how? 2. How or through what linguistic forms and functions is membership in the LoL community of practice indexed? When noting the idiosyncrasies of LoL game world, one may also be curious about whether they facilitate or limit means of communication among the players and therefore shape the presentations of selves there. This interference of the contextual factors in LoL is three-fold. First, owing to the mediation of computer networks, there is a possibility that the features of CMC such as its hyperpersonal nature would. 4.

(17) cultivate identity or relational work very different from that resulting from face-to-face interaction. Second, MMOG players constitute a virtual community whose existence relies on not only their textual negotiation of common interests, needs and norms of conduct, but also their joint practice of gaming. This difference from other types of communities in the cyberspace could pose intriguing questions as to whether the social practice of gaming serves an additional reference point for players’ intersubjectivity in MMOGs like LoL. Lastly, compared to the most studied MMOGs in the previous literature like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Lineage such massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), League of Legends is characterized by one-shot groups of players who have much less anticipation of future interaction and partnerships, because of its Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre of gameplay. Considering this point, it is quite possible that the participants’ identity relations with each other are contextualized by the game world but in a completely different way. These concerns with the environment of LoL as an intermediary between discourse and identity bring out our third research question:. 5.

(18) 3. How do the features of CMC, virtual community of online gaming, and the game mechanics of MOBA contribute to the emergence of LoL gamer identity, as revealed through textual interaction during gameplay? Again, under the premise that LoL is a virtual community of practice, it is very crucial to tap into the relationship between the use of language and formation of some ethnographically-specific membership roles, not just the collective gamer identity. This attention to micro participant roles gives rise to our last research question: 4.. What are the possible ethnographically specific membership roles in the virtual community of practice LoL? How are they interactionally achieved?. Besides all these theoretical motivations, this study is set out to back up previous studies showing that participation in video games is a process of enculturation and requires complex cognitive and cultural skills (e.g. Brown & Bell, 2004; Nardi & Harris, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006). In this respect, MMOGs should not be overly judged as having a frivolous nature or inviting “inert reception” (Solomon, 2004). Rather, they may have always been providing a space where participants reflect on their interpersonal skills and explore different aspects of their identity, hence implications for cognitive development and pedagogy.. 6.

(19) 1.3 Outline of the study The following chapters serve to acquaint readers with relevant theoretical concepts and the study’s analytic methods before getting into investigation of the conversational data for clues to League of Legends gamer identities. Chapter 2 reviews the historical roots of the concept of identity and how it is later realized as emerging from discourse. Subsequently, virtual identity is covered given the topic at hand. The community of practice theory, as following the discursive view of identity, is also included in there. Chapter 3 introduces my use of the method of discourse-analysis based ethnography to collect data for analysis, which is followed by the introduction of an integrative analytic approach, namely combining the virtues of community of practice, stancetaking, and tactics of intersubjectivity. Chapter 4 in turn presents the analysis of selected discourse from one hundred matches of League of Legends gaming, and Chapter 5 discusses our findings with the help of interview responses of some real-life gamers. Chapter 6, last but not least, concludes the study with its significance and implications for future research.. 7.

(20) CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. Since identity is the locus of the present study, this chapter covers first relevant theories and theoretical notions in relation to identity, which is followed by a discussion of identity in the realm of cyberspace. Afterwards, identity is introduced as an issue concerned in the research on MMOGs.. 2.1 Theorizing identity This section attempts a robust but only relevant review on how the concept of identity is researched in the history. From a static entity to a negotiable one, identity has been theorized in different ways. In recent views, it “emerges” from not just the state of mind but real-life practices and discourse. This discursive view of identity is further supported by the sense of membership held in the community of practice theory. At the end of the section, identity is apposed with relevant concepts in order for clarifying the role it plays in the present study.. 8.

(21) 2.1.1. Identity in the flow of history. The concept of identity, in its previous theorized formations, is hardly associated with actual discourse. From the Age of Enlightenment and the Renaissance to the second half of the twentieth century, according to Benwell and Stokoe (2006), the notion of identity had been referred to as a projection of the self or a subject located in the social. With the former view, identity is a reflection of an individual’s state of mind; it is an innate quality endowed with cognition or sensibility (Taylor, 1989; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). With the latter, identity is the subject’s assigned membership of a particular social group; it exists only in relation to others with the same or different group labels (Tajfel, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). 2 Although the above two perspectives on identity enlighten future research in totally different ways, they resemble one another in their emphasis on identity’s essentialist nature.3 That is, they both suggest that identity is a single, essential reality inside oneself. In this sense, the conceptualization of identity does not involve reference to real engagement in social practices, including. 2. This sociological account of identity is the predecessor of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and variationist sociolinguistics (e.g. Trudgill, 1974). 3 The use of the term “essentialist” here is meant to refer back to the view of essentialism characterizing Plato’s and Aristotle’s works. In their view, there should be an essence or specific quality behind any concept that makes it what it is (Cartwright, 1968). 9.

(22) negotiation of talk (Hall, 2000; Lave & Wenger, 1991; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). It was not until post modernity (end of twentieth and early twenty-first century) that identity started to shake off its image as a preexisting subjectivity. With an attitude of distrust toward what has been objectively defined as reality and truth, postmodernism is characterized as an uncertain era when identity is realized to be dislocated from the internal, ideologically labeled self. The notion of identity should be “fluid” and “fragmentary” (Giddens, 1991; Laclau, 1990; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). This movement against Enlightenment rationality paves the road for discursive views of identity that hold that identity is a patchwork of representations from culturally entrenched semiotic systems and indeterminate play of selves within discourse. Concerning the goal of the current research, we shall focus on the interrelationship between identity and discourse and how it is theorized in the literature.. 2.1.2. Discourse and identity. Identity from a discursive point of view has been studied in primarily two discursive. 10.

(23) scopes (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). A group of accounts sets sight on broader pictures, where identity is realized in terms of the existing sociocultural and sociohistorical structures, with ideological power placing constraints on constitution of the self (e.g. Althusser, 1971; Foucault, 1972; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). The other track of theorization of discourse, however, focuses more on individuals’ performances and self-image presentation shaped by here-and-now interactional contexts and demands for interpersonal objectives (e.g. Goffman, 1959; Mead, 1934; as cited in Benwell & Stokoe, 2006). Despite this divergence between structure and agency, they are in essence two sightseeing angles to look at the same view. Postmodernism’s ontological nature gives rise to a concept of identity that is anti-essentialist, constituted through discourse, and full of possibilities for social reproduction and creative reformulation of social meaning. From this perspective, structure and agency are complementary to one another in that ideology is transmitted via generations of performative acts and that any (new) elements introduced by identity performances can only make sense when informed by cultural-historical voices. In other words, an ideal realization of identity should be an all-encompassing one, relevant to participation in both the target event on the spot and anterior texture of the social discourse. This attempt to. 11.

(24) accommodate concepts of both structure and agency is found in Butler (1997), which suggests the need of a theory of the psyche or conscience in the process of subjection, and Fairclough (2005), where discourse is a focal location for (re)construction of social life in processes of social change. Benwell and Stokoe (2006) and Bucholtz and Hall (2005) jump on this trend, arguing that the notion of identity is interactionally emergent from multiple levels of discourse, from empirical examples of language use to ideological structure. As the present study makes most reference to these works, we shall quickly turn to them in the following passages. Benwell and Stokoe (2006) conduct a well-rounded review of interaction-based theories of identity. For them, “micro” analytic approaches such as ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA) go hand in hand with “macro” methods of narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA) in the effort to spell out the full implications of “being oneself.” Particularly drawn into the combination of micro- and macro-levels of discourse are discursive psychology, narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis. They claim that only by such details as linguistic descriptions (i.e. actual speech and texts) can we find the link between macrostructures and the reality, hence the prime attention given to social interaction. 12.

(25) and practices. It is, however, a pity that the niche between any two of the introduced methods is simply left there; there is no clear attempt to incorporate them into one comprehensive theory, which is both interaction-based, able to bring local actions to macro socio-political levels, and can therefore serve as a powerful framework for future analyses. On the other hand, Bucholtz and Hall (2005) are ambitious enough to propose five principles characterizing identity work, no matter under which approach it is investigated. The first principle of their concern is the emergence principle, as explained in the following: Identity is best viewed as the emergent product rather than the pre-existing source of linguistic and other semiotic practices and therefore as fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon. (p. 588). The principle suggests that identity could be a sense of self that inhabits an individual mind; however, identity matters most to the world and the field’s scholars only when taken as emerging from one’s social practices and dialogic discourse. In other words, identity cannot be simplified as some pre-discursive social categories; it is supposed to be acted out in the course of interaction, where it is associated with the socially meaningful ideology. As for the second principle – the positionality principle, it starts. 13.

(26) out from the just mentioned emergent quality of identity: Identities encompass (a) macro-level demographic categories; (b) local, ethnographically specific cultural positions; and (c) temporary and interactionally specific stances and participant roles. (p. 592). As the conception of identity is emergent through dialogues such nuanced processes, not only the macro-sociological sense of self (i.e. the widely recognized demographic labels such as age and gender) but also that of the more micro levels are of importance to the understanding of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. This principle is so called because “position” seems to be a more flexible word to describe what is going on in any encounters, even though the positions taken may accumulate to build ideological associations with large-scale constructs of identity. The ontological statuses of identity such as the emergence and positionality qualities are actualized through the third principle – the indexicality principle. The indexicality principle unveils the mechanism whereby linguistic forms are semiotically linked to social meanings (Ochs, 1992), thereby preparing the notion of identity for sociolinguistic analyses. For Bucholtz and Hall, all levels of linguistic structure and use are possible platforms for indexical processes:. 14.

(27) Identity relations emerge in interaction through several related indexical processes, including: (a) overt mention of identity categories and labels; (b) implicatures and presuppositions regarding one’s own or others’ identity position; (c) displayed evaluative and epistemic orientations to ongoing talk, as well as interactional footings and participant roles; and (d) the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups. (p. 594). The naming of identity categories, interlocutors’ choices of lexical items, syntactic structures, and even the entire linguistic systems can mean an infinite number of different ways to project oneself in public. Their performances of language could be easily interpreted as display of one’s “stances” or more durable structures of mind. The relationality principle, the fourth principle, in turn emphasizes identity as an intersubjective discursive product, suggesting that the goals behind any choices of language rely on the intended social positions relative to one another. Bucholtz and Hall here, along with their previous endeavor (2004), pitch the idea of tactics of intersubjectivity, which encompasses a broad range of relational processes: Identities are intersubjectively constructed through several, often overlapping, complementary relations, including similarity/difference, genuineness/artifice, and authority/delegitimacy. (p. 598). The three pairs of relations are respectively termed, or say, “verbalized” as adequation / distinction, authentication / denaturalization, and authorization / illegitimation, so as 15.

(28) to highlight the idea that identities emerge out of social actions. Adequation and distinction are processes by which speakers position themselves as alike or distinct in relation to an ideologically enforced identity category; authentication and denaturalization are operated to reconfirm or challenge the naturalized associations between indexical forms and identities; authorization and illegitimation involve the exercise of power given by structures of ideology to impose or suppress particular identities. The fact that identity can be constructed through interactions leads to the last but not least principle – the partialness principle: Any given construction of identity may be in part deliberate and intentional, in part habitual and hence often less than fully conscious, in part an outcome of interactional negotiation and contestation, in part an outcome of others’ perceptions and representations, and in part an effect of larger ideological processes and material structures that may become relevant to interaction. It is therefore constantly shifting both as interaction unfolds and across discourse contexts. (p. 606). Because who we are is not only a reflection of the individual self (yielding conscious presentation of ourselves or cognitively habitual practices) but an outcome of interactional negotiation of meaning among the situated contextual elements (interactants and ideological structures, etc.), any representation of identity is partial.. 16.

(29) In line of this, a multiple dimensional view of identity will have the edge of being able to uncover a fuller picture of the reality. We learn from the above review that most approaches of the field before the twenty-first century cannot handle the complexities of social meaning implied by the interrelation between identity and discourse; they tend to take care of only one or a few more aspects of the entirety. Bucholtz and Hall (2005) recognize the lack of coalition among such approaches and explicitly theorize the notion of identity by exemplifying interactional detail and furthermore relating it to wider macrostructures. In the following section, we introduce the concept of community of practice, which circumscribes a space where such relation between agency and structure is built up in a locally meaningful way.. 2.1.3. Community of practice. The concept of community of practice has its root in constructivism (e.g. Piaget, 1950) as an anti-force to traditional pedagogy where instructors instill knowledge to learners via codification and transference. In line with this view, cognition develops at the time and place in which certain experience occurs with the individual. Learning from. 17.

(30) the perspective of constructivism emphasizes the presence of both hands-on tasks that bring up real-world problems and the co-participants, usually teammates. That is, group activities are of great value in this teaching method because participants are needed to engage in negotiated processes with the aim to attain their shared goals. Learning in groups is later attributed to communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), a notional space in which learning takes place as one communicates with other members during participation in particular practices. Such participatory learning is termed as situated learning (Wenger, 1998) because it is situated in authentic contexts from real situations. With regard to this approach to pedagogy, Bielaczyc and Collins (1999) further stresses that a culture of learning in a community of practice is built upon participants’ shared knowledge of learning how to learn, or say, their social interdependence. The community of practice is actually a theory of identity. According to Wenger (2010), the concepts of community of practice and identity coexist as a whole since they complement each other’s social meaning. A community of practice without a place for identity loses sight of the social dynamics of membership while identity out of its belonging community of practice (or context) brings us back to the essentialist. 18.

(31) era assuming over-determinant integrity of oneself. Learning in meaningful context, a person actively constitutes him/herself as not only a cognitive entity but also a social participant who is a negotiated product of social interaction. To be more specific, the way of being in a community of practice is a knower equipped with the competence of the community. In this respect, a newcomer of the community may possess little competence of value; but it does not mean that the person cannot contribute to the group at all. When entering the community, he/she brings along personal experience of knowledgeability that could be new and conducive to some change to the existing belief system. No matter whether the new element is rejected or accepted, further negotiation or “realignment” (p. 181) of meaning occurs among the community members. It is through this avenue that the participants identify and dis-identify with the community, others, and themselves. In other words, identity in the framework of community of practice is interactionally defined; it should be realized in a dynamic process where an individual finds his/her way to the periphery or holds his/her position at the core of a social group. In relation to the resources community members use to achieve mutual understanding, Wenger (1998) suggests that “shared repertoire” (p. 82) like words,. 19.

(32) artifacts, and routines reflects not just a well-established history of mutual engagement but also possibilities for future reengagement in new situations. Such heritage is “ambiguous” (p. 83) not because of its uncertainty of locating meaning but because it entails an element of unexpectedness from negotiability. The repertoire constructs a discourse against which members create meaningful statements and form styles of expressing their standing in the community. As a result, the community of practice framework revolutionizes the treatment for linguistic heterogeneity. It supplements the long stood speech community model (e.g. Labov, 1966; Trudgill, 1974) with a link between arbitrary variation patterns and the complex meaning speakers negotiate during concrete interactions, in local communities. Language itself reflects little reality if it loses contact with the social and physical context of its use. Taking on the idea of community of practice in the field of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, Eckert (1989, 2000) examines the linguistic styles adopted by the opposing identity categories that constitute the social order of Detroit suburban Belton High School: the jocks and the burnouts. The jocks and burnouts embody middle class and working class cultures or institutional and locally oriented cultures respectively, with conflicting ideologies and sociolinguistic competences. Through a. 20.

(33) look at vocalic variables associated with urban and suburban communities, the study shows that speakers are linguistic agents in constructing style and identity. In other words, the relation between style and identity is “reactive” (p. 214) to the regime of a particular community. Only by treating the jocks and the burnouts as communities of practice, their cultures as constituted by different social practices, can the actual dynamics of social meaning be revealed and give implications to social change. At another time and space, Bucholtz (1999) also attempts to approach the role language plays in socialization using the community of practice framework. She observes a third group of high-school students, the nerds. To the community of nerds, the optimal symbolic capital is not the charisma of coolness as claimed by the jocks and burnouts. Rather, the value is placed on intelligence as well as practices that help to achieve it, including school attendance, books, and academia. Bucholtz presents the findings with two kinds of linguistic indices to the nerd identity: negative identity practices and positive identity practices. While negative identity practices are employed by individuals to increase the social distance between themselves and unsanctioned identity, positive ones are employed to claim the chosen identity. Both of them could be stratified into several linguistic levels such as phonological,. 21.

(34) syntactic, lexical, and discursive practices. The analytic categories of linguistic identity practices reveal “the heterogeneity of membership” (p. 220) in the community of practice. That is, within the cohort of nerds, successful or unsuccessful intellectual display makes emerge a heterogeneous group of both central and marginal members. Bringing peripheral members to the foreground, Bucholtz’s work is notable for its attention to the individual, not the group, as the unit of analysis. Both of the above-mentioned studies exemplify research on linguistic variation as a social practice; they take a more agentive view to individual identity while also admitting the community’s structural constraints on its work.. 2.1.4 Identity and its relevant concepts When identity is anchored in interaction, its articulation (i.e. a conversational act or interactional practice) could be seen as representing an attitude or intention towards the world, which may furthermore contribute to the formation of one’s durable persona. Literature of (socio)linguistics over the year has captured such indexicalization 4 through theoretical concepts such as footing, positioning and. 4. The use of the term “indexicalization” here suggests the process during which a particular sign points to some social state of being. It could be taken as a synonym of the more theorized concept of indexicality (e.g. Ochs, 1992). 22.

(35) stancetaking; with the aim to clarify what counts as “identity” in my research, there is a need to carefully go through these conceptually proximal constructs for the sake of further study. The conception of footing, for starters, is one of the earliest attempts to theorize linguistic indexicals in sociological terms, later applied in linguistic analysis of discourse. Goffman (1974, 1981) considers an utterance to be establishing frames of reference, according to which guidance and structures of expectation (including the relations among speakers, hearers, and utterances) people negotiate their footing within a set of participant roles in an act of speaking. In line with his view, a participant’s footing during a talk can be thought of as a particular social capacity that gives his/her words authority and changes in accordance with the frame for events. Due to its ephemeral feature, Goffman’s understanding of framing and footing has given proof that every moment of discourse is a potential turning point for interpersonal relationships or alignments. Positioning or subject position (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999; Hollway 1984; Smith, 1988), compared to footing, is a form of personhood that more underlines the dynamics, contradictions, and discontinuities of psychology. It. 23.

(36) metaphorically “locates” changes in participant structures on the basis of a person’s moral/personal attributes, subjective history, and the investment of power relations in jointly produced story lines. Taken as an “immanentist view” (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999, p. 33) to understand mental phenomena, positioning is not narrowly confined in meaning to the shifting of transcendentalist roles but generated through moment-by-moment discursive practices.5 In this respect, positioning is an agentive, self-conscious way of constructing (inter)subjectivity. Still another conceptual entity that resonates with the indexing of social identity is stance (e.g. Du Bois, 2007; Englebretson, 2007; Jaffe, 2009; Ochs, 1996), which lately broadens its impact across not just corpus linguistics (as authorial stance) and critical discourse analyses (as embedded stances in political texts, for example) but fields of social sciences including sociocultural linguistics and linguistic anthropology. Stance, in a general sense, is a communication act through which we social actors display orientations to the sociolinguistic meanings associated with the form or the context of particular utterances. With reference to Ochs (1996), one of the earliest discussions on the sociocultural dimensions of stance, epistemic and affective stances 5. While transcendentalists believe that an absolute, general idea could transcend what is subsumed, immanentists take the stance that the reality is a sense of becoming – that ideas should exist within our lives (Deleuze, 2001). These two ontological views are close in implication to essentialism and non-essentialism. 24.

(37) as indexed by linguistic structures have been said to be the basic components of social acts and social identities. This idea paves the road to the distinction between direct and indirect indexicality where stance mediates between language practices and relatively enduring social personas. Sociolinguistic realization of stance is also known for its dialogic dimension, entailing that stances are achieved interactionally and taken metacognitively to bring about some interpersonal consequences. Its consequential nature is vividly shown in the actual process of alignment along the history of discourse. In other words, uptake of acts of stance at present receives meaning from the contrastive stances in prior text; in the meanwhile, they prospectively constrain subsequent utterances from other interlocutors and have implications for social reproduction and change. To stress that stances are something we actively engage in, its gerund form with the active verb take, stancetaking, grows to be a new key word in relevant studies. Concepts such as footings, positions, and stances could be taken as alternative names for identity when it gets its indexical meaning from the moment of the speech event and the workings of broader cultural ideologies. Looking at these family terms as interchangeable to one another within the sociocultural field is not to deny their. 25.

(38) respective theoretical characteristics, but rather to highlight the most important indexical plus interactional nature shared among the concepts alike, whatever they are called. In line with this conclusion, I shall hold a view of identity that is close to the one maintained by Bucholtz and Hall (2004, 2005) – that identity is more than just a macro-level ideological category. Its meaning should be broader enough to incorporate the relevant concepts reviewed in here. For the sake of this, the mission of my study is to describe the findings with detailed interpretation of language into presentation of both the speakers’ interactionally specific roles (footings, positions, and stances) and stereotypically constructed selves (demographic or ethnographic identity as indexed or cumulated by stance taking moves).. 2.2 Identity in cyberspace As communication technologies become increasingly domesticated, the boundaries between real and virtual have been questionable as to their relative contributions to the understanding of our identities. The question of “who I am” in an online community has, therefore, been crucial to the studies of sociolinguistics. This section aims to tap into important questions about identity construction in computerized. 26.

(39) virtual world. The first part recalls the conception of online identity in its generic sense, as reflected in its comparison with real world social beings. The second passage concerns identity in digital game world in particular, given the topic of the present research.. 2.2.1. Online identity. To explore what makes online, virtual selves so idiosyncratic and thus worthy of discussion in a whole new section, one may want to put some thinking into the differences between real and virtual realities, or real-life and cyber space. The notion of cyberspace, first dubbed by Gibson (1984), is commonly realized as a figurative environment where “a graphic representation of data abstracted from the bank of every computer in the human system” (p. 51) comes to connect with each other. It has become a conventional means to describe anything in conjunction with the Internet, but with an extra implication of fluidity and humanity that are not normally attributed to the computerized network (Wood & Smith, 2005). Below I organize two key draws of the concept that are most related with the workings of identity: its code-driven constraints and hospitable environment for sociality.. 27.

(40) Consider first the code-driven constraints brought about by infrastructure of the computer system, or say, how configurations of computerized programs exercise control over the behaviors of Internet users. An evident design for many virtual environments online is their text-based communicative platforms (Wood & Smith, 2005),6 which leads us to the subject of the language of the Internet or computer mediated communication (CMC). To Crystal (2006) and Herring (1996), the language of CMC is almost indecipherable to outsiders and characterized by linguistic creativity such as emoticons, acronyms, unconventional spellings, representations of both written and spoken features, and any other codes produced to meet with the constraints of the context. In such a form of online communication, sound, images, and other nonverbal stimuli sent from the conversants cannot be shared through computers. The remaining communication cues, especially when transmitted intermittently or asynchronously, could enhance message senders’ self-awareness in planning conversation or self-presentation. Receivers, on the other hand, may judge a person based on their stereotypes reflected in meager information. This observation,. 6. The discussion on CMC here is purposefully limited to text-based exchanges because the conversation data in the present study only consist of written messages, with no sounds or images of the interactants. 28.

(41) noted as the hyperpersonal interaction of CMC (Walther, 1996),7 also has a bearing on the second constraining effect imposed by the computer system – anonymity. In mediated contexts such as the Internet, communicators are provided with access to a state of anonymity where their real-life identities remain unknown, or more commonly, pseudonymity where they disguise themselves with unidentifiable pseudonyms. It is because of such a possibility that the hyperpersonal nature of CMC is tenable. As participants do not have to risk personal security, they experience more freedom to verbalize their thoughts in public, which, when going too far, leads to uninhibited or assertive texts such as hostile speech acts. Reduced self-regulation and lack of accountability may as well become a problem. In addition to the malleability of self-representations, anonymity and pseudonymity also create opportunities for redeployments of social relationships in the virtual world. That is, without a pre-given understanding of partners’ hierarchical status and social power, users are able to participate more equally in communication, starting new as members of a democratized society (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984). A communicator’s credibility in transmitting particular information can therefore be built solely on the 7. The hyperpersonal nature of CMC is derived from the social identity deindividuation (SIDE) theory, (Lea & Spears, 1992) which suggests that, without prior knowledge about their partners, CMC members tend to heighten their feelings or attitudes toward each other when the given-off social context cues are associated with membership in certain social categories. 29.

(42) practices that they engage in in cyberspace, not their achievements or bad reputation in real lives. Another computerized design of relevance is the availability of more than one account or username one could apply for online. In terms of sociology, it means the actionable multiplicity of identity with CMC. This feature goes hand in hand with anonymity and pseudonymity in providing a safety net for a wrongdoer on the Internet, as he/she could just reconstruct a new, innocent self to get rid of the “package” of the former identity. More importantly, the design allows participants to play with different aspects or “faces” of themselves. In line with this, the Internet is considered a “social laboratory” (Turkle, 1995) or “identity workshop” (Bruckman, 1992) for experiments with one’s psychodramas and unexplored personas. For example, a “flamer” is someone who predominantly projects his/her vicious side in cyberspaces. In sum, online users would adapt their verbal behaviors to cater for the restrictions set by the mediated context in their formation of impressions and identities. As for the cyberspace’s hospitable environment for sociality, we direct attention to the emergence of online community, under the social influence of those irresistible external forces exerted by the computer system mentioned above. Strictly speaking,. 30.

(43) this phenomenon is also a product of a code-driven constraint, that is, the messaging channels for one-to-many communication. Due to the development of the “network,” online identities could naturally emerge from joint groups where peer-to-peer communication and collaboration are valued (Crawford, 2004). From a social information processing perspective (Walther, 1992), it has been shown that Internet users are apt to build interpersonal relationships with one another, even with previously unfamiliar partners. This is why there are norms of conduct, group-specific meanings for language or other practices, and socially negotiated interpersonal relationships among the participants (Baym, 1998). To better understand their interpersonal interactions, one may refer to the idea of virtual community, as introduced by Rheingold (1993): Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationship in cyberspace. (p. 5). In other words, different from traditional communities, virtual communities are not based on proximity of participants to one another or face-to-face interaction but ongoing communication and a sense of belonging (“feeling”) to the social peer groups. To continue with this notion, Squire and Johnson (2000) add that virtual communities. 31.

(44) in cyberspace should be organized around a task or activity, existing according to a need or mutual interest. To be more specific, Palloff and Pratt (1999) generalize several prerequisites for the emergence of virtual communities. In addition to a common public space for the group, members need to identify the motive or purpose for CMC’s use and subsequently define a code of conduct, assign a range of participant roles, and facilitate subgroups. In relevance to this, one may also make reference to the establishment of netiquette (i.e. Internet etiquette), meaning rules or responsibilities that the participants expect their members to observe. These social norms serve as a reference point for evaluation of who is a newbie, an outsider, or an old-time netizen. As summarized in this section, in media where text is present, the use of language is of great importance because it allows the Internet user to project his/her voice there, thereby constructing their unique online identities. All of the code-driven constraints discussed help to build images of multiplicity and fluidity of the new era’s identity, which echoes with the postmodern, discursive view of selves reviewed in the previous section. With the additional sense of groupness and aptitude for sociality online, virtual identity is now understood in the context of online communities and. 32.

(45) through channels of mutual subjectivity among members.. 2.2.2. Massively multiplayer online gamer identity. As a site of online collaboration or social network, massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have been giving clues to the authoring of identities as situated in the virtual communities. As a matter of fact, MMOGs are not the earliest technology-mediated environments where people pursue their desire for fantasy. Back to 1980s, a class of virtual worlds known as Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)8 fulfilled one’s dream of playing out adventures as he/she acted in a character engaging in fictional practices in the computational space. The character interactions in the virtual reality are primarily text-based; players may invoke commands to direct certain texts to appear on the screen of each other. To investigate the relationship between role-playing and identity work through MUDs, most previous researchers (e.g. Turkle, 1994, 1995) have focused on meaning making from sociological or psychological perspectives. The collected data based on participant observations and interviews have shown that MUDs have evocative power in that players enter the world to think. 8. The label of this category of virtual worlds derives from a role-playing game called “Dungeons and Dragons” booming in 1970s. 33.

(46) or work through personal concerns and different aspects of themselves. In other words, “online identities” in studies on virtual social space of MUDs have been related to the true identity of the players, which could even serve as a piece of evidence of the blurred boundaries between real life and virtual space. Along the development of technology, alternative digital worlds have been created, where players no longer have to rely on descriptions to perform actions. From graphical 2-D chat environments to the advent of 3-D space like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Lineage in the recent decade, online game worlds have held their stance as a sizable part of the interactive entertainment industry, gradually becoming what we commonly refer to as MMOGs today. In the fields of sociology and anthropology (or sociolinguistics and anthropologic linguistics), aside from quantitative surveys that have been conducted to explore play patterns (e.g. Seay, Jerome, Lee, & Kraut, 2004), motivations for play MMOGs (e.g. Yee, 2002), and perceptions of in-game social roles (e.g. Friedline & Collister, 2012), most research works devote themselves to participant-observation ethnography, where conversation analyses and interviews are done to gather traces of participants’ collaborative play, player communities, and the work of gamer identity.. 34.

(47) In previous literature, MMOGs are constantly emphasized as a social construction or mechanism for socialization (e.g. Ducheneaut & Moore, 2005; Seay et al., 2004; Steinkuehler, 2004; Steinkuehler, 2008). Although bunches of conventions about how to behave in the virtual society, such as twinking (Jakobsson & Taylor, 2003), are not intended by the online intermediaries, overall speaking MMOGs are designed in a way that makes player collaboration essential for achieving high-end goals and success within the game. For example, there are tasks or quests that are difficult to accomplish if players do not team up to complement each other in terms of their characters’ “inborn” strengths and weaknesses and engage in strategic interaction through a chat channel. In fact, most MMOGs have expansive grouping and guild systems by which players are able to create “actual” social organizations within the virtual world. Great efforts have been made in the field to describe the emergent culture, or more specifically, the types of social interaction on the ground of the game’s framework. According to Ducheneaut and Moore (2005), three types of social skills are found to be vital for proving one’s competence as a player, including self-organization into small groups, instrumental coordination with other roles (or classes), and sociability with chatting. Nardi and Harris (2006), on the other hand,. 35.

(48) introduce the multiplicity of collaborative play with regard to informal encounters with strangers, more structured collaborations with friends and strangers, downtime acts of fun, and misbehaving through spamming. Such findings normally sum up with the notion of community where players share a collective activity of having fun and learn to recognize community-valued goals through playing with others. In line with this, the theory of situated learning plus community of practice (see Section 2.1.3) is one way of tapping into MMOG players’ joint participation in light of enculturation and apprenticeship. Particularly interesting is when one considers the “newbie versus veteran” distinction implicit in a gaming community of practice. That is, through social learning and participation, novice players or newbies move from periphery to the center of the virtual community (Steinkuehler, 2006). Their learning resources may include in-game discussion with fellow players, out-game discussions on forums and websites, observation, and in-situ teaching from more experienced players, or veterans (Ducheneaut & Moore, 2005). As pointed out by Steinkuehler (2004), participation in valued community practices is in this way consequential for a player’s membership and identity in the game. Taking MMOGs as communities, researchers have also emphasized the role. 36.

(49) discursive interaction plays in maintaining social relationships among the members. As pointed out by Ducheneaut and Moore (2005), players spend even more time simply talking with others than engaging in combat. Regarding the content of talk, Seay et al. (2004) reports that MMOG players communicate to exchange support and advice, exercise sociability, and coordinate tasks and activities. As for the forms of their language, it is discovered that they take on linguistic practices such as specialized word choice and syntax, abbreviations and truncations, and typographical and grammatical errors (Steinkuehler, 2006; Turkle, 1995). With the view that language is a social practice particular to the players of an MMOG, prior literature has resorted to thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) of in-game communication to unveil the utterances’ social consequences in social networking. It is implied from such examination that language is being used to construe reality of not only the game world but also the player community, with its peculiar cultural and cognitive structures. In this sense, the utterances in question could be seen to index the interactants’ membership within the community. In other words, the interactants have agency in deploying linguistic or discursive resources to present themselves on the screen, as the kinds of people appreciated by the community or not. Another research. 37.

(50) type focusing on virtual discourse involves the use of Conversation Analysis, with discourse feature such as turn continuation, cohesion, and reference (e.g. Collister, 2006). The result is associated with players’ endeavor to demonstrate orientations to each other and to the game world. Just like the community-based studies mentioned earlier, such an analysis of conversation in MMOGs does not take identity as the starting point or major issue to deal with in research. Particular linguistic or discursive practices are not presented as having specific connections to participants’ construction of identities. In other words, it is still unclear how MMOG players comprehend and act on who they are in the frame of identity theories. Up till now, identity as an issue has been covered mostly as one’s membership in the community. There are indeed scholars who give full attention to players’ individual identities in relation to each other, instead of the collective identity as a community member. The most cited characterization of players should be, again, the distinction between newbie and veteran, or peripheral and central participant (in terms of the concept of community of practice), as it directly concerns the ability to participate with other members and is the most important dimension in judging one’s standing in the virtual community. Steinkuehler (2008) raises one such discussion on. 38.

(51) the difference between newbies and veterans in Lineage II. Besides the continuum that runs from newcomers and old timers, there have been great variations in dimensions of player categorizations. Bartle (1996), for example, organizes primarily four types of players based on the question “What do people want out of a MUD?” The four stereotypical players include achievers (who play to achieve game-related goals), explorers (who play to explore interesting features or design of the game), socializers (who play to socialize with others), and killers (who play to kill off others’ fun by causing their distress). Despite the classification, the study ends with a reminder that it is the combination of the four that makes MUDs unique. Following this work, Yee (2002) proposes five motivation factors for why people play MMOGs: relationship (to develop relationships with others), immersion (to enjoy being immersed in the fantasy world), grief (to enjoy the game by annoying others), achievement (to become powerful and reach goals set by the game), and leadership (to enjoy leadership positions within the game). Since each gamer has a score for each factor, the research is not intended for mutually exclusive types of players but for a clearer understanding of different facets or aspects of a person during gameplay. Still concerning micro characterization of MMOG players, Friedline and Collister (2012). 39.