Unified Discourse Analysis

Language, Reality, Virtual Worlds and Video Games

James Paul Gee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138774520
• eBook ISBN: 9781317684466
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Discourse Analysis is becoming increasingly "multimodal", concerned primarily with the interplay of language, image and sound. Video Games allow humans to create, live in and have conversations with new multimodal worlds.

In this ground-breaking new textbook, best-selling author and experienced gamer, James Paul Gee, sets out a new theory and method of discourse analysis which applies to language, the real world, science and video games. Rather than analysing the language of video games, this book uses discourse analysis to study games as communicational forms. Gee argues that language, science, games and everyday life are deeply related and each is a series of conversations. Discourse analysis should not be just about language, but about human interactions with the world, with games, and with each other, interactions that make meaning and sustain lives amid risk and complexity.

Written in a highly accessible style and drawing on a wide range of video games from World of Warcraft and Chibi-Robo to Tetris, this engaging textbook is essential reading for students in discourse analysis, new media and digital culture.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315774459-1

Hundreds of thousands of books are published each year just in the United States. Many more are published each year across the world. It is hard to come up with a topic that has not already been written about a great deal. For better or worse, you are about to embark on reading a book that is about something that has, as far as I know, never been written about before. This is so, in part, because this book seeks to unify topics that are of interest to quite different people and quite different fields of inquiry.

This book is about discourse analysis, language, meaning, video games, the real world, imaginary worlds, human development, and life. Discourse analysis is a rather sleepy field in linguistics that analyzes language as it is used in specific contexts. It is not a field that gamers have shown much interest in and discourse analysts have shown little interest in video games, though there is an emerging interest in multi-modality (words, images, and sounds mixed together). People have, of course, studied how language is used in games, but they have not used discourse analysis to study games themselves as communicational forms.

This book is an exploration of whether we can create a new type of discourse analysis. It will explore whether there can be a unified theory and method of discourse analysis that studies language, games, science, and human action and interaction in the real world and in imaginary worlds. This theory and method will treat human language as foundationally connected to conversation. It will treat conversation as a turn-taking form of interaction that humans can have with each other, with the real world, with other worlds, and with video games. And it will treat humans as themselves complex worlds.

Why feature video games in the mix? Because video games are a new form of media that allows humans to create, live in, and have conversations with new worlds. They can illuminate the nature of conversation itself and allow us to bridge between language and the real world as scientists study it and as we all live in it. Video games will allow us to see that an expanded notion of discourse as the study of an expanded notion of conversation can connect discourse not just to language and worlds, but to human development, the structure of society, and the nature of human life.

Now I must admit that we cannot know (yet) whether this enterprise—this enterprise of attempting a unified theory and method of discourse analysis of language, games, and worlds as deeply related things—is possible. We cannot know until we try and we cannot know our first try has worked or not until others chip in (or not). Perhaps the task is folly. But at least it is new.

Why even try? I am now an old academic (65 as I write this). I have come to believe that too much of academics has too little impact on the world. I have come to believe that too much of academics is too narrow and too often separates things that belong together. For me, science is a human collaborative enterprise based on respect for the world. Today, as we humans have brought the world to the brink of crisis by how little respect we have paid to it—to the environment, to global poverty and inequality, to ideologies run amok—we need to realize that respect for “reality”, for the world, is fundamental to being human and indeed for survival.

I want to argue that language, science, games, and everyday life, for all of us, are deeply related and each is a series of conversations in which we can flourish only if we proactively find a good alignment between who we are as individuals and the various social, cultural, natural, and imaginative worlds in which we live and seek meaning. Discourse analysis should be about life. It cannot answer the age-old question about the meaning of life. But it can show us how we humans go about giving meaning to life.

I will argue that thinking about language can illuminate how we think about video games. I will argue that video games can illuminate how we think about language. And I will argue that both language and games can illuminate how we think about and live in the world, actually in multiple worlds, including worlds we create.

It may well be that readers interested in one topic here will have little interest in the others, despite the fact that I am arguing that all the topics in this book belong together and are, at a deep level, quite similar. However, as a discourse analyst, gamer, and human being I find these three identities deeply complementary. I hope I can convince you that you yourself are all three of these things and that they belong together. I will succeed here, even if the larger project fails, if I have engaged you in a good conversation.

Keep in mind that this book is not definitive, but tentative. It is not an end, but a beginning. It covers a few landmarks in a possible new terrain, not anything like the whole territory. It puts some marks on a map, but the map is incomplete. Nonetheless, I want to suggest that discourse analysis could become an integrative science of meaning making in human lives and society. I want to suggest that discourse analysis should not be just about language, but about human interactions with the world, with games, and with each other, interactions that make meaning and sustain lives amid risk and complexity. Video games, the world, and language will all be on a par here.

Those who do not play video games may see them as ephemeral and much less significant than language. And in one sense they are. They are a very new form, much newer than literary and far newer than oral language. We are concerned here more with their potential than their current reality. They are a new form of world making and problem solving.

Those who play video games may see language and linguistics as boring and irrelevant to games. But games, I will argue, are a type of language and language is a type of game (really a set of games). They have much to teach each other, especially about what it means to think, imagine, act, play, work, and live.

The terms I use in this book will often be old ones used in new ways, words like “avatar”, “conversation”, and “worlds”. And, then, there are those troublesome words “real” and “reality”, contested terms indeed. The “real world” is available to us only via interpretations and different worlds become available through different interpretations and different tools (e.g., a microscope).

Nonetheless, the world we interpret “talks back”. Our tools and interpretations lead us to act in and on the world in different ways and the world answers back, we get a result. Of course, we have to interpret this result as well, often as good or bad for our goals. But the world can very much bite back and hard if we ignore it or disrespect it. There are plenty of dead or sick people—maybe now the whole of human society—that have learned that the world does not put up with just any interpretation, use, or abuse.

This book argues that we humans have consequential conversations with the real world. Such conversations are the basis of science and of a sane and humane life and society. As with our fellow humans, we need to talk to the world with respect and care. If, in the end, you do not think the real word is real in the sense that it has its own ways and can bite back, I don't recommend telling it so. Lately the real world seems a bit grumpy, what with all the human caused and human denied global warming, toxic spills, and species extinction and all.

This is an academic work, but I have tried to write it for a wide audience in the sense that it covers topics of interest to a diverse array of people and fields. Since we are exploring a new field—one that may or may not actually come to exist—we have to sometimes stretch the meanings of words and play with ideas in new ways. I have tried to express my ideas in several different ways so that they might become as clear as possible, at the risk, though, of repetition.

People who are not gamers will not necessarily know about the games I discuss and that is fine. I have tried to make my points about games clear even for non-gamers. Gamers will not necessarily find the language data I discuss familiar, but that is fine as well. I hope they will see how language used in the world to do things is a lot like playing games. I hope, too, that gamers and language people alike will see that science shares a form of life with the work and play that all of us everyday people engage in all the time in order to survive and hopefully flourish in life and in games.

I have written about discourse analysis (e.g., Gee 2011, 2014a, 2014b) and I have written about video games (e.g., Gee 2004, 2007, 2014c). But I have not heretofore brought them together. I have, over the last decade, dealt with audiences in the two areas quite separately and they have rarely mixed. However, I have long sensed that there is a deep connection between the two, but only lately have been able to explicate that connection in words. The words are in this book. The connection has changed my view of language and of games. I hope it does yours as well.

Notes

Now, all of the above is not meant to say that there is not much important and highly relevant previous work in both games studies and discourse analysis. So, let me say something about the literature in both these areas.

Game design and game studies

For those not familiar with games, game design, or game studies, I would highly recommend starting with Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph, 2004). The book has line drawings accompanying the text. It is written by a well-known game designer and is both entertaining and savvy.

If readers want to delve more deeply into game design, here are three outstanding books: Tracy Fullerton, Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2008); Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2008); and Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). Greg Costikyan's Uncertainty in Games (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013) takes up themes that importantly supplement my discussion in this book. Mary Flanagan's Critical Play: Radical Game Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) takes things deliciously further. Anna Anthropy's amazing book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012) shows how in gaming and game design to let everyone in.

For games studies, I would start with Jesper Juul's Half-Real: Between Real Rules and Imaginary Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), a book very relevant to my discussion in this book. His other books, A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and their Players (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012) and The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012) are well worth reading too. See also Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith, & Susana Pajares Tosca's Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2012) for another fine way to begin.

At a more technical level, Ian Bogost's books Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007) and How to Do Things with Games (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) are combinations of game studies, rhetoric, and philosophy and they are highly relevant to my discussion. Mark J. P. Wolf's Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (New York: Routledge, 2012) is highly relevant as well and his two theory readers, The Video Game Theory Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003) and The Video Games Theory Reader 2 (New York: Routledge, 2009), are important collections. Jon Petersen's fascinating book, Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games (San Diego: Unreason Press, 2012) is important background for some of the issues in this book. Christopher Paul's Word Play and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words, Design, and Play (New York: Routledge, 2012) is the best and most accessible combination of games studies, rhetoric, and discourse studies to date. If my book bores you, read his.

Discourse analysis

There are innumerable books on discourse analysis. The best book to start with is, in my view, Ron Scollon and Suzanne Scollon's brilliant Narrative, Literacy, and Face in Interethnic Communication (New York: Praeger, 1981). Then read everything Ron Scollon ever wrote. I am prejudiced enough to recommend also starting with either of my books: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (London: Routledge, 4th edn, 2014) or How to Do Discourse Analysis (London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 2014). For those who do not trust authors recommending themselves (and why, indeed, should you?), start with Rodney Jones' wonderful book, Discourse Analysis: A Resource Book for Students (London: Routledge, 2012). Follow up with Rodney Jones and Sigrid Norris, Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005), a book quite relevant to the book you are about to read. Teun A. van Dijk's Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (London: Sage, 2012) is a good collection of articles. Another good way to start or continue: Norman Fairclough's, Analysing Discourse (London: Routledge, 2003), followed by anything else he has written (and he has written a good deal).

All of the above works are not cited in the text below, but all serve as essential background for myself as writer and you as readers of this book.

A note on citations

This book develops in a new direction views I have long worked on in the areas of discourse analysis, language, learning, and games. That work is covered in Gee (2004; 2007, org. 2003; 2011, org. 1996; 2014a, org. 1999; 2014b, org. 2010). These works have appeared in new editions and they cite the literature behind my views for those who want to pursue the literature further. In a great many cases in this book I am discussing my own viewpoints on issues about which not much has yet been written. My remarks on games, in particular, are based on my own game play and participation in the gamer world. That said, as my comments above show, much relevant literature has indeed appeared. Finally, let's be clear that I am by no means arguing in this book that my approach to games or to discourse analysis is uniquely right or worthy. Each is but one approach to its domain, good for some things and not others.

2 Conversations

DOI: 10.4324/9781315774459-2

Language, worlds, and games

Meaning

We are all comfortable with the idea that words have “meaning”. But what does it mean to “have a meaning”? Words and phrases mean things to us because we are familiar with social conventions in terms of which a word like “puppy” in English means YOUNG DOG and “large mouse” means a MOUSE THAT IS LARGE FOR A MOUSE. Meaning is simply a matter of social conventions just like a strike in baseball is. “Three strikes and you are out” is a “rule”—a convention—in baseball. That “puppy” means YOUNG DOG is a convention in English.

Human languages are communication systems that rely on shared conventions about what words will mean (Gee 2011, 2014a). There are other sorts of communication systems built on conventions but ones which do not use (or do not only use) verbal words and phrases. Mathematics is one such communication system. It is clear that we give and get meaning from mathematical symbols much as we do with language.

Conversation

Oral language is not just a set of conventions for how to mean with words. It is also a tool for having conversations. Conversation is a turn-taking system. When we speak we design what we say in anticipation of a response. When we get a response, we design what we say next with due regard for the response we just got. Our listeners do the same as they engage with us. We each take our turns. We each shape what we say based ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• List of Figures
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Conversations: Language, worlds, and games
• 3 Avatars and affordances
• 4 The things we can be
• 5 Syntax and semantics
• 6 Situated meaning
• 7 An interim summary
• 8 A unified theory of discourse analysis
• 9 Chibi-Robo
• 10 Metal Gear Solid
• 11 Projective identity
• 12 Avatars and big “D” Discourses
• 13 Reading: Non-responsive media
• 14 Alignment and development
• References
• Index