Divine intervention
Multimodal pragmatics and unconventional opposition in performed character speech in Dragon Age:
Inquisition
Videogames often take place in fictional worlds, yet the performed accents of game characters are
real reflections of the language ideologies of a game’s creators and intended audience. This chapter
demonstrates how these ideologies are at play in BioWare’s fantasy role-playing game Dragon Age:
Inquisition (2014), through its linguistic differentiation of two characters, Cassandra and
Leliana. Although largely presented as counter to one another, both are othered from the majority of in-game
characters by way of their accented English. Videogames contain unique, medium-specific affordances; thus,
using multimodal discourse analysis and procedural rhetoric, this chapter examines how Cassandra and Leliana’s
accents construct social and ideological meaning, and how the performative nature of gameplay affects players’
perception of these characters.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Language ideologies and performed accents in fantasy role-playing games
- 2.Theoretical framework: Language ideologies in videogames and character opposition
- 3.Dragon Age
- 4.Analysing characters’ accented speech and players’ comments
- Data collection and analysis
- Characters’ accents and multimodal analysis
- Cassandra
- Leliana
- Written Discourse Analysis
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
References
Andronis, Mary A.
2003 “
Iconization,
Fractal Recursivity, and Erasure: Linguistic Ideologies and Standardization in Quichua-Speaking
Ecuador.”
Texas Linguistic
Forum 47: 263–269.
Beyer, Jocelyn A.
2019 “
Playing
with Consent: An Autoethnographic Analysis of Representations of Race, Rape, and Colonialism in
BioWare’s Dragon Age.” Master’s
thesis, University of Alberta.
BioWare
2009 Dragon Age:
Origins. Redwood City: Electronic Arts.
BioWare
2011 Dragon Age:
II. Redwood City: Electronic Arts.
BioWare
2014 Dragon Age:
Inquisition. Redwood City: Electronic Arts.
Bleichenbacher, Lukas
2008.
Multilingualism in the Movies: Hollywood Characters and Their Language
Choices. Tübingen: Francke Verlag.
Blommaert, Jan.
ed. 1999 Language
Ideological Debates. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Bogost, Ian
2007 Persuasive
Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Clements, Ron, and John Musker
1992 Walt
Disney Pictures presents Aladdin [Motion
Picture]. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Pictures.
Davies, Matt
2007 “
The
Attraction of Opposites: The Ideological Function of Conventional and Created Oppositions in the
Construction of In-Groups and Out-Groups in News
Texts.” In
Stylistics and Social
Cognition, ed. by
Lesley Jeffries,
Dan McIntyre, and
Derek Bousfield, 71–100. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
de Saint-Georges, Ingrid
2004 “
Materiality
in Discourse: The Influence of Space and Layout in Making
Meaning.” In
Discourse and Technology:
Multimodal Discourse Analysis, ed. by
Philip LeVine, and
Ron Scollon, 71-87. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Ensslin, Astrid
2010 “
‘Black
and White’: Language Ideologies in Computer Game
Discourse.” In
Language Ideologies and Media
Discourse: Texts, Practices, Politics, ed. by
Sally Johnson, and
Tommaso M. Milani, 205–222. London: Continuum.
Ensslin, Astrid
2011 “
‘Recallin’
Fagin: Linguistic Accents, Intertextuality and Othering in Narrative Offline and Online Video
Games.” In
Online Gaming in Context: The
Social and Cultural Significance of Online Games, ed.
by
Garry Crawford,
Victoria K. Gosling and
Ben Light, 224–235. New York: Routledge.
Ensslin, Astrid
2012 The
Language of
Gaming. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Giles, Howard
1970 “
Evaluative
Reactions to Accents.”
Educational
Review, 22: 211–227.
Goorimoorthee, Tejasvi, Adrianna Csipo, Shelby Carleton, and Astrid Ensslin
2019 “
Language
Ideologies in Videogame Discourse: Forms of Sociophonetic Othering in Accented Character
Speech”. In
Approaches to Videogame
Discourse: Lexis, Interaction, Textuality, ed. by
Astrid Ensslin, and
Isabel Balteiro, 269–287. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Greer, Stephen
2013 “
Playing
Queer: Affordances for Sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age.”
Journal of
Gaming and Virtual
Worlds, 5 (1): 3–21.
Harré, Rom, and Luk van Langenhove
1999 Positioning
Theory: Moral Contexts of International Action. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Hawreliak, Jason
2019 “
On
the Procedural Mode.” In
Approaches to
Videogame Discourse: Lexis, Interaction, Textuality, ed.
by
Astrid Ensslin, and
Isabel Balteiro, 13–38. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Herring, Susan C.
2001 “
Computer-mediated
discourse.” In
The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, ed. by
Deborah Schiffrin,
Deborah Tannen, and
Heidi E. Hamilton, 612–634. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Herring, Susan C.
2004 “
Slouching
toward the ordinary: Current trends in computer-mediated
communication.”
New Media &
Society 6 (1): 26–36.
Hodson, Jane
2014 Dialect
in Film and
Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Irvine, Judith and Susan Gal
2000 “
Language
Ideology and Linguistic
Differentiation.” In
Regimes of Language:
Ideologies, Polities and Identities, ed. by
Paul V. Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
JanMohamed, Abdul R.
1995 “
The
Economy of the Manichean Allegory.” In
The
Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. by
Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths and
Helen Tiffin, 18–23. New York: Routledge.
Jeffries, Lesley
2010 Opposition
in Discourse: The Construction of Oppositional
Meaning. London: Continuum.
Jones, Steven
2002 Antonymy:
A Corpus-Based
Perspective. London: Routledge.
Jørgensen, Kristine
2010 “
Game
Characters as Narrative Devices. A Comparative Analysis of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect
2."
Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game
Culture 4(2): 315-331.
Juul, Jesper
2005 Half-Real:
Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kane, Matt
2014 “
2014’s
Most Intriguing LGBT Characters.” Last modified December
22 2014
[URL]
Kroskrity, Paul V.
2000 Regimes of
Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Lippi-Green, Rosina
2012 English
with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States, 2nd
ed.. London: Routledge.
Lööf, Jenny
2015 “
An
Inquisitive Gaze: Exploring the Male Gaze and the Portrayal of Gender in Dragon Age:
Inquisition.” Bachelor’s
thesis, Stockholm University.
Meier, Paul
2012 Accents
& Dialects for Stage and Screen: An Instruction Manual for 24 Accents and Dialects Commonly Used
by English-Speaking Actors, 22nd
ed.. Lawrence, KS: Paul Meier Dialect Services.
Navarro-Remesal, Victor
2018 “
Gender,
Sex and Romance in Role Playing Video Games: Dragon’s Dogma, Fable III and Dragon Age:
Inquisition.”
Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural
Studies 10: 177–191.
Pedraça, Samia A
2015 “
Narrativized
Video Games: Playing Cultural Influences and
Intentionalities.” Master’s
thesis, University of Alberta.
Planchenault, Gaëlle
2015 Voices
in the Media: Performing French Linguistic
Otherness. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Planchenault, Gaëlle
2017 “
Doing
Dialects in Dialogues: Regional, Social and Ethnic Variation in
Fiction.” In
Pragmatics of
Fiction, ed. by
Miriam A. Locher, and
Andreas H. Jucker, 265-296. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Schieffelin, Bambi B., Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity
eds 1998 Language
Ideologies: Practice and
Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schrier, Karen, and David Gibson
2010 Ethics
and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.
Solarski, Chris
2017 Interactive
Stories and Video Game Art: A Storytelling Framework for Game
Design. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Tarnarutckaia, Elizaveta, and Astrid Ensslin
2020 “
The
Myth of the “Clarté Française”: Language Ideologies and Metalinguistic Discourse of Videogame Speech
Accents on Reddit.”
Discourse, Context &
Media 33: 1–9.
Thurlow, Crispin and Kristine Mroczek, eds
2011 Digital
Discourse: Language in the New
Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Waern, Annika
2011 “
‘I’m
in Love with Someone that Doesn’t Exist!’ Bleed in the Context of a Computer
Game."
Journal of Gaming and Virtual
Worlds 3 (3): 239-257.
Woolard, Kathryn A.
1998 “
Introduction:
Language Ideology as a Field of
Inquiry.” In
Language Ideologies: Practice
and Theory, ed. by
Bambi B. Schieffelin,
Kathryn A. Woolard, and
Paul V. Kroskrity, 3–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zagalo, Nelson
2019 “
Multimodality
and Expressivity in Videogames.”
Observatorio
(OBS*) 13 (1): 86–101.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Jens & Míša Hejná
2023.
The Voices of Game Worlds: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Disco Elysium.
Games and Culture 18:5
► pp. 578 ff.
Stein, Simon David
2023.
Space Rednecks, Robot Butlers, and Feline Foreigners: Language Attitudes Toward Varieties of English in Videogames.
Games and Culture 18:8
► pp. 1043 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.