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Article published In: Register Studies
Vol. 6:1 (2024) ► pp.1–30

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Measuring the linguistic similarity of discourse from open-world role-playing games to the real world through an additive multidimensional analysis

ORCiD logo with link | Georgia State University
Published online: 18 June 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rs.23001.dix
Abstract
Digital games can provide rich sources of second language (L2) input; however, the extent to which gaming discourse is similar to real-world discourse has been a topic of debate in the computer-assisted language learning community. To quantitatively measure the extent to which gaming discourse shares linguistic similarity with real-world discourse, this study reports the findings of an additive multidimensional (MD) analysis comparing registers in open-world role-playing games to real-world registers using Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar Dimension 1: ‘Involved versus Informational Production.’ Results indicate that gaming discourse provides extensive language exposure that shares much linguistic similarity across a wide range of real-world contexts. Importantly, however, these similarities only become salient when the situational characteristics of gaming discourse are considered and parsed appropriately into register categories.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1The single player offline game corpus and its representativeness
      • 2.1.1SPOC compilation
    • 2.2Data analysis
    • 2.3Calculating D1 scores
    • 2.4Methodological limitations related to short text lengths
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Interactive and immersive speech
    • 3.2Lore
    • 3.3Quest Stages and Tutorial Text
    • 3.4Quest objectives and character text
  • 4.Conclusion, limitations, and direction for future research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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