Language Ideologies and Stereotypes in Fantasy Video Games

master's thesis

• Author: Martina Belančić
• Mentor: Višnja Josipović-Smojver (mentor)
• Committee member: Mateusz-Milan Stanojević (predsjednik povjerenstva)
• Committee member: Anđel Starčević (član povjerenstva)
• Granter: University of Zagreb; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; (Department of English language and literature); Zagreb
• Defense date and country: 2020-09-24, Croatia
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: HUMANISTIC SCIENCES; Philology; Anglistics

Abstract

The way we speak can influence the way others perceive us, to the point of bringing social advantage or disadvantage. Language ideology is a set of beliefs about language that serves as a rationalization or justification of such biased value judgments. Media play a big role in spreading language ideology. Video games are a form of media that has been largely neglected by linguists, despite constituting a significant part of the 21st-century cultural corpus. Fantasy video games are an especially interesting genre, because they include fantasy races. In order to characterize different races, the fantasy genre often makes use of language ideology, from Tolkien to contemporary times. Fantasy races used to be bound to a description on paper which creates a mental image unique to each reader. But now, video games create the opportunity for a more immersive fantasy world, where players interact with characters that are given a visual model, and — importantly for this paper — a voice. This paper analyzes three fantasy video games to see to which extent they make use of language ideology, and if it can be detrimental to the real-world speakers of those varieties. It also assigns character roles to members of fantasy races in those video games to see which varieties and accents are assigned to which type of character. My findings are that video games that avoid the use of language ideology to characterize their fantasy races also allow the members of those races to fulfill a greater range of character roles, putting an emphasis on diversity.

• Keywords: language ideology; fantasy; videogames; standard language; stereotypes
• Language: english
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:131:995968
• Study programme: Title: English Language and Literature (double major); specializations in: Linguistics, Literature and Culture, Translation, TEFL; Course: Linguistics; Study programme type: university; Study level: graduate; Academic / professional title: magistar/magistra engleskog jezika i književnosti (magistar/magistra engleskog jezika i književnosti)
• Type of resource: Text
• File origin: Born digital
• Access conditions: Open access
• Created on: 2020-09-25 08:29:43