Translanguaging, Diglossia and Bidialectalism in the Video Gamer Argot

Róbert Arnold-Stein,Ildikó Hortobágyi

doi:10.52885/pah.v1i2.61

Abstract

Video games have undergone an extensive technological advancement which has triggered a rapid shift in the role and potency the different media have gained in meeting infotainment needs. The widespread use of the internet has increased the frequency of video gaming among the youth thus promoting the emergence of linguistic material which could be instrumental in second language acquisition. The present paper aims to reveal the linguistic gains from virtual multicultural environments for video gamers in relation to their communication needs, a situation which rightfully characterizes them as bilinguals. Despite the continuing linguistic experimentation activities initiated by researchers, the video gamers’ language utilization has not been paid much attention to as potential research domain in bi/multilingualism. The research has capitalized on the germane information of a cross sectional survey conducted on secondary school video gamer students in Hungary by investigating their language use habits derived from video game usage. The ample research scope results contribute to filling the linguistic gap of word formation methods, translanguaging, diglossia and bidialectalism by comparing the international and Hungarian instances of the video gamer argot. We also journey through the description, modelling, explanation of several processes which could happen within and outside the digital world as an illustration of language use in contact.

Highlights

Nowadays, on the digital platforms the dividing line between written and oral communication is highly blurred
In terms of video game-related vocabulary, the gamers’ language usage comprises only a narrow segment of the communication domains at first sight, since a gamer plays several types of video games or genres in her/his youth, to a certain extent their insight into the different accessed domains can be expanded by the importance of the timespan they spend in front of the screen
Video gamers have been researched from comprehensive linguistic points of view, such as vocabulary development, pragmatic language skills, code switching and borrowing, and willingness to communicate, as found by Sylvén & Sundqvist (2012), Cabraya (2016), Hing (2015), Prensky (2006), Reinders, & Wattana (2011), Horowitz (2019), etc

Summary

Introduction

On the digital platforms the dividing line between written and oral communication is highly blurred. Video gamers have been researched from comprehensive linguistic points of view, such as vocabulary development, pragmatic language skills, code switching and borrowing, and willingness to communicate, as found by Sylvén & Sundqvist (2012), Cabraya (2016), Hing (2015), Prensky (2006), Reinders, & Wattana (2011), Horowitz (2019), etc They all concluded that video gaming is a cutting-edge facilitator of language acquisition and social practice, and carries characteristics of the new way of attaining and utilizing literacy, which was labelled “digilect” by Veszelszki During online gamer-gamer and in-game oral and written communication, the participants must employ terms from the particular (played) games from which they develop the gamer argot where the players adopt or eventually borrow words from a foreign language (English) in order to accurately express their personal interests. In the discussion part we highlight the relevance of the bilingual status of the video gamers through examples of word formation, translanguaging, diglossia and bidialectalism

Literature review

Conclusions from the written examples

Is there any recognisable hierarchy in a hard-core gamer’s speech?

Findings

Conclusion